The Phantasmal Past: Time, History, and the Recombinative Imagination
- Author / Editor
- Watson, Nicholas.
The Phantasmal Past: Time, History, and the Recombinative Imagination
- Published
- SAC 32 (2010): 1-37.
- Description
- Proposes that historical thinking can be productively conceived of as recombinative fantasy rather than as empirical recollection. Uses several medieval examples of imaginative fantasy as exemplary models: Chaucer's House of Rumour in HF, Dante's Geryon in "Inferno" 16, John of Morigny's experimental envisioning in "Liber florum," and Julian of Norwich's "hermeneutics of visionary suspicion" in "Revelation." In these examples--and arguably in historical research--the phantasm is a "vehicle of the real"; it is potentially useful for helping to bridge the medieval/modern divide.
- Chaucer Subjects
- House of Fame