The Cloud of Unknowing: And Other Works (Penguin Classics)

Book Description
In the fourteenth century there was a great flourishing of religious writings in English, both orthodox and heretical. Many of these works focused on Christ's Passion and humanity, whereas The Cloud of Unknowing describes an abstract, transcendent God beyond human knowledge and human language. Drawing upon radically different traditions, it is a rich work full of intriguing contradictions that speaks to us with liveliness and wit even today. The unknown author, thought to be a priest and Carthusian monk, is also believed to have written the other three works in this volume: The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling, and An Epistle on Prayer, which, together with The Cloud of Unknowing, are the four texts at the core of medieval mystical theology.

This Penguin Classics edition includes full explanatory notes, suggestions for further reading, an appendix that reproduces the Middle English text of a section of The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, and an introduction that places the texts within the context of medieval religious writing.

About the Author
A. C. Spearing is professor of English at the University of Virginia. He has published widely on medieval literature and edited Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love for Penguin Classics.


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"In the fourteenth century there was a great flourishing of religious writing in English, both orthodox and heretical. Many of these works focused on Christ's Humanity and Passion, whereas The Cloud of Unknowing draws on radically different traditions to evoke an abstract, transcendent God, beyond human understanding. It calls for intense contemplation, motivated by love and stripped of all thought, as the way to the Divine. Yet the author's powerfully concrete language is deliberately at odds with this spiritual doctrine, making The Cloud a rich work full of intriguing contradictions that speaks to us with liveliness and wit today." This edition also includes three other works attributed to the same author, thought to be a priest and Carthusian monk: The Mystical Theology of Saint Denis, The Book of Privy Counselling and An Epistle on Prayer.


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