Medieval Institute Publications

The Cloud of Unknowing describes the contemplative method centered around eliminating all noise and images from the mind, and in that encounter with nothingness, finding God. Meanwhile, despite the austerity of the content, the style of the author is warm and congenial and eminently readable. Patrick J. Gallacher further makes this text accessible to students and teachers by including a gloss, introduction, notes, and glossary. This text gives a great introduction to the ethos of mysticism in the middle ages.

Patrick Joseph Gallacher was Professor Emeritus of Medieval Language and Literature in the Department of English at the University of New Mexico. He was author or editor of several books, as well as numerous reviews and path breaking articles. He was, for example, one of the first Chaucerian scholars to combine medieval medicine and literature in such articles as ＂Chaucer and the Rhetoric of the Body,＂ ＂The Summoner’s Tale and Medieval Attitudes Toward Sickness,＂ and ＂Food, Laxatives, and Catharsis in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale.＂