Medieval Thought Experiments: Poetry, Hypothesis, and Experience in the European Middle Ages ed. by Philip Knox, Jonathan Morton and Daniel Reeve (review)

It is well-known that medieval thinkers grappled with complex problems such as the nature of knowledge, ethics, or unity with God. This book considers ways in which different aspects of such complex problems were examined in less philosophical medieval texts, such as poetry or fiction. These examinations are presented by the editors as thought experiments, although they generally proceeded in a very different way to the thought experiments of present-day philosophers.

The book consists of an introductory chapter by Jonathan Morton and twelve essays that are connected with the central theme of the volume. The essays are written by present-day medieval scholars and cover a wide range of subjects. For example, Marco Nievergelt discusses a poem by Guillaume de Deguileville which explores a mind–body duality similar to Avicenna’s flying man. Jane Griffiths looks at Chaucer’s House of Fame, which contains a discussion, and to some extent a revision, of the medieval understanding of memory and mnemonic techniques.

Vincent Gillespie argues that in the Middle Ages poetry was thought to stimulate the imagination rather than to create assent, and was not principally concerned with the teaching of ethics, and particularly not with teaching simple ethics. This theme is exemplified by a favorite of mine among the essays: Gabrielle Lyons’s discussion of French fabliaux. The fabliaux were short tales, sometimes bawdy, usually down-to-earth, and often containing a mix of quite contradictory moral messages.

Although the essays are diverse there are common threads. Much present-day writing serves to make a point that is carefully developed and leads in a fairly obvious way to a particular conclusion or set of conclusions. This collection of essays reminds us that much medieval writing, especially if one sets aside theological and philosophical discussion, did not proceed in this way at all. Medieval writing makes extensive use of metaphor, often revels in symbolism that is not straightforward to unpick, and need not lead to straightforward conclusions. Perhaps most important, many of the essays describe medieval writing that is fun. The volume serves as a reminder that medieval thinking was not always seriously dogmatic and was rarely simple.