IMC 2019: Sessions
Session 1634: Minds and Matter, II: Medieval Minds and Materialities - New Approaches
Thursday 4 July 2019, 11.15-12.45
| Sponsor: | Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Culture, University of Southampton |
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| Organiser: | Catherine A. M. Clarke, Faculty of Humanities, University of Southampton |
| Moderator/Chair: | James Smith, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Studies (CMEMS), University of Western Australia |
| Paper 1634-a | 'Anhyld þinre heortan eare': Mind as Body in Old English Poetry and Prose (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Mentalities, Science |
| Paper 1634-b | The Problems of Staþol: Grounding Anglo-Saxon Minds (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Language and Literature - Latin, Medicine, Mentalities |
| Paper 1634-c | Picturing Brains: Negotiating between Images and Phantasms (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - General, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Medicine |
| Abstract | One of a pair of sessions investigating intersections between medieval minds and materialities, this session offers new perspectives on minds in medieval theory and culture. Two papers explore questions such as representations of the mind in Anglo-Saxon sources, which variously suggest its material and embodied constitution, as well as paradoxes surrounding its 'unstable' or 'ungrounded' nature, its capacity to travel, and the need to keep it bound and tightly held. A further paper examines phantasms or mental images - and their potential materiality - in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon, through an exploration of medieval visual depictions of the brain. Together, these papers advance our understanding of concepts of the mind(s) in the Middle Ages, and especially the paradoxical, ambiguous, and slippery relationships between the material and immaterial. This session is proposed for the special thematic strand on 'Materialities'. |