Crying in the Middle Ages Tears of History [Hardcover]

Sacred and profane, public and private, emotive and ritualistic, internal and embodied, medieval weeping served as a culturally charged prism for a host of social, visual, cognitive, and linguistic performances. Crying in the Middle Agesaddresses the place of tears in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic cultural discourses, providing a key resource for scholars interested in exploring medieval notions of emotion, gesture, and sensory experience in a variety of cultural contexts.

Gertsman brings together essays that establish a series of conversations with one another, foregrounding essential questions about the different ways that crying was seen, heard, perceived, expressed, and transmitted throughout the Middle Ages. In acknowledging the porous nature of visual and verbal evidence, this collection foregrounds the necessity to read language, image, and experience together in order to envision the complex notions of medieval crying.

Selected Contents: Introduction: Going They Went and Wept : Tears in Medieval Discourse Elina Gertsman  Prolegomenon: Considerations of Weeping and Sincerity in the Middle Ages Lyn A. Blanchfield  Part 1: Tears and Image  1. Women Mourners in Byzantine Art, Literature, and Society Henry Maguire  2. The Eve Fragment from Autun and the Emotionalism of Pilgrimage Marian Bleeke  3. Weeping Women: Social Roles and Images in Fourteenth-Century Tuscany Judith Steinhoff  4. The Paradoxical Rhetoric of Tears: Looking at the Madrid Descent From the Cross Felix Th?rlemann  Part 2: Tears and Religious Experience  5. A Penitent Prepares: Affect, Contrition, and Tears Christopher Swift  6. He Cried and Made Others Cry : Crying as a Sign of PietislÃq