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Unlocking the Church: The lost secrets of Victorian sacred space

Autor William Whyte
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 9 ian 2020
The Victorians built tens of thousands of churches in the hundred years between 1800 and 1900. Wherever you might be in the English-speaking world, you will be close to a Victorian built or remodelled ecclesiastical building. Contemporary experience of church buildings is almost entirely down to the zeal of Victorians such as John Henry Newman, Henry Wilberforce and Augustus Pugin, and their ideas about the role of architecture in our spiritual life and well-being. In Unlocking the Church, William Whyte explores a forgotten revolution in social and architectural history and in the history of the Church. He details the architectural and theological debates of the day, explaining how the Tractarians of Oxford and the Ecclesiologists of Cambridge were embroiled in the aesthetics of architecture, and how the Victorians profoundly changed the ways in which buildings were understood and experienced. No longer mere receptacles for worship, churches became active agents in their own rights, capable of conveying theological ideas and designed to shape people's emotions. These church buildings are now a challenge: their maintenance, repair or repurposing are pressing problems for parishes in age of declining attendance and dwindling funds. By understanding their past, unlocking the secrets of their space, there might be answers in how to deal with the legacy of the Victorians now and into the future.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780198796169
ISBN-10: 0198796161
Pagini: 260
Ilustrații: 26 black and white illustrations
Dimensiuni: 134 x 214 x 21 mm
Greutate: 0.27 kg
Editura: OUP OXFORD
Colecția OUP Oxford
Locul publicării:Oxford, United Kingdom

Recenzii

Scholarly, witty and thought-provoking.
Unlocking the Church of St Martin-within-Ludgate, daily, is an evocative experience...This is a gem of a book and should be read by the broadest of audiences, and certainly well beyond the sheltered halls of the academy.
Unlocking the Church is an impressive work of historical scholarship, but it is remarkable as well for its serious consideration of a contemporary dilemma that crosses sociological boundaries.
Unlocking the Church deserves to be considered not only by historians of church buildings, but more widely as a refreshing model of architectural history writing that dispenses with dry technicalities and connoisseurship in favour of an engaging and lucidly historical approach.
In this engaging, eloquently written book, the distinguished historian William Whyte explores the symbolism and sacred space that informed the large-scale movement of church building and restoration in Victorian Britain.
Impeccably researched, thoroughly explored, and expertly argued... the depth of the research and attention to detail make Unlocking the Church an invaluable resource.
With a dazzling and witty range of reference to the literature of Victorian religion, be it sermons, controversial pamphlets or three-decker novels , [Whyte] retells the story of the rebirth of the church building as sacred object from J.H. Newmans St Mary, Littlemore, onwards.
Whyte is a genial guide and writes with wit and humour... One of the great virtues of the book is that it encourages further reflection... We may not look for answers in the same place as the Victorians did, but we may at least now learn from them, thanks to this book, to face the challenge with the same seriousness of purpose.
A thoroughly engrossing book [which cites] a wonderful range of sermons, clerical literature and polemical writing.
I found Whyte's appreciation of the sight-lines and acoustics necessary in a preaching house and explanations of the Victorian rediscovery of the symbolism of mediaeval churches both fascinating and useful. His perspectives reach back before Victorian times and project forward to the challenge and questions of church design today.
There is much to learn and enjoy in this book.
Fascinating and meticulously-researched.
A very important book that deserves careful consideration.
An eloquent plea for an understanding of the past through built fabric ... William Whyte has raised important issues, with much on which to ponder regarding the future of ecclesiastical buildings.
A revealing way of looking at Victorian churches... Unlocking the Church is a necessary corrective to the tendency to look at Victorian churches in purely architectural terms.
This accessible page-turner... is essential reading for anyone who ever looked at a Victorian spire and wondered how it got there, or what it meant to those who paid for it, and the worshippers across a century and a half who have called it their spiritual home.
Masterful... fascinating and useful.
The polymathic verve and spry wit of William Whytes Unlocking the Church: The lost secrets of Victorian space (Oxford) is an exemplary model of a short, comprehensible history covering diverse, delicate and complex themes.
Alarmingly learned and constantly entertaining.
A country mile distant from the heavy prose of the Victorian churchmen, Whyte writes nimbly and wittily about the resacralisation of Britain through the vast church building of the 19th century.
Whyte does an excellent job of bringing to the fore the disproportionate focus that today's architectural historians (much like Victorian antiquaries) place on form rather than religious function.
This is an engaging book, written in a lively, accessible and sometimes humorous way.
This beautifully written book is an erudite yet very accessible and entertaining study of the relationship between Victorian church architecture and faith. The Victorians built and restored tens of thousands of churches. Understanding more about them and, through them, the faith that inspired them, is to gain invaluable insights into our national history and identity. This book enables just that.
In this erudite, engaging and witty book, William Whyte gives us a brilliantly original account of how the Victorians profoundly reshaped church buildings and their use, and demonstrates how much the Victorians continue to influence our ideas about churches today - often in surprising ways.
You will never look at your local church in the same way again. With an eye for the telling detail, William Whyte has become a master at reading church buildings. Elegantly written, it must be impossible to read this book without pleasure or profit.

Notă biografică

William Whyte is Professor of Social and Architectural History and Vice President of St John's College, Oxford. His last book, Redbrick: a social and architectural history of Britain's civic universities was shortlisted for the Longman-History Today prize and the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. He serves as associate priest in the parish of Kidlington and writes regularly for the Church Times.

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