How, Barbara Newman asks, did the myth of the separable heart take
such a firm hold in the Middle Ages, from lovers exchanging hearts
with one another to mystics exchanging hearts with Jesus? What
special traits gave both saints and demoniacs their ability to read
minds? Why were mothers who died in childbirth buried in
unconsecrated ground? Each of these phenomena, as diverse as they
are, offers evidence for a distinctive medieval idea of the person
in sharp contrast to that of the modern "subject" of "individual."
Starting from the premise that the medieval self was more permeable
than its modern counterpart, Newman explores the ways in which the
self's porous boundaries admitted openness to penetration by divine
and demonic spirits and even by other human beings. She takes up
the idea of "coinherence," a state familiarly expressed in the
amorous and devotional formula "I in you and you in me," to
consider the theory and practice of exchanging the self with others
in five relational contexts of increasing intimacy. Moving from the
outside in, her chapters deal with charismatic teachers and their
students, mind-reading saints and their penitents, lovers trading
hearts, pregnant mothers who metaphorically and literally carry
their children within, and women and men in the throes of demonic
obsession. In a provocative conclusion, she sketches some of the
far-reaching consequences of this type of personhood by drawing on
comparative work in cultural history, literary criticism,
anthropology, psychology, and ethics. The Permeable Self offers
medievalists new insight into the appeal and dangers of the erotics
of pedagogy; the remarkable influence of courtly romance
conventions on hagiography and mysticism; and the unexpected ways
that pregnancy—often devalued in mothers—could be positively
ascribed to men, virgins, and God. The half-forgotten but vital
idea of coinherence is of relevance far beyond medieval studies,
however, as Newman shows how it reverberates in such puzzling
phenomena as telepathy, the experience of heart transplant
recipients who develop relationships with their deceased donors,
the phenomenon of psychoanalytic transference, even the
continuities between ideas of demonic possession and contemporary
understandings of obsessive-compulsive disorder. In The Permeable
Self Barbara Newman once again confirms her status as one of our
most brilliant and thought-provoking interpreters of the Middle
Ages.
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