Sensory Studies and the Middle Ages: historiographical questions, challenges and projections

Abstract

In the last few years, researchers from various disciplinary fields have set out to understand and explain how sensory perceptions have intervened in shaping social dynamics over time. On a historiographical level, a history of the senses facilitates a new reading of the available documentation, studying the sensory perceptions recorded in the sources for each period and the network of dynamic relationships into which they are inserted. This approach not only attempts to reconstruct the variety of sensory perceptions and how they change from to one period to another or from one culture from another, but also seeks to establish the intimate connection that exists between sensory formation and the ways in which this contributes to interpret and decode reality. In this article, my general goal will be to analyse the configuration of the field of sensory studies, and in particular, I shall address the development of a sensory history of the Middle Ages. This will enable a reconstruction of the trajectory of a historiographical question by highlighting theoretical and methodological contributions by various authors. My intention is to provide an update on the progress of this analytical perspective over time, which although not without its difficulties and dangers, has awakened the ingenuity of those who take on the challenge of interpreting the sensory imprints that have left their mark on all records of the past. Indeed, I contend that sensory history is a consolidated area of research in the academic world, with a particular methodology, a wide variety of publications and an active international community of scholars who have revived the values of interdisciplinary and collaborative work.