Details
Synopsis
Travel writer Geoffrey Moorhouse turns his attention to the rigors of Irish monasticism in the medieval period, using a clever and evocative combination of fictional vignettes and more traditional historiography. The resulting work illuminates the evolution of Irish monasticism, from an isolated and austere faith shaped by its island environment to the less zealous, Romanized form that developed as Rome reasserted its primacy.
| Size | | Length: | 284 pages | | Height: | 8.5 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 11.2 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "The men at the oars moved as though they had all the time in the world at their disposal."
Industry Reviews
"[H]e [Moorhouse] gives us seven episodes in the history of the monastery from its founding by Fionan, which he places in 588 (9 years before St. Augustine came to Canterbury), until 1222, when, probably because of the difficulty of survival in deteriorating weather conditions, the last monks returned to the mainland, where they found a new monastery....This is a marvelous book bringing together Moorhouse's proven talents as a recorder of travels, an historian and a first-class stylist. He provides insight into the lives and minds of those extraordinary men who went to live on what was for them the rim of the world."
Literary Review - David Chipp (04/19/1997)
"Nobody but Geoffrey Moorhouse could have written this wonderfully imaginative book...masterly, written with great restraint and scholarly care....An almost hallucinatorily vivid reenactment of a very peculiar human experience."
Times (London) - Jan Morris
"'Sun Dancing' casts light on one of the most astonishing chapters in the history of Christianity."
Sunday Telegraph (London) - Philip Marsden
"A unique work, in which the places themselves are potent characters...its distinctive combination of documentary fiction and grossing scholarship will compel many readers."
other - Thomas Keneally
"The rigors of Irish monasticism in the medieval period, well told by travel writer Moorhouse...intriguing and beautifully written."
Nader
"It is said that anyone who sees the Skelligs will be forever restless until he sets foot on them; readers of "Sun Dancing" can only have a secondhand glimpse, but it is nonetheless enchanting."
Franklin
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