How, Barbara Newman asks, did the myth of the separable heart take such
a firm hold in the Middle Ages, from lovers exchanging hearts with one
another to mystics exchanging hearts with Jesus? What special traits
gave both saints and demoniacs their ability to read minds? Why were
mothers who died in childbirth buried in unconsecrated ground? Each of
these phenomena, as diverse as they are, offers evidence for a
distinctive medieval idea of the person in sharp contrast to that of the
modern "subject" of "individual."
Starting from the premise that the medieval self was more permeable than
its modern counterpart, Newman explores the ways in which the self's
porous boundaries admitted openness to penetration by divine and demonic
spirits and even by other human beings. She takes up the idea of
"coinherence," a state familiarly expressed in the amorous and
devotional formula "I in you and you in me," to consider the theory and
practice of exchanging the self with others in five relational contexts
of increasing intimacy. Moving from the outside in, her chapters deal
with charismatic teachers and their students, mind-reading saints and
their penitents, lovers trading hearts, pregnant mothers who
metaphorically and literally carry their children within, and women and
men in the throes of demonic obsession. In a provocative conclusion, she
sketches some of the far-reaching consequences of this type of
personhood by drawing on comparative work in cultural history, literary
criticism, anthropology, psychology, and ethics.
The Permeable Self offers medievalists new insight into the appeal and
dangers of the erotics of pedagogy; the remarkable influence of courtly
romance conventions on hagiography and mysticism; and the unexpected
ways that pregnancy--often devalued in mothers--could be positively
ascribed to men, virgins, and God. The half-forgotten but vital idea of
coinherence is of relevance far beyond medieval studies, however, as
Newman shows how it reverberates in such puzzling phenomena as
telepathy, the experience of heart transplant recipients who develop
relationships with their deceased donors, the phenomenon of
psychoanalytic transference, even the continuities between ideas of
demonic possession and contemporary understandings of
obsessive-compulsive disorder.
In The Permeable Self Barbara Newman once again confirms her status as
one of our most brilliant and thought-provoking interpreters of the
Middle Ages.
