Table Of ContentRELIGION AND CULTURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies
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Series Editors
Denis Renevey (Université de Lausanne)
Diane Watt (University of Surrey)
Editorial Board
Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London)
Jean-C laude Schmitt (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
Fiona Somerset (Duke University)
Christiania Whitehead (University of Warwick)
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RELIGION AND CULTURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies
An Introduction
edited by
JULIANA DRESvINA and vICTORIA BLUD
UNIvERSITY OF WALES PRESS
2020
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© The Contributors, 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material
form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and
whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication)
without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the
provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Applications for the copyright
owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be
addressed to University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII
Avenue, Cathays Park, Cardiff, CF10 3NS.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78683-674-8
e-I SBN 978-1-78683-675-5
The rights of The Contributors to be identified as authors of this work have been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
Typeset by Eira Fenn Gaunt, Pentyrch, Cardiff
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham, Wiltshire
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Contents
Series Editors’ Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
List of Illustrations xi
Notes on Contributors xiii
Introduction: Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies 1
Victoria Blud and Juliana Dresvina
I QUESTIONS OF METHOD
1 How Modular Are Medieval Cognitive Theories?
José Filipe Silva 23
2 An Unrealised Conversation: Medieval Mysticism and the
Common Core Thesis
Ralph W. Hood Jr 39
3 Questions of Value: Brain Science, Aesthetics and Art in the
Neurohumanities
Matthew Rampley 59
II CASE STUDIES: HISTORIES OF NEUROSCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGY
AND MENTAL ILLNESS
4 Neuroscience and the Dialectics of History
Daniel Lord Smail 83
5 Medieval English Understanding of Mental Illness and Parallel Diagnosis to
Contemporary Neuroscience
Wendy J. Turner 97
6 Attachment Theory for Historians of Medieval Religion: An Introduction
Juliana Dresvina 121
III CASE STUDIES: READING TEXTS AND MINDS
7 ‘A Knot So Suttel and So Mighty’: On Knitting, Academic Writing
and Julian of Norwich
Godelinde Gertrude Perk 145
8 Making Up a Mind: ‘4E’ Cognition and the Medieval Subject
Victoria Blud 163
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9 Cognitive Approaches to Affective Poetics in Early English Literature
Antonina Harbus 183
Iv CASE STUDIES: APPROACHING ART AND ARTEFACTS
10 Medieval Art History and Neuroscience: An Introduction
Nadia Pawelchak 199
11 Spoons, Whorls, and Caroles: How Medieval Artefacts Can
Help Keep Your Brain on Its Toes
Jeff Rider 217
Afterword: The Medieval Brain and Modern Neuroscience
John Onians 237
Index 245
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Series Editors’ Preface
Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages aims to explore the interface between medieval
religion and culture, with as broad an understanding of those terms as possible. It puts to
the forefront studies which engage with works that significantly contributed to the
shaping of medieval culture. However, it also gives attention to studies dealing with
works that reflect and highlight aspects of medieval culture that have been neglected in
the past by scholars of the medieval disciplines. For example, devotional works and the
practice they infer illuminate our understanding of the medieval subject and its culture
in remarkable ways, while studies of the material space designed and inhabited by
medieval subjects yield new evidence on the period and the people who shaped it and
lived in it. In the larger field of religion and culture, we also want to explore further the
roles played by women as authors, readers and owners of books, thereby defining them
more precisely as actors in the cultural field. The series as a whole investigates the
European Middle Ages, from c.500 to c.1500. Our aim is to explore medieval religion
and culture with the tools belonging to such disciplines as, among others, art history,
philosophy, theology, history, musicology, the history of medicine, and literature. In
particular, we would like to promote interdisciplinary studies, as we believe strongly
that our modern understanding of the term applies fascinatingly well to a cultural period
marked by a less tight confinement and categorization of its disciplines than the modern
period. However, our only criterion is academic excellence, with the belief that the use
of a large diversity of critical tools and theoretical approaches enables a deeper
understanding of medieval culture. We want the series to reflect this diversity, as we
believe that, as a collection of outstanding contributions, it offers a more subtle
representation of a period that is marked by paradoxes and contradictions and which
necessarily reflects diversity and difference, however difficult it may sometimes have
proved for medieval culture to accept these notions.
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Acknowledgements
During the writing and editing of this volume we have been the grateful recipients of
advice, feedback and responses from scholars both within and outside the ‘cognitive
medievalism’ enclave. This volume is much the richer for the expertise and academic
kindnesses of numerous colleagues and friends, and in particular we would like to
thank: Alex Anokhina, Alan Costall, Rick Cooper, Laura Crombie, Greg Currie, Line
Engh, Daniel Gerrard, Michael Moore, Sarah Salih, Debs Thorpe, Stephanie Trigg
and Kathleen Walker-Meikle. We would also like to acknowledge the support of our
respective institutions, the University of Oxford and the University of York, and
particularly The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) for their help in
securing images. Several chapters in this volume were also supported by individual
grants, which are acknowledged separately. The two anonymous readers for University
of Wales Press gave us some tremendously helpful insight and incisive suggestions,
and we thank them for helping us make this a better volume. Finally, our heartfelt thanks
go to Sian Chapman, Dafydd Jones, Bethan Phillips and all the team at University of
Wales Press, to Heather Palomino for her careful copyediting, and especially to Sarah
Lewis, our endlessly patient and supportive editor.
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