"Faith cometh by hearing"--so said Saint Paul, and devoted
Christians from Augustine to Luther down to the present have placed
particular emphasis on spiritual arts of listening. In quiet
retreats for prayer, in the noisy exercises of Protestant
revivalism, in the mystical pursuit of the voices of angels,
Christians have listened for a divine call. But what happened when
the ear tuned to God's voice found itself under the inspection of
Enlightenment critics? This book takes us into the ensuing debate
about "hearing things"--an intense, entertaining, even spectacular
exchange over the auditory immediacy of popular Christian piety.
The struggle was one of encyclopedic range, and Leigh Eric
Schmidt conducts us through natural histories of the oracles,
anatomies of the diseased ear, psychologies of the unsound mind,
acoustic technologies (from speaking trumpets to talking machines),
philosophical regimens for educating the senses, and rational
recreations elaborated from natural magic, notably ventriloquism
and speaking statues. "Hearing Things" enters this labyrinth--all
the new disciplines and pleasures of the modern ear--to explore the
fate of Christian listening during the Enlightenment and its
aftermath.
In Schmidt's analysis the reimagining of hearing was
instrumental in constituting religion itself as an object of study
and suspicion. The mystic's ear was hardly lost, but it was now
marked deeply with imposture and illusion.
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