Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies: An Introduction (Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages)

What is the value of mapping how neurons fire when engaging with literature and art? How can we understand psychological stress as a historically specific phenomenon? What can medieval mystics teach us about contemplation and cognition? With the rapid development of the cognitive sciences and their importance to how we contemplate questions about the mind and society, recent research in the humanities has been characterized by a cognitive turn. For their part, the humanities play an important role in forming popular ideas of the human mind and in analyzing the way cognitive, psychological, and emotional phenomena are experienced in time and space. Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies aims to inspire medievalists and other scholars within the humanities to engage with the tools and investigative methodologies deriving from cognitive sciences. Contributors explore topics including medieval and modern philosophy of mind, the psychology of religion, the history of psychological medicine, and the re-emergence of the body in cognition. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Contents Series Editors’ Preface Acknowledgements Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction: Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies I Questions of method 1 How Modular are Medieval Cognitive Theories? 2 An Unrealised Conversation: Medieval Mysticism and the Common Core 3 Questions of Value: Brain Science, Aesthetics and Art in the Neurohumanities II Histories of Neuroscience, Psychology and Mental Illness 4 Neuroscience and the Dialectics of History 5 Medieval English Understanding of Mental Illness and Parallel Diagnosis to Contemporary Neuroscience 6 Attachment Theory for Historians of Medieval Religion: An Introduction III Case Studies: re ading texts and minds 7 ‘A Knot So Suttel and So Mighty’: On Knitting, Academic Writing and Julian of Norwich 8 Making Up a Mind: ‘4E’ Cognition and the Medieval Subject 9 Cognitive Approaches to Affective Poetics in Early English Literature IV Approaching Art and Artefacts 10 Medieval Art History and Neuroscience: An Introduction 11 Spoons, Whorls, and Caroles: How Medieval Artefacts Can Help Keep Your Brain on Its Toes Afterword: The Medieval Brain and Modern Neuroscience Index Back Cover This book argues for the value of applying methods deriving from cognitive sciences (such as neuroscience or psychology) to studies of medieval history, literature, art and culture, and suggests ways in which this comparative approach might be achieved.