Can I read In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion) on EtoBox?

In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion) by Patricia Cox Miller; Patricia Cox Miller is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion) about?

Early Christian theology posited a strict division between animals and humans. Nevertheless, animal figures abound in early Christian literature and artfrom Augustine's renowned "wonder at the agility of the mosquito on the wing," to vivid exegeses of the six days of creation detailed in Genesisand when they appear, the distinctions between human and animal are often dissolved. How, asks Patricia Cox Miller, does one account for the stunning zoological imagination found in a wide variety of genres of ancient Christian texts? In the Eye of the Animal complicates the role of animals in early Christian thought by showing how textual and artistic images and interpretive procedures actually celebrated a continuum of human and animal life. Synthesizing early Christian studies, contemporary philosophy, animal studies, ethology, and modern poetry, Miller identifies two contradictory strands in early Christian thinking about animals. The dominant thread viewed the body and soul of the human being as dominical, or the crowning achievement of creation; animals, with their defective souls, related to humans only as reminders of the brutish physical form. However, the second strand relied upon

Author

Patricia Cox Miller; Patricia Cox Miller

Publisher

University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc

Published

2018

Language

EN

ISBN

9780812295221

Subjects

History, Christian, Philosophy