The 14th century English alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is admired for its morally complex plot and brilliant poetics. A chivalric romance placed in an Arthurian setting, it received acclaim from the peasantry of its time for its commentary regarding important socio-political and religious concerns. The poem's technical brilliance blends psychological depth and vivid language to produce an effect widely considered superior to any other work of the time. Although the poem is a combination of English alliterative meter, romanticism, and a wide-ranging knowledge of...

Description: A Living Light explores some of the major events in the life of Hildegard of Bingen: mystic, physician, composer, and one of the foremost intellectuals of the Middle Ages. In the form of a dramatic novella, it telescopes to such life-changing events as the courageous recording of her visions, the Church's acceptance of her accounts of prophetic experience, the formation of her own abbey, and the interdiction against her nuns for the burial of a revolutionary on holy ground. A story of character, spiritual doubt and achievement, kindness and resolve, and a life devoted to both...