Rethinking the Medieval Senses : Heritage - Fascinations - Frames

by Nichols, Stephen G.; Kablitz, Andreas; Calhoun, Alison

• ISBN13: 9780801887376
• ISBN10: 0801887372
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-01-02
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

How much can we know about sensory experience in the Middle Ages? While few would question that the human senses encountered a profoundly different environment in the medieval world, two distinct and opposite interpretations of that encounter have emerged -- one of high sensual intensity and one of extreme sensual starvation. Presenting original, cutting-edge scholarship, Stephen G. Nichols, Alison Calhoun, and their team of distinguished colleagues transport us to the center of this lively debate. Organized within historical, thematic, and contextual frameworks, these essays examine the psychological, rhetorical, and philological complexities of sensory perception from the classical period to the late Middle Ages. Contributors: Marina Brownlee, Princeton University; Alison Calhoun, Johns Hopkins University; Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University; Daniel Heller-Roazen, Princeton University; Andreas Kablitz, Universitat zu Koln; Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, University of Zurich; Joachim Kupper, Freie Universitat Berlin; Stephen G. Nichols, Johns Hopkins University; David Nirenberg, University of Chicago; Gabrielle M. Spiegel, Johns Hopkins University; Eugene Vance, University of Washington; Gregor Vogt-Spira, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universitat Greifswald; Rainer Warning, University of Munich; Heather Webb, Ohio State University; Michel Zink, the Sorbonne

Author Biography

Stephen G. Nichols is James M. Beall Professor of French and Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University, author of Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography, and editor of The New Philology. Andreas Kablitz is a professor of Romance Philology and head of the Romanisches Seminar of the Philosophische Fakult+ñt of the Universit+ñt zu K+¦ln. Alison Calhoun is currently pursuing her doctorate in French Literature at the Johns Hopkins University and in 2006--2007 was the Louis Marin Fellow at the +ëcole Normale Sup+¬rieure (Ulm) in Paris.

Table of Contents

Prologue	p. vii
Introduction. Erudite Fascinations and Cultural Energies: How Much Can We Know about the Medieval Senses?	p. 1
Heritage	p. 11
Seeing God: Augustine, Sensation, and the Mind's Eye	p. 13
Common Sense: Greek, Arabic, Latin	p. 30
Senses, Imagination, and Literature: Some Epistemological Considerations	p. 51
Fascinations	p. 73
The Critical Sense: Some Spanish Examples	p. 75
The Place of the Senses	p. 93
Seeing and Hearing in Ancient and Medieval Epiphany	p. 102
Hidden Energies	p. 117
Perception, Cognition, and Volition in the Arcipreste de Talavera	p. 119
Christian Sovereignty and Jewish Flesh	p. 154
Paradoxes of the Senses	p. 186
Representation and Participation: Some Remarks on Medieval French Drama	p. 194
Blinding Sight: Some Observations on German Epics of the Thirteenth Century	p. 206
Blinded Avengers: Making Sense of Invisibility in Courtly Epic and Legal Ritual	p. 218
Frames	p. 263
Cardiosensory Impulses in Late Medieval Spirituality	p. 265
"The Pupil of Your Eye": Vision, Language, and Poetry in Thirteenth-Century Paris	p. 286
Contributors	p. 309
Index	p. 315
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