Performing Beauty

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course offers an entree to themes at the intersection of liturgy, theology, and aesthetics. The class will introduce students to major questions in theological aesthetics as they relate to liturgy. To what extent is beauty part of divine revelation, and how does "liturgical beauty" reveal? What role does art, drama, and poetry play in liturgical rites? Is there a beautiful way to participate in the liturgy, and if so, what is it? How does one judge the beauty of a prayer, a rite, a church, a sermon, or a piece of music? The course will examine these questions, not simply through an examination of systematic texts but through historic study of specific incarnations of liturgical beauty. These incarnations of beauty will include rituals, prayer texts, sermons, devotional books, mystagogical treatises, liturgical drama, poetry, hymnody, architecture, as well as painting and iconography.