From now on will be possible to enjoy in Spanish one of the most distinguished medieval books: Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres
5 july 2016
In 2016 Spanish readers will have finally the opportunity of enjoying one of the best books explaining the medieval culture: Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, written by the American Henry Adams. In the words of the Spanish historian José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec: “The book that best achieved to decode the inexhaustible wisdom of the Gothic as a way of understanding Europe”.
Henry Adams presents the book as a didactic short story for his nieces: an intimate tone that catches the reader since the first page. The author goes through the great centuries of the cathedrals and focuses on the Gothic art and its transforming role in the European medieval society. Adams goes from the architecture, sculpture and stained glass windows of Chartres to religion, literature, politics, the stablished social order and the Crusades of the 11th to 13th centuries. His story is innovative and brings the reader close to the times of troubadours and courtly love.
Some of the historical figures in his pages are Eleanor of Aquitaine and her drama, also the love story between Héloïse and Abélard and the victory of Thomas Aquinas over the rival theologians.
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres is a cultural review of the Middle Ages as well as a kind of travel guide for that time. Taking the architecture as the centre of his exposure of ideas, the author debates about religion and art and their transforming power of the medieval society: a time of tumultuous changes explained centuries later with the necessary objective and distant view to create a good story.
The American writer Henry B. Adams (1838-2978), is a distinguished medievalist but he was also journalist and writer, editor of the prestigious magazine North American Review and professor of Medieval History in Harvard University. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1918 with The Education of Henry Adams, which was recently chosen as “the best American literature work” by the American critics.
An innovative author that decided to express his great passion, Medieval Ages, in a disseminating book for his nieces that turned into a great legacy for the entire society thanks to a story that allows travelling to that time through its pages.
