The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works
Anonymous
Penguin Group USA, Inc.
<p>In the fourteenth century there was a great flourishing of religious writings in English, both orthodox and heretical. Many of these works focused on Christ's Passion and humanity, whereas <i>The Cloud of Unknowing</i> describes an abstract, transcendent God beyond human knowledge and human language. Drawing upon radically different traditions, it is a rich work full of intriguing contradictions that speaks to us with liveliness and wit even today. The unknown author, thought to be a priest and Carthusian monk, is also believed to have written the other three works in this volume: <i>The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis</i>, <i>The Book of Privy Counselling</i>, and <i>An Epistle on Prayer</i>, which, together with <i>The Cloud of Unknowing</i>, are the four texts at the core of medieval mystical theology.</p><p>This Penguin Classics edition includes full explanatory notes, suggestions for further reading, an appendix that reproduces the Middle English text of a section of The...</p>