Light as Experience and Imagination from Medieval to Modern Times

This scholarly work focuses on encounters with light, telling the story of "seduction" from the Middle Ages through our times, as revealed in works of literature and art, including architecture and film. Rather than the historical investigation of light’s “essential” nature, its subject is our relationship with light. In Light as Experience and Imagination from Medieval to Modern Times, David S. Herrstrom synthesizes and interprets the experience of light as revealed in a wide range of art and literature from medieval to modern times. The true subject of the book is making sense of the individual’s relationship with light, rather than the investigation of light’s essential nature, while telling the story of light “seducing” individuals from the Middle Ages to our modern times. Consequently, it is not concerned with the “progress” of scientific inquiries into the physical properties and behavior of light (optical science), but rather with subjective reactions as reflected in art, architecture, and literature. Instead of its evolution, this book celebrates the complexity of our relation to light’s character. No individual experience of light being “truer” than any other.

Pagina's: 388, Hardcover, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press