medieval history
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Medieval Semiotics
Though “semiotics” is a word coined only in the late 17th century—and used consistently and meaningfully beginning only in the late 19th—the study of signs and their actions goes back millennia. During those thousands of years, some of the most important contributions were made during the age often called “Medieval” (though it would be better…
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Henry Osborn Taylor on the “Middle Ages”
Preface to the First Edition, 1911: The Medieval Mind (2 volumes), Vol.I, xi–xiv: The Middle Ages! They seem so far away; intellectually so preposterous, spiritually so strange. Bits of them may touch our sympathy, please our taste; their window-glass, their sculpture, certain of their stories, their romances—as if those straitened ages really were the time…