Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls Hardcover by Susan Ashbrook Harvey

Product Details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press (2017-10-31)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 342 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780884024217
• Item Weight: 567.0 grams
• Dimensions: 0.0 x 0.0 x 0.0 cm

How does sense perception contribute to human cognition? How did the Byzantines understand that contribution? Byzantine culture in all its domains showed deep appreciation for sensory awareness and sensory experience. The senses were reckoned as modes of knowledge—intersecting realms both human and divine, bodily and spiritual, physical and intellectual.

Scholars have attended to aspects of sight and sound in Byzantine culture, but have generally left smell, taste, and touch undervalued and understudied. Through collected essays that redress the imbalance, the contributors explore how the Byzantines viewed the senses; how they envisaged sensory interactions within their world; and how they described, narrated, and represented the senses at work. The result is a fresh charting of the Byzantine sensorium as a whole.

About the Author

Susan Ashbrook Harvey is Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of Religion and History at Brown University.

Margaret Mullett is Professor of Byzantine Studies, Emerita, at Queen’s University Belfast and Director of Byzantine Studies, Emerita, at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University.