Semiotics of the Christian Imagination: Signs of the Fall and Redemption
Ebook
The semiotics of the Christian imagination describes the repository of signs and the logic of signification through which a community of faith envisions spiritual truths. This book analyses various examples in text, images, music, art and scientific treatise of the imaginative semiotisation of the fall of Man and the Church's semiotic perception of the Divine plan for Redemption.
The book includes a chapter detailing the theory of signs, based on a close reading of primary sources, and has nine further chapters on the meaning-making inherent in ideas of the Fall and Redemption of mankind. These are filtered through and given material representation by the semiotic paradigms of various cultural fields, including philology, verbal arts and science.
Central to this practice - and to the book's message - are two themes of theological semiotics fundamental to man's understanding of himself in the larger scheme of things. Two of these include the theology of the Fall and a sacramental theory of signs. The theory is grounded in the doctrine of analogy, and this is the only reliable cognitive link between the immanence of the thinking subject and the transcendence that is the object of thought.
Demonstrates how to conceptualize and study the Christian imagination through a framework of signs, meaning-making and semiotics.
Blends semiotic theory and theology to develop a sacramental theory of signs and a semiotic approach to the Fall and Redemption of Man
Covers written text, images, music, art and scientific treatise in its analysis of how meaning-making works in the Biblical Christian imagination
A bold and innovative use of the semiotic tool kit to provide fresh new insights into a much written about topic
Acknowledgements
Preface
1. The Centrality of Signs in the Christian Imagination
2. Gendering the Serpent
3. Cajetan on the Fall of Eve
4. Workers of Evil
5. The Fall from Harmony
6. Passiontide Drama
7. Signs of the Passion and Compassion
8. Imitatio Christi
9. Signum Magnum
10. The Starry Saints
Bibliography
Index
A riveting account of the Christian Weltanschauung and an erudite tour de force astride visual and textual argumentation. Pietropaolo regales the reader with a fundamental work for thoroughly understanding the Christian imagination, an important cultural pillar of the West.
The creative interplay of the semiotics of Christian Imagination, Medieval and Renaissance studies is engaging both in creativity and diversity and provides a creative new approach to theological anthropology. An original work informed by rich and diverse primary sources.
- Title: Semiotics of the Christian Imagination: Signs of the Fall and Redemption
- Author: Domenico Pietropaolo
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350064140, 9781350196926, 1350196924, 1350064149
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350064140
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-09T02:21:57Z
Domenico Pietropaolo is Professor of Italian Studies and Drama at the University of Toronto, Canada.