The Cloud of Unknowing - E. Allison Peers (essay date 1947)
E. Allison Peers (essay date 1947)
SOURCE: Peers, E. Allison. “The Cloud of Unknowing.” In Behind That Wall: An Introduction to Some Classics of the Interior Life, pp. 56-63. Toronto: SCM Press Ltd, 1947.
[In the following essay, Peers provides an overview of the major themes of The Cloud of Unknowing.]
This is a book written, late in the fourteenth century, by an Englishman, about whose identity no one knows anything whatsoever, or can even make much of a guess. He was undoubtedly a scholar, and almost certainly a priest; but, though he seems to have known a good deal about solitude and contemplation, he gives clear indications of having lived in the world. Whatever his state of life, he was a most remarkable writer; for, in days when the language of “religious” books was so apt to be conventional, he is vivid, surprising, picturesque, caustic and even humorous. His faculty of observation is rivalled by his gifts of...
[The entire page is 2385 words long]
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