Getting our Leg Off the Ground*...

Well, since we've finally chosen a book to tackle together, and since I know that Mark and Leslie have them by now (for a few day), I thought I would start some thoughts here about the introduction to Jacques Le Goff's The Medieval Imagination.

Among Le Goff's definitions and beginning to sort out his use of imagination as a methodology to think about history, I found it striking how he saw it so central to human thought.
was the following:

The images of interest to the historian are collective images as they are shaped, changed, and transformed by the vicissitudes of history. They are expressed in words and themes. They are bequeathed in traditions, borrowed from one civilization to another, and circulated among the various classes and societies of man. They are a part of social history but not subsumed by it.... The imagination nourishes the man and causes him to act. It is a collective, social, and historical phenomenon. A history without the imagination is a mutilated, disembodied history. (5)

In its eloquence, this passage struck me, but, more than that, it also informs some of the discussions we've had about the collectivity of history and literature. It thrilled me to see a scholar embracing such a definition as the core of his methodology in searching for the past. All of this also points toward his strong sense of interdisciplinarity--using literature, art, historical documents, philosophy.

Another aspect that I found fascinating is Le Goff's sense of time and the medieval period, as he writes, "when one takes a broad view of human evolution, it is clear that certain slowly developing systems or phases persist for relatively long periods" (9)--an idea he uses to justify the long Middle Ages and his even longer approach to history of the period (further developed in his first chapter). I'm interested in your thoughts about his views here and in the first chapter "For an Extended Middle Ages."

No doubt there are myriad other concepts to focus on--for me, I'm also greatly pulled toward Le Goff's examination of the marvelous, since I've always gravitated toward that sort of aspect of history and literature. Hopefully that's enough to get us started!


*Again with the punny title, I know. Please continue in your forgiving attitudes.