The Medieval Heart

Where is life located? What does it consist of? Where does it begin? And how does it end? This title reveals medieval answers to these fundamental questions. It explores the 'lost circulations' of an era when individual lives and bodies were defined by their extensions into the world rather than as self-perpetuating, self-limited entities.

Drawing from the works of Dante, Catherine of Siena, Boccaccio, Aquinas, and Cavalcanti and other literary, philosophic, and scientific texts, Heather Webb studies medieval notions of the heart to explore the “lost circulations” of an era when individual lives and bodies were defined by their extensions into the world rather than as self-perpetuating, self-limited entities.