Machines of the Mind: Personification in Medieval Literature
Katharine Breen
Abstract
This book proposes that medieval personifications should be understood neither as failed novelistic characters nor as instruments of heavy-handed didacticism, but as powerful tools for complex imaginative work. In making this argument, Machines of the Mind disrupts a debate over the nature of allegory that has persisted for nearly a century. One side of the debate sees medieval personification as the literary manifestation of an extreme form of philosophical realism that treats abstractions such as Truth and Justice as really existing independent beings. The other side sees it as the literary ... More
This book proposes that medieval personifications should be understood neither as failed novelistic characters nor as instruments of heavy-handed didacticism, but as powerful tools for complex imaginative work. In making this argument, Machines of the Mind disrupts a debate over the nature of allegory that has persisted for nearly a century. One side of the debate sees medieval personification as the literary manifestation of an extreme form of philosophical realism that treats abstractions such as Truth and Justice as really existing independent beings. The other side sees it as the literary manifestation of an extreme form of philosophical nominalism that treats these same abstractions as mere rhetoric, with no connection to any external reality. Machines of the Mind demonstrates that neither of these positions were considered viable during the Middle Ages. Instead, it finds that medieval personifications embody the full range of positions in the medieval debate over philosophical universals, varying according to the convictions of individual authors and the purposes of individual works. It identifies three different types of personification – Platonic, Aristotelian, and Prudentian – that allowed medieval writers to apply the trope with utility and subtlety, employing methods of personification as tools that serve different functions.
Keywords:
personification,
allegory,
character,
realism,
nominalism,
universals,
Plato,
Aristotle,
Prudentius,
Middle Ages
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2021 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226776453 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: January 2022 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226776620.001.0001 |
