Medieval Thought Experiments: Poetry, Hypothesis, and Experience in the European Middle Ages

Throughout the Middle Ages, fictional frameworks could be used as imaginative spaces in which to test or play with ideas without asserting their truth. The aim of this volume is to consider how intellectual problems were approached–if not necessarily resolved–through the kinds of hypothetical enquiry found in poetry and in other texts that employ fictional or imaginative strategies. Scholars working across the spectrum of medieval languages and academic disciplines consider why a writer might choose a fictional or hypothetical frame to discuss theoretical questions, how a work’s truth content is affected and shaped by its fictive nature, or what kinds of affective or intellectual work its reading demands. By reading literary, philosophical, and spiritual texts from England, France, and Italy alongside each other, this collection offers a new interdisciplinary approach to the history of medieval thought.