Graduate Student, History
Lady Margaret Hall
Thesis Title: Carolingian attitudes towards sight: 770–850
Chris Wickham
Conrad Leyser
About
For my DPhil research, I am examining the complex nature of sight within the Carolingian period. The period is known as one of of intense manuscript production and decoration, and I argue that the sensory experience of sight was factored into the composition of these codices, particularly those of the Bible. As this was also the time of Byzantine Iconoclasm, Carolingians reconsidered their own attitudes to the nature of images as potentially dangerous to the untrained eye. The idea that sight as a concept extended beyond the sensory experience of vision was a philosophy inherited from those two mainstays of early medieval scholarship, St. Augustine and Gregory the Great. I aim to see how their understanding of sight as a tripartite experience, corresponding to the corporeal, intellectual/rational, and spiritual parts of mankind, can be found in the basis behind Carolingian liturgical and educational reform. I also hope to link this perspective towards sight with manuscript developments during the period, particularly the growth of single volume decorated Bibles.
Contact Information
http://www.history.ox.ac.uk/medieval/postgraduates/carlson_laura.html
