medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Marjorie.
Let's put things into context. The conversation took place in the spring
of 1977 when Duby was just beginning to make waves in the US. So it's really
unfair to judge Professor Constable's comments by the state of scholarship
today. Second, he is a wonderful scholar and a very open thinker from whom I
learned worlds, so I think the harshness of your comment is out of place.
Third, not being a Foucault aficionado, I personally am very cautious about
'psycho' anything when it comes to other periods. Gurevitch has persuaded me
that the emotional and intellectual structure of medieval society was very
different than ours. Each generation's neuroses were dealt with differently.
So, as Barry Rubin has recently argued, Freud may have been irrelevant to
the needs of earlier periods. OTOH, I do suspect that living within a more
or less integrated belief system provides more emotional support and hence
less emotional illness, than does life in an industrial, libertarian
society.
Jeffrey Woolf
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marjorie Greene" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, August 03, 2002 2:24 AM
Subject: [M-R] Constable response
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Your question to Giles Constable was thoughtful and
> very interesting. It's too bad his response was: 1)
> non-responsive; and 2) uninformed. Perhaps it was
> years before psycho-history, psycho-anthropology,
> psychoanalytical art- and literary criticism, etc.
> were fully accepted areas of learned research. It
> bespeaks a true fear of the topic, one that is gaining
> in its ability to pique interest. My students
> frequently wonder about the effects of child rearing
> practices on the (medieval) children in question and I
> have no decent informed response. Perhaps I just don't
> know where to look...
> MG
>
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