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, Andreas Kablitz, 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, College de France.

Clever, integrated, and convincing. Rethinking the Medieval Senses is a gate into the medieval culture at large-from literature to theology-into the history of the occidental body, into the complexity of the human condition. -- Bernard Cerquiglini, Louisiana State University

About the Author
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 Fakultat of the Universitat zu Koln. 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 Ecole Normale Superieure (Ulm) in Paris.

Reviews
Rethinking the Medieval Senses is a major contribution to our understanding of a fundamental aspect of medieval culture. It is throught-provoking and informative. -- Virginie Greene Clio The collection of essays edited by Nichols et al. is the fruit of cooperation between historians and literary scholars (mainly in the Romance languages) at American and European universities. -- Richard G. Newhauser Senses and Society 2009



Book Information
ISBN 9780801887369
Author Stephen G. Nichols
Format Hardback
Page Count 344
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 567g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 27mm