Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction Overview

This Study Guide consists of approximately 30 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Cathedral.

Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction Overview

This Study Guide consists of approximately 30 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Cathedral.
This section contains 178 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy the Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction Study Guide

Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction Summary & Study Guide Description

Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:

This detailed literature summary also contains Further Study and a Free Quiz on Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction by David Macaulay.

In Cathedral architecture and construction come alive as human accomplishments. The drawings and a thoroughly researched but brief text clarify the technical aspects and terminology as well. A one-page glossary in the back provides a quick reference for architectural terms found in the text.

The book also introduces the social structure, materials, and working conditions of the medieval trade guilds.

The book provides excellent exercise for the developing imagination, presenting an incredible variety of viewpoints from which to examine a cathedral— angles not even available to someone standing in the real building. For example, Macaulay provides a bird's-eye view down through the unfinished choir and then takes the reader inside at triforium height, looking out toward the empty space where the nave will be. One page later the reader stands on a narrow scaffold up in the trusses of the roof. A head-on elevation sketch indicates exactly how high the scaffold is and—in terms of construction stages—how it got there. Macaulay's drawings are both meticulously detailed and highly imaginative in perspective.

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This section contains 178 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy the Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction Study Guide
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Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.