This book examines the nexus between the corporeal, emotional, spiritual and intellectual aspects of human life as represented in the writing of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Authors from different fields examine not only the question of the body and soul (or body and mind) but also how this question fits into a broader framework in the medieval and early modern period. Concepts such as gender and society, morality, sexuality, theological precepts and medical knowledge are a part of this broader framework.

This discussion of ideas draws from over two thousand years of Western thought: from Plato in the fifth century BC and the fourth century Byzantine dialogues on the soul, to the philosophical and medical writings of the early 1700s.

There are four sections to this book: each section is based on where the authors have found a conjunction between the body and mind/soul. The work begins with a section on text and self-perception, which focuses on creative output from the period. The second conjunction is human emotions which are described in their social contexts. The third is sex, where the human body and mind are traditionally believed to meet. The fourth section, Material Souls, engages with bodies and other material aspects of existence perceived, studied or utilised as material signs of emotional and spiritual activity.

Inhalt

Foreword.- Introduction.- Conjunction 1: Text and Self-Perception.- Chapter 1. Body vs. Soul, Text vs. Interpretation in Michael Psellos; Graeme Miles.- Chapter 2. Murdering Souls and Killing Bodies: Understanding Spiritual and Physical Sin in Late-Medieval English Devotional Works; Philippa Maddern.- Chapter 3. 'Adam, you are in a Labyrinth': The First-Person Voice as The Nexus Between Body and Spirit in the Chronicle of Adam Usk; Alicia Marchant.- Chapter 4. The Thin End of The Wedge: Self, Body and Soul in Rembrandt's Kenwood Self-Portrait; Richard Read.- Conjunction 2: Emotion.- Chapter 5. Grief and Desire, Body and Soul in Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Saint Macrina; Michael Champion.- Chapter 6. 'Variable Passions': Shakespeare's Mixed Emotions; Bob White.- Chapter7. Subtle Persuasions: The Memory of Bodily Experience as a Rhetorical Device in Francis Bacon's Parliamentary Speeches; Daniel Derrin.- Chapter 8. Lessons in Music, Lessons in Love; Katherine Wallace.- Conjunction 3: Sex.- Chapter 9. Sex and Spirituality Among the Carolingians; William Schipper.- Chapter 10. On the Bridling of the Body and Soul of Héloise, the 'Chaste Whore'; Laura French Moran.- Chapter 11. Keeping Body and Soul Together: Jean le Fevre and Sexuality; Karen Pratt.- Chapter 12. Paul, Augustine, and Marital Sex in Guilielmus Estius' Scriptural Commentaries; Wim François.- Chapter 13. The Ageing of Love: The Waning of Love's Power; Danijela Kambaskovic-Sawers.- Chapter 14. Quaint Knowledge: A Body-Mind Pattern Across Shakespeare's Career; Laurence Johnson.- Conjunction 4: Material Souls.- Chapter 15. Tears in Ancient and Early Modern Physiology: Petrus Petitus and Niels Stensen; Manfred Horstmanshoff.- Chapter 16. Alchemy and The Body/Mind Question in The Work of John Donne; Michael Ovens.- Chapter 17. 'Among The Rest Of The Senses.Proued Most Sure': Ethics of the Senses in Early Modern Europe; Danijela Kambaskovic-Sawers.- Chapter 18. The Material Soul: Strategies for Naturalising the Soul in an Early Modern Epicurean Context; Charles T. Wolfe and Michaela van Esveld.