In the Middle Ages, liturgies, books, song, architecture and poetry were performed as collaborative activities in which performers and audience together realized their work anew. Essays by leading scholars analyse how the medieval arts invited and delighted in collaborative performances designed to persuade. The essays cast fresh light on subjects ranging from pilgrim processions within Chartres Cathedral, to polyphonic song, and the rhetoric of silence' perfected by the Cistercians. Rhetoric is defined broadly in this book to encompass its relationship to its sister arts of music,...

Mary Carruthers s classic study of the training and uses of memory for a variety of purposes in European cultures during the Middle Ages has fundamentally changed the way scholars understand medieval culture. This fully revised and updated second edition considers afresh all the material and conclusions of the first. While responding to new directions in research inspired by the original, this new edition devotes much more attention to the role of trained memory in composition, whether of literature, music, architecture, or manuscript books. The new edition will reignite the debate on memory...

This book articulates a new approach to medieval aesthetic values, emphasizing the sensory and emotional basis of all medieval arts, their love of play and fine craftsmanship, of puzzles, and of strong contrasts. Written for a general educated audience as well as students and scholars in the field, it offers an understanding of medieval literature and art that is rooted in the perceptions and feelings of ordinary life, made up of play and laughter as well as serious work.