Studies on Medieval Empathies (Hardcover)

Rudolph M. Bell

ISBN 10: 2503530311 / ISBN 13: 9782503530314

Published by Brepols N.V., Turnhout, 2013

About this Item

Hardcover. Empathy is a deep feeling or intuition for kinship transcending self-preoccupied individuality. This book is about empathy in the Middle Ages, before it had a name.The authors begin by tracing the origins of empathy in pre-Christian Antiquity and early Christianity, especially in mysteries of divine justice, by which the good often suffered and the wicked prospered and, as with surgical healing, compassion was manifested by inflicting pain. The authors also explore many facets of empathy's development in the Latin West, criss-crossing the artificial borders of academic departments to reveal interlocking connections that give emotional power to images, whether verbal, pictorial, or performative. In a powerful multi-disciplinary collaboration, they identify conditions and limits of empathy, and areas in which the dynamic between insiders and outsiders forced subversive explorations of what it meant to be human. The doctrine of Christ as mediator of divine love dominated medieval thought about empathy as a human instinct. Taken together, like magnetic poles, two pictures in this book represent that mediation in action. The cover illustration, a mid-ninth-century ivory plaque from Carolingian Gaul, depicts Christ, the Divine Word, Love incarnate, glorified, enthroned, and adored by angels as creator, judge, and teacher. The second, Plate 1, from the same period and region, represents the act that sealed the mediation of divine love to humanity: Christ the man, tortured and dying for love. Empathy is a deep feeling or intuition for kinship transcending self-preoccupied individuality. This book is about empathy in the Middle Ages, before it had a name.The authors begin by tracing the origins of empathy in pre-Christian Antiquity and early Christianity, especially in mysteries of divine justice, by which the good often s Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9782503530314

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Studies on Medieval Empathies (Hardcover)
• Publisher: Brepols N.V., Turnhout
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 2503530311
• ISBN 13: 9782503530314
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

As a feeling or instinct for kinship, empathy is rooted in human connectedness - it belongs to the field of emotional forces that attract and repel and alloy. Since empathy springs from a person's sense of oneness with another, it differs from sympathy, which marks a distance between the unharmed perceiver and the injured perceived, and from altruism, which also poses difference by setting between them the objective duty of the unharmed to help the injured. This book is an experiment in empathy: it takes a new step by mapping out the profile empathy had in the creative imagination of Europe in the Middle Ages, the period when European culture took permanent shape. The studies give special attention to how the stimuli of art were used to teach, and hold up for imitation models of empathetic fervour. They identify areas in which the dynamic between insiders and outsiders forced subversive explorations of what it meant to be human. Like falling in love across ethnic, racial, or religious borders, empathy has its dangers, one of which is assimilation to former outsiders. This book is also an emphatic experiment in that it is a collaborative work by a number of scholars in different fields. Each contributor is an acknowledged expert, not only in one area, but also in crisscrossing the artificial borders of academic departments to reveal the interlocking connections that give emotional power to all images, verbal, pictorial, or performative. Thus, a number of themes weave through the whole book: art history, musicology, theology, biography, spirituality, and feminism.

About the Author

Rudolph M. Bell is professor of history at Rutgers University. Some of his more recent books published include, The Voices of Gemma Galgani: The Life and Afterlife of a Modern Saint, with Cristina Mazzoni, How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians, and Holy Anorexia.