Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History

Description

A beautifully written personal account of the discovery of late antiquity by one of the world’s most influential and distinguished historians The end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the “neglected half-millennium” now known as late antiquity was in fact crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age. As he and other scholars opened up the history of the classical world in its last centuries to the wider world of Eurasia and northern Africa, they discovered previously overlooked areas of religious and cultural creativity as well as foundational institution-building. A respect for diversity and outreach to the non-European world, relatively recent concerns in other fields, have been a matter of course for decades among the leading scholars of late antiquity. Documenting both his own intellectual development and the emergence of a new and influential field of study, Brown describes his childhood and education in Ireland, his university and academic training in England, and his extensive travels, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. He discusses fruitful interactions with the work of scholars and colleagues that include the British anthropologist Mary Douglas and the French theorist Michel Foucault, and offers fascinating snapshots of such far-flung places as colonial Sudan, midcentury Oxford, and prerevolutionary Iran. With Journeys of the Mind, Brown offers an essential account of the “grand endeavor” to reimagine a decisive historical moment. Cover Contents Preface Part I. Ireland to Shrewsbury 1. Home and Abroad: The Protestant Irish 2. Empire: The Greys 3. Decline and Fall 4. Squireens: The Warrens from County Meath to Dublin 5. Rugby Football: Bob Warren 6. Dubliners: The Lamont Browns 7. Sudan: North and South 8. Atbara: Life Abroad 9. Time of War: Home and Abroad in Time of War 10. The Boss 11. Dublin Days: “Number Sixty” 12. Who’s What? Identities 13. The Modern World 14. To Be a Tweak: Shrewsbury School 15. You Shall Do Greek 16. Modern Side 17. The Duke: History with “the Duke” 18. Into New Worlds: Laurence Lequesne and Frank McEachran 19. Sense of the Past 20. Oxford 1952 21. Encounters with the Past: Archives and Abbeys 22. Switzerland and the Late Middle Ages 23. German at Home: Ernst Scheyer 24. End of the Ancient World Part II. Oxford to all Souls 25. Idylls: Oxford 1953 26. Very “Oxford”: C. S. Lewis 27. France 1954 28. An Oxford Medievalist 1954 29. Friends and Books 30. The Age of Augustine 31. “Decadence”or “Late Antiquity”? Henri-Irénée Marrou 32. Cowley Road 33. “A Very Special Degree”: Finals 34. To All Souls 35. All Souls: Courtesy and Ignorance 36. Teaching, Writing, and Rome 37. Libraries, Lectures, and Talks 38. Religious Dissent: The Case of North Africa 39. Religious Coercion Part III. Augustine to the Holy Man 40. Writing Augustine of Hippo 41. From Life and Times to Biography 42. Patristic Summer 1963 43. Encounters: Henri-Irénée Marrou and Robert Markus 44. All’s Well That Ends Well 1966 45. Resonances 46. Towardthe East: Bohemia, the Balkans, and East Rome 47. Byzantium, Persia, and the Rise of Islam 48. Hebrew 49. Anthropology and History: E. E. Evans-Pritchard 50. Mary Douglas 51. Society and the Supernatural 52. Oxford under Strain 53. The Holy Man Part IV. The World of late Antiquity to Iran 54. The World of Late Antiquity: An Invitation and a Title 55. From Marcus Aurelius . . . 56. To Muhammad: Late Antiquity in a Wider World 57. Medieval Change 58. Presences 59. From the Mediterranean . . . 60. To Iran 61. The Royal Road: Tehran to Kermanshah 62. Palaces and Rock Carvings: Firuzabad and Naqsh-e Rostam 63. Three Cities: Esfahan, Tabriz, and Mashhad 64. Yazd Part V: Berkeley 1975 to Cairo 65. Berkeley 1975 66. Royal Holloway College 67. Genius Loci: Political Thought, World History, and Islam 68. On the East Coast 69. To the Top of the World: Takht-e Soleyman 70. “Guardians of the Sacred Flame”: David Frost 71. From the Zagros to Afghanistan 72. Afghanistan 73. Twilight of Empire 74. Invisible Friends in Visible Places 75. Maynooth to California 76. The Weight of Islam 77. Cairo Part VI: Berkeley to Princeton 78. Berkeley 1978: The Philosopher and Society 79. The Return of Religion: From Revolution to Adab 80. Poverty and Power: Évelyne Patlagean and Paul Veyne 81. Teaching 82. The Tranformation of the Classical Heritage 83. Sexuality: Michel Foucault 84. At the Bear’s Lair: Encounters with Foucault 85. Virginity in Venice 86. Body and City 87. Winter in Venice 88. Surprised in Venice 89. The Collège de France 90. Pierre Hadot 91. A Might-Have-Been 92. The Northeast Corridor 93. High Gravity 94. Writing Body and Society 95. From Origen to Augustine 96. Arnaldo Momigliano 97. Remembering Arnaldo 98. Mums 99. Shifting Boundaries Postscript Since Then Index