The Book of Hours and the Body

Somaesthetics, Posthumanism, and the Uncanny

• Author(s): Sherry C. M. Lindquist,
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Pages: 272
• ISBN_10: 1003822118
  ISBN_13: 9781003822110
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Art / History / General , Art / Subjects & Themes / Human Figure , Art / Criticism & Theory , Philosophy / Aesthetics , Philosophy / Movements / Deconstruction , Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social , Social Science / Sociology / General , History / Europe / General , History / Europe / Renaissance , Social Science / Regional Studies , Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity ,

Description:...

This book explores our corporeal connections to the past by considering what three theoretical approaches - somaesthetics, posthumanism, and the uncanny - may reveal about both premodern and postmodern terms of embodiment.

It takes as its point of departure a selection of fifteenth-century northern European Books of Hours - evocative objects designed at once to inscribe social status, to strengthen religious commitment, to entertain, to stimulate emotions, and to encourage discomfiting self-scrutiny. Studying their kaleidoscopically strange, moving, humorous, disturbing, and imaginative pages not only enables a window into relationships among bodies, images, and things in the past but also in our own internet era, where surprisingly popular memes drawn from such manuscripts constitute a part of our own visual culture.

In negotiating theoretical, post-theoretical, and historical concerns, this book aims to contribute to an emerging and much-needed intersectional social history of art. It will be of interest to scholars working in art history, medieval studies, Renaissance/early modern studies, gender studies, the history of the book, posthumanism, aesthetics, and the body.