SOURCE: Minnis, Alastair. “Affection and Imagination in The Cloud of Unknowing and Hilton's Scale of Perfection.” Traditio 39 (1983): 323-66.

In the following essay, Minnis compares the approach taken to spirituality in The Cloud of Unknowing with that taken by Hilton is The Scale of Perfection, particularly concerning the roles of intellectual contemplation and imaginative meditation.

How can a literary critic best approach texts which are living classics of religious literature? This question is being asked with increasing frequency by modern readers of The Cloud of Unknowing and Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection.¹ My own preference is for an historical-critical approach which, while recognising that these works are for all time, is concerned to relate them to the time in which they were written. It has recently been pointed out that certain studies of the English Mystics are marred by ‘the scholar's lack of adequate theological training to interpret the...