IMC 2011: Sessions
Session 1007: Reading Medieval Minds, I: Medieval Authors' Inner Life and Their Modern Readers
Wednesday 13 July 2011, 09.00-10.30
| Sponsor: | Centre for the Study of the Middle Ages (CeSMA), University of Birmingham / Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York |
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| Organiser: | Christina Pössel, School of History & Cultures, University of Birmingham |
| Moderator/Chair: | John H. Arnold, Department of History, Classics & Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London |
| Paper 1007-a | Other Minds: Carolingian 'Folk Psychology' (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities |
| Paper 1007-b | The Freedom of Meaning: The Psychology of Scriptural Symbolism and Interpretation in Carolingian Europe (Language: English) Index terms: Biblical Studies, Mentalities |
| Abstract | The linguistic turn and resulting increase in historians' awareness of the constructedness of, and discursive strategies in, medieval texts, made medievalists wary of making any claims to be able to study medieval authors' inner lives. However, as modern readers, we constantly make assumptions about authorial motivations, concerns, sometimes even moods, in our quest for meaning. In doing so, we invoke all manner of concepts that need to be examined and historicized, for example, ideas about what might be 'logical', raising the question of a possible different rationality of medieval minds. These two sessions are intended to explore a variety of different approaches to deal with the problems of modern minds trying to understand medieval minds. |