Richard G. Newhauser & Susan Ridyard 
Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture 
The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins

A fresh consideration of the enduring tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, showing its continuing post-medieval influence.


The tradition of the seven deadly sins played a considerable role in western culture, even after the supposed turning-point of the Protestant Reformation, as the essays collected here demonstrate. The first part of the book addresses such topics as the problem of
acedia in Carolingian monasticism; the development of medieval thought on arrogance; the blending of tradition and innovation in Aquinas’s conceptualization of the sins; the treatment of sin in the pastoral contexts of the early Middle English
Vices and Virtues and a fifteenth-century sermon from England; the political uses of the deadly sins in the court sermons of Jean Gerson; and the continuing usefulnessof the tradition in early modern England. In the second part, the role of the tradition in literature and the arts is considered. Essays look at representations of the sins in French music of the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries; in Dante’s
Purgatorio; in a work by Michel Beheim in pre-Reformation Germany; and in a 1533 play by the German Lutheran writer Hans Sachs. New interpretations are offered of Gower’s ‘Tale of Constance’ and Bosch’s
Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins. As a whole, the book significantly enhances our understanding of the multiple uses and meanings of the sins tradition, not only in medieval culture but also in the transition from the medievalto the early modern period.


RICHARD G. NEWHAUSER is Professor of English and Medieval Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe; SUSAN J. RIDYARD is Professor of History and Director of the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium, The University of the South, Sewanee.


Contributors: Richard G. Newhauser, James B. Williams, Kiril Petkov, Cate Gunn, Eileen C. Sweeney, Holly Johnson, Nancy Mc Loughlin, Anne Walters Robertson, Peter S. Hawkins, Carol Jamison, Henry Luttikhuizen, William C. Mc Donald, Kathleen Crowther.

表中的内容

Introduction: Understanding Sin: Recent Scholarship and the Capital Vices – Richard G. Newhauser

Working for Reform:
Acedia, Benedict of Aniane and the Transformation of Working Culture in Carolingian Monasticism – James B. Williams

The Cultural Career of a ‘Minor’ Vice: Arrogance in the Medieval Treatise in Sin – Kiril Petkov

Vices and Virtues: A Reassessment of Stowe MS 34 – Cate Gunn

Aquinas on the Seven Deadly Sins: Tradition and Innovation – Eileen C. Sweeney

A Fifteenth-Century Sermon Enacts the Seven Deadly Sins – Holly Johnson

The Deadly Sins and Contemplative Politics: Gerson’s Ordering of the Personal and Political Realms – Nancy A. Mc Loughlin

‘These Seaven Devils’: The Capital Vices on the Way to Modernity – Richard G. Newhauser

The Seven Deadly Sins in Medieval Music – Anne Walters Robertson

The Religion of the Mountain: Handling Sin in Dante’s
Purgatorio – Peter S. Hawkins

John Gower’s Shaping of ‘The Tale of Constance’ as an
Exemplum contra Envy – Carol Jamison

Through Boschian Eyes: An Interpretation of the Prado
Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins – Henry M. Luttikhuizen

Singing Sin: Michel Beheim’s ‘Little Book of the Seven Deadly Sins’, a German Pre-Reformation Religious Text for the Laity – William C. Mc Donald

Raising Cain: Vice, Virtue and Social Order in the German Reformation – Kathleen M. Crowther