Author Description

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Theology of discourse: Revisioning and retrieval -- Selected contemporary expositors -- The task of retrieval -- Discourse and method -- Etymological illumination: Medieval conversatio -- Conclusion -- 2 Contemporary invitations to a theology of discourse -- Rhetorical categories and theological formation -- A hermeneutical circle of discourse: David Tracy, David Burrell, and Sarah Coakley -- David Tracy: Semiotic mediations as transformative practice -- David Burrell: Conversion in community -- Sarah Coakley: Gender, integration and contemplation -- Conclusion -- 3 Augustine's semiotics of creation and revelation as primary spiritual exercises -- De doctrina christiana and Confessions: Complementary readings in the rhetoric of conversion -- Spiritual exercises in the De doctrina christiana -- Spiritual exercises in the Confessions -- A complexification of exercises in the narrative of the Confessions -- A Pseudo-Dionysian interlude: Mining the language of prayer -- Invitations for further retrieval -- 4 Exercises in memory and conversion in the epistolary discourse of Heloise and Abelard -- Gender and conversion in theological reflection -- Ecclesial contexts for gender complementarity: cura mulierum -- The twelfth-century letters of Heloise and Abelard -- Memory of transgression: Letter 1 (Historia calamitatum) -- Memory of friendship: Letters 2-4 -- Meditation and discernment for the care of souls: Letters 5-8 -- A new lectio for contemplation: Problemata Heloisae -- Thirteenth-century Dominican contributions to the cura mulierum -- Conclusion -- 5 Towards a theology of discourse in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas -- The status of prayer in thirteenth-century theological reflection