The experience of beauty in the Middle Ages / Mary Carruthers.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carruthers, Mary J. (Mary Jean), 1941-

Contributor:

ebrary, Inc.

Constance L. Rosenthal Book Fund.

Series:

Oxford-Warburg studies

Oxford - Warburg studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aesthetics--History--To 1500.

Art, Medieval--Themes, motives.

Aesthetics.

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 233 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations (some color.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, [2013]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Mary Carruthers shirts the focus of previous studies of medieval beauty and aesthetic pleasure from theological ideas to the human experiences of beauty, grounded in sensory perceptions and in the biology of human beings, as it was then understood. Through detailed lexical analyses of several key terms employed by medieval people to evaluate their own aestheticfeelings-including 'various', 'sweet', 'honest', and 'beautiful'-Carruthers shows how flux and change, and the creative tension of the antithetical physical qualities from which all things were thought to be made (cold, hot, dry, wet), govern the pleasures which medieval arts sought to produce, through the variety of styles they employed in their works. The first questions we should ask of a medieval work of art are not 'what does it represent?' or 'what does it mean?' but 'what is it doing?' and 'what is it asking us to do?' With examples drawn from a variety of literary, musical, graphic, and plastic arts, Carruthers explores how medieval people talked about their experiences of their own human-made artefacts, and in the course of her analysis moves our understanding away from nineteenth-century Romantic and twentieth-century High Modern categories to a more historically aware terminology that emphasises the creativity of play, the value of human delight, and the wisdom to be found in human crafts and their products. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : making sense

Artful play

Sensory complexion and style

Taking the bitter with the sweet

Taste and good taste

Varietas

Ordinary beauty.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [206]-226) and indexes.

Electronic reproduction. Palo Alto, Calif. Available via World Wide Web.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Constance L. Rosenthal Book Fund.

ISBN:

0191654566

9780191654565

Publisher Number:

99960037024

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.