The Craft of Thought, first published in 1998, is a companion to Mary Carruthers' earlier study of memory in medieval culture, The Book of Memory. This more recent volume examines medieval monastic meditation as a discipline for making thoughts, and discusses its influence on literature, art, and architecture. In a process akin to today's 'creative' thinking, or 'cognition', this discipline recognises the essential roles of imagination and emotion in meditation. Deriving examples from a variety of late antique and medieval sources, with excursions into modern architectural memorials, this study emphasises meditation as an act of literary composition or invention, the techniques of which notably involved both words and making mental 'pictures' for thinking and composing.
- ISBN13 9780521582322
- Publish Date 12 October 1998
- Publish Status Inactive
- Out of Print 1 March 2005
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Cambridge University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 426
- Language English