I had planned to nominate the following, then I rejected it as being too long. But now that Paola's nominated a whopper, I figure what the heck.
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, by Henry Adams. Here's the blurb from GR:
Quote:
|
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres is a record not of a literal jouney but of a meditative journey across time and space into the medieval imagination. Using the architecture, sculpture, and stained glass of the two locales as a starting point, Adams breathes life into what others might see merely as monuments of a past civilization. With daring and inventive conceits, Adams looks at the ordinary people, places, and events in the context of the social conventions and systems of thought and belief of the thirteenth century turning the study of history into a kind of theater.
|
Privately published in 1904 and released publicly in 1913, it's in the public domain. My copy is from Manybooks, but the link isn't working for me at the moment. Here's the
Gutenberg copy and it should be available cheaply at all the usual venues.