SOURCE: Peers, E. Allison. “The Cloud of Unknowing.” In Behind That Wall: An Introduction to Some Classics of the Interior Life, pp. 56-63. Toronto: SCM Press Ltd, 1947.

In the following essay, Peers provides an overview of the major themes of The Cloud of Unknowing.

This is a book written, late in the fourteenth century, by an Englishman, about whose identity no one knows anything whatsoever, or can even make much of a guess. He was undoubtedly a scholar, and almost certainly a priest; but, though he seems to have known a good deal about solitude and contemplation, he gives clear indications of having lived in the world. Whatever his state of life, he was a most remarkable writer; for, in days when the language of “religious” books was so apt to be conventional, he is vivid, surprising, picturesque, caustic and even humorous. His faculty of observation is rivalled...