Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Medieval Art of Fear

The Medieval Art of Fear

Binning, Ravinder S.

Hardcover

Art HistoryConceptual ArtTeaching Instruction

PREORDER - Expected ship date September 24, 2026

ISBN10: 022684627X
ISBN13: 9780226846279
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: Sep 24 2026
Pages: 296
Weight: 1.00
Language: English
A bold new approach to medieval art and architecture's shaping of psychosomatic experience.
​
In the medieval world, experiences of fear attained a mystical significance: monks, urban publics, and even emperors pursued horror and grief to explore the limits of fantasy, sensation, and catharsis. In this book, Ravinder S. Binning examines an expansive archive ranging from poetry and scientific treatises to artistic works in ivory and crystal to recover an aesthetic tradition centered on optical tension, spatial suspense, and tactile experience.

Moving between early monastic spaces in Egypt and major urban centers like Constantinople from the fourth through the thirteenth centuries, The Medieval Art of Fear shows how the psychosomatic experience of fear became the deliberate object of mystical practices, meditation, and other embodied techniques across the medieval world. The result is a powerful exploration of the aesthetic effects behind some of the medieval world's most ambitious works, whose influence extends well beyond the Middle Ages.

Also from

Binning, Ravinder S.

View All

Also in

Conceptual Art

View All