Arguing that historians must write in a comic mode, aware of history's artifice, risks, and incompletion, Caroline Walker Bynum here examines diverse medieval t

These seven essays by noted historian Caroline Walker Bynum exemplify her argument that historians must write in a "comic" mode, aware of history's artifice, ri

Bynum argues that Christ's blood as both object and symbol was central to late medieval art, literature, and religious life. As cult object, blood provided a fo

An exploration of the roles of metamorphosis and hybridity in the establishment of personal identity, with particular emphasis on the twelfth and thirteenth cen