Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

by Giselle de Nie (Editor), Thomas F.X. Noble (Editor)

Our imagination reveals our experience of ourselves and our world. The late philosopher of science and poetry Gaston Bachelard introduced the notion that each image that comes to mind spontaneously is a visual representation of the cognitive and affective pattern that is moving us at the time - often unconsciously. When such a mental image inspires a picture or text, it evokes in the mind of the reader or beholder a replication of the internal pattern that originally inspired the artist or writer. Thus mental images are rarely empty phantasies. Whereas intellectual concepts are conscious constructions of abstracted relations, mental images evoked by texts and pictures often point - like dreams - to pre-verbal experience that patterns itself through multiplying associations and analogies. These mental images can also manifest their own limits, pointing indirectly to experiences beyond what can be expressed and communicated. The six essays in this volume seek to uncover the dynamic patterns in verbal and pictorial images and to evaluate their potentialities and limitations. Thematically ordered according to their specific focus, the essays begin with material images and move on to increasing degrees of immateriality. The subjects treated verbal descriptions of an icon and of a statue; imaginative visions and auditions evoked by material depictions; verbal imagery describing imagined sculptures and scenes as compared with drawings of a moving historical pageant; drawings of symbolic figures representing subtle relationships between verbal expositions that cannot be syntactically represented; dream images that precipitate actual healing; and aural patterns in a sounded text that are experienced as 'images' of affective dynamisms.

182 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2012

About the author

Dr. Giselle de Nie (B.A. Bryn Mawr College 1958, M.A. Harvard University 1959; dr. lett. Universiteit Utrecht 1987) doceerde middeleeuwse geschiedenis aan deze universiteit; haar onderzoek richt zich op de rol van de verbeelding in laatantieke christelijke auteurs. Haar Poetics of Wonder. Testimonies of the New Christian miracles in the Late Antique Latin World (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012) laat een mogelijk verband zien tussen de nieuwe wonderen en de gelijktijdige overgang naar een denken in beelden dat gestimuleerd werd door de toen opkomende kerkelijke allegorische exegese. Haar Engelse vertaling van en inleiding tot een aantal van de zesde-eeuwse bisschop Gregorius van Tours’ wonderverhalen zal binnenkort verschijnen in de bronnenserie Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. H aar Views from a Many-Windowed Tower. Studies of Imagination in the Works of Gregory of Tours (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987) behandelt de bepalende rol van mentale beelden in zijn religieuze mentaliteit; en een verzameling van een aantal van haar artikelen over diverse auteurs verscheen als Word, Image and Experience. Dynamics of Miracle and Self-Perception in Sixth-Century Gaul (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). Naast andere publicaties hielp zij de bijdragen aan een internationaal multidisciplinair congres in Utrecht redigeren: Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), alsmede die van een workshop in Notre Dame University: Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Dynamic Patterns in Texts and Images (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012).

~~~

Dr Giselle de Nie (B.A. Bryn Mawr College 1958; M.A. Harvard University 1959; dr lett. University of Utrecht 1987) taught medieval history at the University of Utrecht; her research focuses upon the role of imagination in late antique Christian authors. Her Poetics of Wonder. Testimonies of the New Christian Miracles in the Late Antique Latin World (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012) shows a possible connection of the miracle experience with a contemporaneous transition to thinking in images that was stimulated by the Church Fathers’ then upcoming practice of allegorical exegesis. Her English translation of a number of the sixth-century bishop Gregory of Tours’ miracle books, with an introduction, will appear shortly in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series. Her Views from a Many-Windowed Tower. Studies of Imagination in the Works of Gregory of Tours (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987) explored the central role of mental images in his religious mentality; a collection of a number of her articles on various authors appeared as Word, Image and Experience. Dynamics of Miracle and Self-Perception in Sixth-Century Gaul (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). Alongside other publications she helped edit the papers of an international multidisciplinary conference at Utrecht: Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), and those of a workshop at Notre Dame University: Envisioning Experience in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Dynamic Patterns in Texts and Images (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012).