LEADER 04230cam 2200541 i 4500001 on1200577876 003 OCoLC 005 20210617081625.0 008 201113t20212021ilu b 001 0 eng 010 2020051233 019 1200579877 020 9780226776453 |qhardcover 020 022677645X |qhardcover 020 9780226776590 |qpaperback 020 022677659X |qpaperback 020 |z9780226776620 |qelectronic book 035 (Sirsi) 40030645416 035 40030645416 035 (OCoLC)1200577876 |z(OCoLC)1200579877 040 ICU/DLC |beng |erda |cDLC |dOCLCO |dOCLCF |dUKMGB |dYDX |dUtOrBLW 042 pcc 050 00 PN682.P475 |bB74 2021 082 00 809/.02 |223 100 1 Breen, Katharine, |d1973- |eauthor. |=^A1424741 245 10 Machines of the mind : |bpersonification in medieval literature / |cKatharine Breen. 246 30 Personification in medieval literature 264 1 Chicago ;London : |bThe University of Chicago Press, |c2021. 264 4 |c©2021 300 viii, 365 pages ; |c23 cm 336 text |btxt |2rdacontent 337 unmediated |bn |2rdamedia 338 volume |bnc |2rdacarrier 504 Includes bibliographical references and index. 505 0 Introduction -- Prudentian personification. Consecratus manu : men forming gods forming men ; How to fight like a girl : Christianizing personification in the Psychomachia -- Neoplatonic personification. Ex uno omnia : Plato's forms and daemons ; Oh, nurse! The Boethian daemon -- Aristotelian personification. E pluribus unum : abstracting universals from particulars ; Dreaming of Aristotle in the Songe d'Enfer and Winner and waster -- A good body is hard to find : putting personification through the paces in Piers Plowman. 520 "Katharine Breen challenges our understanding of how medieval authors received philosophical paradigms from antiquity in their construction and use of personification in their writings. She shows that our modern categories for this literary device (extreme realism versus extreme rhetoric, or novelistic versus allegorical characters) would've been unrecognizable to their medieval practitioners. Through new readings of key authors and works--including Prudentius's "Psychomachia," Langland's "Piers Plowman," Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," and Deguileville's "Pilgrimage of Human Life"--she finds that medieval writers accessed a richer, more fluid literary domain than modern critics have allowed. Breen identifies three different types of personification--Platonic, Aristotelian, and Prudentian--inherited from antiquity that both gave medieval writers a surprisingly varied spectrum with which to paint their characters, while bypassing the modern confusion of conflicting relationships between personifications and persons on the path connecting divine power and human frailty. Recalling Gregory the Great's phrase "machinae mentis" (machines of the mind), Breen demonstrates that medieval writers applied personification with utility and subtlety, much the same way that, within the category of hand-tools, an open-end wrench differs in function from a hex-key wrench or a socket wrench. It will be read by medievalists working at the crossroads of religion, philosophy, and literature, as well as scholars interested in character-making and gendered relationships among characters, readers, and texts beyond the Middle Ages"-- |cProvided by publisher. 650 0 Literature, Medieval |xHistory and criticism. |=^A36836 650 0 Personification in literature. |=^A158656 650 0 Literature |xPhilosophy. |=^A25295 650 7 Literature, Medieval. |2fast |0(OCoLC)fst01000151 650 7 Literature |xPhilosophy. |2fast |0(OCoLC)fst01000005 650 7 Personification in literature. |2fast |0(OCoLC)fst01896080 655 7 Criticism, interpretation, etc. |2fast |0(OCoLC)fst01411635 776 08 |iebook version : |z9780226776620 949 |i30372017340248 |ojjlm 960 |o1 |s105.00 |tJoyner48 |uJAPP |zUSD 596 1 998 5659522