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History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person

Edited by Rachel Fulton and Bruce W. Holsinger

May, 2007
Cloth, 408 pages, 2 b&w halftones, 1 line drawings
ISBN: 978-0-231-13368-5
$50.00 / £34.50

"An excellent addition to medieval studies. " — Thomas O'Donnell, Comitatus

"With eloquence and erudition, Caroline Bynum persuaded a generation to reconsider the meaning of gender, subjectivity, and the self in the Middle Ages and beyond in light of medieval conceptions of community and emulation. This magnificent collection of essays by her former students testifies in turn to the power of one individual, her ideas, and her example to shape a community of scholars. These studies, like Bynum's own work, fill one with wonder and admiration." — Jeffrey Hamburger, Harvard University

"In this intriguing, thought-provoking collection of essays, the question of medieval individualism is set forth in exciting ways that focus on exceptional characters and their communities and on personhood understood in terms of embodiment, torment (both positive and not), and contingency. The comic mode does not mean that all the stories collected here about visionaries, saints, and intellectuals are literally funny, but that history can be regarded as a series of stories that are often incomplete, unknown in their conclusion, or capable of being told another way. The reader comes away from these essays with a renewed sense of the color and variety of medieval personalities and admiration for the ability of the editors and contributors to reconstruct from fragments a convincing and multi-faceted picture of the Middle Ages." — Paul Freedman, Chester D. Tripp Professor of History and Department Chair at Yale University

"This is a superb collection that demonstrates the range of scholarly work being done on medieval history and in particular shows the impact that Caroline Walker Bynum has had on an entire generation of medieval historians. The essays in the volume include gems of scholarly analysis that help change the way we perceive the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux, conceptions of heresy, Machiavelli and Dante, monastic charters, merchants' records, cognitive theory as a tool for understanding medieval visions, and a great deal else. They also show how, in the face of fragmentary and sometimes frustrating evidence, historical understanding can still be achieved. " — Richard Kieckhefer, John Evans Professor of Religion, Northwestern University

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About the Author

Rachel Fulton is associate professor of history at the University of Chicago. She is the author of From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200, and she is currently studying the making of prayer in the medieval West, with special emphasis on prayer to the Virgin Mother of God. Bruce Holsinger is professor of English and music at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer, as well as The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory. He is writing a book on liturgy and vernacularity in premodern England.Fulton is Associate Professor of History at the University of Chicago. Her Ph.D. is from Columbia. She is the author of From Judgment to Passion (Columbia, 2002), which won the Journal of the History of Ideas Morris D. Forkorsch Prize. Holsinger is Professor of English and Music at the University of Virginia. His Ph.D. is from Columbia. He is the author of Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture (Stanford, 2002), which won the AMS's Philip Brett Award, the Modern Language Association's Prize for a First Book, and the Medieval Academy of America's John Nicholas Brown Prize, and of Premodernities: Archaeology of an Avant-Garde (Chicago, 2005).

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