"These essays recover the lively discussions on the topics of "magnificence" and "the sublime" in the art and literature of antiquity, the Renaissance, and the ages following, and apply them to the Middle Ages to draw exciting new conlusions"--

"Lively and deeply productive discussions have focused on the topics of "Magnificence" and "the Sublime" in the art and literature of antiquity, the Renaissance and the ages following, including the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They have engaged major figures: Ernst Gombrich, Theodore Adorno, Barnett Newman, Jean-Francois Lyotard to name only a few. This discussion has virtually bypassed the Middle Ages. The essays in Magnificence and the Sublime reclaim a position for the medieval period in the theoretical discussion of art, architecture, music and literature. It shows that artistic practice in the Middle Ages often strove for, and celebrated, grand effects. These are analysed as an aesthetic of grandeur, a psychology and a sociology of that aesthetic, also the emotional response of hearer/viewer/reader to the magnificent and the sublime. "--