The Origins of Protestant Aesthetics in Early Modern Europe
The Origins of Protestant Aesthetics in Early Modern Europe
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The aesthetics of everyday life, as reflected in art museums and galleries throughout the western world, is the result of a profound shift in aesthetic perception that occurred during the Renaissance and Reformation. In this book, William A. Dyrness examines intellectual developments in late Medieval Europe, which turned attention away from a narrow range liturgical art and practices and towards a celebration of God's presence in creation and in history. Though threatened by the human tendency to self-assertion, he shows how a new focus on God's creative and recreative action in the world gave time and history a new seriousness, and engendered a broad spectrum of aesthetic potential. Focusing in particular on the writings of Luther and Calvin, Dyrness demonstrates how the reformers' conceptual and theological frameworks pertaining to the role of the arts influenced the rise of realistic theater, lyric poetry, landscape painting, and architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
- Presents ways that Reformation and Calvin in particular played a constructive role in the development of culture
- Argues for a broader understanding of aesthetics with roots in this period, as in part a development of medieval devotional trends
- Provides a fresh approach to understanding the arts in the period of the Reformation
Reviews & endorsements
'… the book is loaded with excellent references … [This book] … an invaluable resource for theologians, church historians, art historians, cultural critics, and liturgical scholars.' Michael N. Jagessar, Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies
Product details
May 2019Adobe eBook Reader
9781108656696
0 pages
24 b/w illus.
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
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Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction: the medieval context of the Reformation
- 2. Like and presence in Holbein, Luther and Cranach
- 3. John Calvin: creation, drama and time
- 4. Calvin, language and the rise of literary culture
- 5. Portraits and dramatic culture in sixteenth century England
- 6. The emerging aesthetics of early modern England: a new world with echoes of the past
- 7. The new visual culture of reformed Holland and France
- 8. Epilogue: the cultural afterlife of Protestant aesthetics.
