Background
Morrison, Karl Frederick was born on November 3, 1936 in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. Son of Karl and Gladys (McConatha) Morrison.
( Karl Morrison discusses historical writing at a turning...)
Karl Morrison discusses historical writing at a turning point in European culture: the so-called Renaissance of the twelfth century. Why do texts considered at that time to be masterpieces seem now to be fragmentary and full of contradictions? Morrison maintains that the answer comes from ideas about art. Viewing histories as artifacts made according to the same aesthetic principles as paintings and theater, he shows that twelfth-century authors and audiences found unity not in what the reason read in a text but in what the imagination read into it: they prized visual over verbal imagination and employed a circular, or nuclear, spectator-centered perspective cast aside in the Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Twelfth-century writers assimilated and transformed a tradition of the conceptual unity of all the arts and attributed that unity to the fact that art both conceals and discloses. Recovering that tradition, especially the methods and motives of concealment, provides extraordinary insights into twelfth-century ideas about the kingdom of God, the status of women, and the nature of time itself. It also identifies a strain in European thought that had striking affinities to methods of perception familiar in Oriental religions and that proved to be antithetic to later humanist traditions in the West. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691055823/?tag=2022091-20
( Important trends in contemporary intellectual life cele...)
Important trends in contemporary intellectual life celebrate difference, divisiveness, and distinction. Speculative writing increasingly highlights "hermeneutic gaps" between human beings, their histories, and their hopes. In this book Karl Morrison identifies an alternative to this disruption. He explores for the first time the entire legacy of thought revolving around the challenging claim "I am you"--perhaps the most concise possible statement of bonding through empathy. Professor Morrison shows that the hope for thoroughgoing understanding and inclusion in another's world view is central to the West's moral/intellectual tradition. He maintains that the West may yet escape the fatal flaw of casting that hope in paradigms of sexual and aesthetic dominance--examples of empathetic participation inspired by hunger for power, as well as by love. The author uses diverse sources: in theology ranging from Augustine to Schleiermacher, in art from the religious art of the Christian Empire to post-Abstractionism, and in literature from Donne to Joyce, Pirandello, and Mann. In this work he builds on the thought of two earlier books: Tradition and Authority in the Western Church: 300-1140 (Princeton, 1969) and The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West (Princeton, 1982). "I Am You" goes beyond their themes to the inward act that, according to tradition, consummated the change achieved by mimesis: namely, empathetic participation. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691608733/?tag=2022091-20
(Examines the ways in which people made sense of religious...)
Examines the ways in which people made sense of religious conversion during the 12th century, a critical point in the formation of Western moral values. The book also indicates that the understanding of conversions, rooted in medieval love of indirect and intricate allegorical symbolism, entered the permanent legacy of Western literature and art. The idea of conversion became a mythic strategy of survival in conflict against the world, the flesh and the devil. This book holds that the idea of conversion was a study in aesthetics, specifically in a male aesthetic, combining the brotherhood that violence engendered among warriors with the inexplicable genius of the poet. It explores the ascetic discipline, social myth, and representational art as components in a vast, militantly aggressive education system that served as context defining in the conversion process. The author of this book begins by explaining the basic critical proposition: that the experience of conversion is quite different from what is called conversion in texts; that no one can grasp the actual experience through texts about it; that Western religious literature displays not one kind of conversion, but an ill-matched repertory of such paradigms, each with a distinctive history; and that the moral imperative to change self and society is embroiled by the idea of conversion, has contributed an enduring, dominant and relentless ideal to Western culture.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813913608/?tag=2022091-20
( Interpreting three conversion accounts, Morrison accent...)
Interpreting three conversion accounts, Morrison accents the categorical difference between the experience of conversion and written narratives about it. He explains why experience and text can only be related to each other in fictive ways.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813913934/?tag=2022091-20
( Ancient writers distinguished between art and style, ar...)
Ancient writers distinguished between art and style, arguing that free imitation was a critical strategy that freed artists from servile copying of objects and blind submission to rules of style. In this study Karl F. Morrison explores the far-reaching consequences of this distinction Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691053502/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005HZIHJY/?tag=2022091-20
Morrison, Karl Frederick was born on November 3, 1936 in Birmingham, Alabama, United States. Son of Karl and Gladys (McConatha) Morrison.
Bachelor, University Mississippi, 1956. Master of Arts, Cornell University, 1957. Doctor of Philosophy, Cornell University, 1961.
Acting instructor history, Stanford University, 1960-1961;
instructor, University of Minnesota, 1961-1962;
assistant professor, University of Minnesota, 1962-1964;
assistant professor, Harvard University, 1964-1965;
associate professor, University of Chicago, 1965-1968;
professor, University of Chicago, 1968-1984;
department chairman history, University of Chicago, 1970-1976;
Ahmanson-Murphy distinguished professor Medieval and Renaissance history, U. Kansas, Lawrence, 1984-1988;
Lessing professor of history and poetics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, since 1988. Visiting assistant professor Columbia University, New York City, summer 1963. Visiting professor Princeton University, 1992.
Member of faculty selection committee U. Cyprus, since 1991. Visiting member Institute for Advanced Study, 1966-1967, 76-77. Vice president Midwest Medieval Conference, 1975-1976, president, 1976-1977.
( Ancient writers distinguished between art and style, ar...)
( Interpreting three conversion accounts, Morrison accent...)
(Examines the ways in which people made sense of religious...)
( Karl Morrison discusses historical writing at a turning...)
( The Description for this book, Tradition and Authority ...)
( Important trends in contemporary intellectual life cele...)
Board trustees Princeton Community Housing Inc., since 1994. Fellow Medieval Academy American (counsellor 1972-1975, orator of fellows since 1996, Haskins medal 1994). Member American History Association, Medieval Association Midwest (president 1977-1978), Medieval Association Mid-American (president 1988-1989), International Museum Surgical Sciences and Hall of Fame (board directors 1982-1984).
Married Anne Blunt, August 29, 1964. Children: Andrew, Sarah.