History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition. Volume 1

Explores the conviction that paradise existed in a precise although unreachable earthly location. Delving into the writings of dozens of medieval and Renaissance thinkers, from Augustine to Dante, this title presents a study of the meaning of Original Sin and the human yearning for paradise.

In this volume Professor Jean Delumeau announces a new direction for his ongoing study of ideas central to the evolution of Western Christianity. Four prior books, beginning with La peur en Occident (Paris, 1978), explored concepts of fear, sin, anxiety, and reconciliation. But History of Paradise (originaly Une histoire du Paradis [Paris, 1992]), the first in a trilogy on ideas of human happiness, focuses on descriptions of Eden and Paradise, with special emphasis on the fourteenth through eighteenth centuries.