Medieval thought experiments : poetry, hypothesis, and experience in the European Middle Ages / edited by Philip Knox, Jonathan Morton, and Daniel Reeve.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Knox, Philip, 1988- editor.

Morton, Jonathan, 1982- editor.

Reeve, Daniel, 1988- editor.

Series:

Disputatio (Turnhout, Belgium) ; v. 31.

Disputatio, 1781-7048 ; volume 31

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Thought experiments--History--To 1500--Congresses.

Thought experiments.

Philosophy, Medieval--Congresses.

Philosophy, Medieval.

Literature, Medieval--History and criticism--Congresses.

Literature, Medieval.

History.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

vi, 339 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Turnhout, Belgium : Brepols, [2018]

Summary:

An interdisciplinary collection examining the interface of literature and philosophy in the High Middle Ages. Throughout the Middle Ages, fictional frameworks could be used as imaginative spaces in which to test or play with ideas without asserting their truth. The aim of this volume is to consider how intellectual problems were approached - if not necessarily resolved - through the kinds of hypothetical enquiry found in poetry and in other texts that employ fictional or imaginative strategies. Scholars working across the spectrum of medieval languages and academic disciplines consider why a writer might choose a fictional or hypothetical frame to discuss theoretical questions, how a work?s truth content is affected and shaped by its fictive nature, or what kinds of affective or intellectual work its reading demands. By reading literary, philosophical, and spiritual texts from England, France, and Italy alongside each other, this collection offers a new interdisciplinary approach to the history of medieval thought.

Contents:

Introduction: textual experiments, thinking with fiction / Jonathan Morton

Thought experiments with unbelief in the long Middle Ages / John Marenbon

Can thought experiments backfire?: Avicenna's flying man, self-knowledge, and the experience of allegory in Deguileville's Pèlerinage de vie humaine / Marco Nievergelt

Piers Plowman and God's thought experiment / Mishtooni Bose

The conception of the world in Placides e Timéo / Alice Lamy

'As I kan now remembre': memory and making in The House of Fame / Jane Griffiths

Affective meditation in hand mnemonics and devotional texts, from Amor Dei to fear of judgement / Julia Bourke

Bonaventure's thought experiment: the use of Synderesis in the Itinerarium mentis in Deum, the ineffability topos, and Francis's stigmata / Gustav Zamore

The art of rambling: errant thoughts and entangled passions in Petrarch's 'The Ascent of Mont Ventoux' (Familiares iv, 1) and RVF 129 / Francesca Southerden

Desire for the good: Jean de Meun, Boethius, and the 'homme devisé en deuz' / Philip Knox

Interpretation all the way down: Fabliaux and medieval exegesis / Gabrielle Lyons

Queer arts of failure in Alan of Lille and Hue of Rotelande / Daniel Reeve

Ethice Subponitur?: the imaginative syllogism and the idea of the poetic / Vincent Gillespie.

Notes:

"This collection emerges from a conference held at New College, Oxford in April 2015"--Acknowledgements.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9782503576213

2503576214

OCLC:

1053842638

Publisher Number:

9782503576213