The Seven Deadly Sins as Cultural Constructions in the Middle Ages

FAIN: FS-50066-05

Trinity University (San Antonio, TX 78212-7201)
Richard G. Newhauser (Project Director: March 2005 to March 2007)

A five-week seminar for fifteen college and university teachers on cultural aspects of medieval moral thought, to be held in Cambridge, England.

This seminar will examine the cultural construction of medieval moral thought using the categories of the Seven Deadly Sins, critically review scholarship on the sins, and make maximum use of the unique manuscript, research, and human resources available in Cambridge. The seminar will deepen the participants' appreciation for ways in which the medieval conception of morality was a response to varying cultural factors and make the study of the sins available for inclusion in the participants' regular university classes. The format of the seminar will combine individual presentations, guest lectures, and field trips to manuscript collections and parish churches; its results will be disseminated in sessions at conferences for medievalists.

Associated Products

Sin and its Cultural Place in the West: Medieval and Early Modern (Book)
Title: Sin and its Cultural Place in the West: Medieval and Early Modern
Editor: Susan J. Ridyard
Editor: Richard G. Newhauser
Abstract: A collection of essays, derived primarily from a 2006 NEH Summer Seminar and from papers presented at the 2007 Sewanee Medieval Colloquium. These essays make available significant current scholarship on the place of the Seven Deadly Sins tradition in Western culture both before and after the supposed turning-point of the Protestant Reformation. Part I concerns the sins in religious, intellectual and pastoral contexts. Part II focuses on the sins in musical, literary and visual arts. Together these essays, contextualized in an extended introduction by Richard Newhauser, significantly enhance our understanding of the multiple uses and meanings of the sins tradition not only in medieval culture but also in the transition from the medieval to the early modern period.
Year: 2013
Publisher: York Medieval Press
Type: Edited Volume

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