میان‌مدیایی در قرون وسطی: فراوانی و کمبود

This book presents, for the first time, a coherent, tightly argued history of medieval mediality, which also casts a new light on modern thinking about the medial. Abundance and lack constitute the defining feature of all media forms. These forms always undertake to preserve, transmit, or give access to something that might otherwise be lost, or remain inaccessible or ineffective. But at the same time they are always in danger of disguising or distorting what they are referring to, or of missing their target altogether. Medieval culture offers an excellent chance to observe this. In this culture, media forms were places of mediated immediacy. They transported a presence of the divine, but also knowledge of its unattainability. This volume investigates the multi-layered and fascinating approaches of medieval authors to the word and writing, the body and materiality, and their experimentation with the possibilities of media before the concept was invented. Front Cover 1 Front matter 3 Half-title 3 Series information 4 Title page 5 Copyright information 6 Table of contents 7 List of Illustrations 9 Acknowledgements 11 Body 13 Chapter 1. Introduction 13 Alterity 13 Inner Logic 18 Abundance and Lack 21 Media Perspectives 31 Historical Mediology 34 Chapter 2. Model 43 A Paradoxical Map 43 Christological–Mediological Models and Metaphors 48 High Medieval Systematizations 52 Signs 56 Medium Absolutum 60 Chapter 3. Presence 65 Manifestations 65 Christian Reconfigurations 69 Salvific Presence 73 Real Presence 75 Presence Performative 78 Hypermediality and Antimediality 81 Presence of the Passion 85 Complexities 90 Transformations 93 Chapter 4. Word 99 Verbum 99 Prayer 101 Patterns and Performances 103 Christian Magic 108 Transfers 112 Performative Aesthetics of Love 114 Materialization 117 Poetic Options 121 Signatures 123 Chapter 5. Writing 127 Sublimity 127 Recoding 129 Materiality and Meaning 133 Visibility 137 Performativity 145 Staging 149 Hybridity 157 Old and New Letters 161 Chapter 6. Body 169 Body/Medium 169 Stigmata 174 Textures 177 Exemplar 182 The Writer’s Body 186 Self-Observation 192 Chapter 7. Materiality 199 Materiality and Transcendence 199 Materials—Circulations—Intensifications 202 Material Meaning 207 A Temple of the Intangible 210 Autoreflexivity 215 New Materiality 220 Chapter 8. Spacetime 225 Salvation History and Passion 225 Loca Sancta 228 Transfers 234 Ways and Paths 237 Reconstructions 239 Chapter 9. Metonymy 243 Figures and Objects 243 Vera Icon 246 The Robe of Christ 253 Hybridity 258 Questionable Elements 267 Chapter 10. Conclusion 271 Mediated Immediacy 271 Writing Systems 277 Once Again: Abundance and Lack 282 Back matter 287 Bibliography 287 Primary Sources 287 Secondary Sources 294 Index (authors and anonymous works, without biblical books) 329 In medieval culture, media forms were places of mediated immediacy. They transported a presence of the divine, but also knowledge of its unattainability. This volume investigates the multi-layered and fascinating approaches of medieval authors to the word and writing, the body and materiality, and their experimentation with the possibilities of media before the concept was invented. The book presents, for the first time, a coherent, tightly argued history of medieval mediality, which also casts a new light on modern thinking about the medial.

Ton de Leeuw's lifetime engagement with music, European and Oriental, gives this book its unique insight into what constitutes true modernity and innovation