Sight, touch, and imagination in Byzantium / Roland Betancourt (University of California, Irvine).

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Betancourt, Roland, author.

Contributor:

Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Touch.

Byzantine Empire.

Perception (Philosophy)--History.

Perception (Philosophy).

History.

Touch--Byzantine Empire.

Visual perception.

Imagination (Philosophy).

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xvi, 401 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Summary:

"Considering the interrelations between sight, touch, and imagination, this book surveys classical, late antique, and medieval theories of vision to elaborate on how various spheres of the Byzantine world categorized and comprehended sensation and perception. Revisiting scholarly assumptions about the tactility of sight in the Byzantine world, it demonstrates how the haptic language associated with vision referred to the cognitive actions of the viewer as they grasped sensory data in the mind in order to comprehend and produce working imaginations of objects for thought and memory. At stake is how the affordances and limitations of the senses came to delineate and cultivate the manner in which art and rhetoric was understood as mediating the realities they wished to convey. This would similarly come to contour how Byzantine religious culture could also go about accessing the sacred, the image serving as a site of desire for the mediated representation of the divine"-- Provided by perception.

Contents:

Introduction: Canʹt touch this

Part I: How sight is not touch. The medium of sight ; The problem of tactility ; The commonalities of the senses

Part II: Photios and the unfolding of perception. "Has the mind seen?" The language of effluxes ; "Has it grasped?" Apprehending the object ; "Has it visualized?" I: The grasp of the imagination ; "Has it visualized?" II: The problem of fantasy ; Then it has effortlessly". Judgment and assent ; Conclusion to Part II

Part III: Mediation, veneration, remediation. Medium and mediation ; Tactility and veneration ; Synesthesia and remediation

Conclusion: Tempted to touch.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 342-385) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

9781108424745

1108424740

OCLC:

1005117508