What I admire about Adams, aside from the elegance and intimacy of his prose, is this grasp of the grand arc of history. Why did eleventh-century Normans and twelfth-century French rulers make this investment? His intelligence probes deeper, though: these are not merely skillful arrangements of piles of stone the great cathedrals and abbeys are the input of wealth, the result is an expression of energy. Adams is a sensitive responder to architecture he “reads” Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres with a perceptive eye. Adams casts this book as a vade mecum addressed to a “niece” (one of the charming young ladies in his social circle) about to make her first visit to these two monuments of medieval construction.
0 kommentar(er)
