[...]hat it endeavors to know or project its self onto an imagined other --> a passion that reduces to a startle response at the unfamiliar

}=/= historian (and teacher [and performance-lecturer]) vacation (or responsibility) --> (we must aspire to) imagine the kind of nonappropriative perspectival *intensely cognitive* response

middle ages (how they characterize their difference:)
1. theological-philosophical understanding of wonder <== university intellectuals {
◦admiratio =/= scientia ==> knowledge
◦admiratio ~= diversitas (diversity) =/= solitum (the usual, the general)
2. religious discourse about wonder <-- sermons, hagiography, devotional writing, enormously popular genre of *saint's lives* (tazkirat تذکره نویسی) {
◦admiratio =/= imitatio (imitation جعلى) [the readers were urged to wonder at and not immitate the power and extravagant asceticism of holy men and women (in Attar?)]
◾admiratio ~= paradox (coincidence of opposites) [one finds mira (wondrous) again and again in the texts alongside mixta (mixed, composite things, chimera)]
◦admiratio ~/= curiositas (curiosity کنجکاوی)
◦admiratio ~/= disputatio (disputatiousness ستيزه جويى)
3. literature of entertainment: travel accounts, history writing, collection of odd stories called by one author
◦admirari (to wonder at) =/= rimari (to pay into)
◦(collected stories ==> amuse, instruct, move their aristocratic listeners -->) wonder =/= inductio exemplorum (generalizing)


12th 14th centuries
(twin authorities for middle ages) Aristotle + Augustine ==> tradition of understanding wonder as perspectival & psychological ==> theological-philosophical discourse
•Augustine: marvel =/= what we know of nature (=/= nature) --> *lodge the wonderful-ness of things (not in our reaction to them but) in their ontological status*
•Anselm of Canterbury: marvelous =/= natural =/= artificial (voluntary, made by humans)
}--> miracles are objectively wonderful (because produced by God's power alone)


[1]
early middle ages latin texts --> mirabilia (wonder) ~= miracula (miracle)
13th century --> mirabilia (wonder) =/= miracula (miracle) ==ontological==> flatten the impulse to wonder:
1- (tends to) separate out (with hair-splitting distinction) a small number of phenomena as objectively wonder-inducing (*whereas all others no matter how odd are wonderful only to the ignorant*)
2- (suggests that) most events have natural causes: *if philosophers are diligent enough ==> wonder will cease* [= Sherlock Holmes]
◦(1235) William of Augergne --> people do not know how to go about investigating the cause [--> detective]
◦(1325) Oresme --> *vigorous imagining of a retained species + small external appearance + imbalance of some internal disposition ==> marvelous appearance* [--✕--> himself was fascinated and enchanted by the “marvelous properties” of animals and the *diversitas of human experience* especially of tastes in *food and in sexual positions and partners*]
◦a 13th century treatise “on the marvels of the world” (Qazwini?) --> a great part of philosophers and physicians believe that: natural things ==> marvellousness of experiences and marvels
◦Roger Bacon --> naturalistic explanation of saints who lived without eating... charms and amulets... *waxed lyrical over the infinite complexity of the common fly* (<-- is this what i did in telegram bestiary?)
◦Albert the Great --> physical manifestations of admiratio = "constriction and suspension of the heart” confronted with something “great and unusual”
◦Aquinas --> connect wonder with pleasure = a desire that culminates not so much in knowledge as in encounter with majesty, *wonder: the best way to grab the attention of the soul
◦
}--Bynum--> distinguishing ‘miracle =/= marvel’ ontologically =/= psychologically, perspectivally (or attributing marvels to natural causes) --✕--> eclipse of wonder

wonder as a response was not devalued or dismissed (even in a philosophical and theological tradition that de-wondered anomalies by insisting on an increasingly ordered world, whose laws were decipherable by the wise)



[2]
in the discourse of the homiletic موعظه and hagiographical تاريخ انبياء (tazkirat) --> wonder =/= imitable قابل تقلید (--✕--> the known, the knowable, the usual)
“non imitandum sed admirandum” (not to be immitated but to be marveled at)
heroes and martyrs =/= ordinary faithful
--> (Attar [master of rhetorics] in تذکرة الاولیا uses) a kind of *humility topos* intended to express an author's conviction that the miracle-working charisma of a saint was far beyond the capacity of author and reader alike (channel the attention of the faithful... towards the emulation of ordinary virtues: to control credulity ساده لوحی, extravagant asceticism, straining after flamboyant religiosity)
}--> nonappropriative nature of wonder

Bernard of Clairvaux (medieval piety)
(rhetoric of) wonder =/= curiosity
praying to the affairs of others
praying to the secrets of the universe
wonderful deformed beauty (of Romanesque sculpture)
--> ****imitatio (جعل) = appropriation = being in society with [---> go to drawing mimetics, literal CG 3D modeling], experiencing, learning, taking into oneself, consuming****

“we, when we take the deeds [of others] for imitation, ought to make the lofty things hidden and humble ones manifest” (like the shape of the seal: sculpted inward is appeared concave when printed) --> mimesis

*the encounter is made possible because an ontological similarity to that other is built into the experiencing self*

golden goblet 🏆
we consume, absorb, incorporate the drink (~= imitate the virtues) =/= we give back (~= we wonder at) the goblet, we wonder at what we cannot in any sense incorporate, or consume, or encompass in our mental categories --> we wonder at mystery, at paradox, at admirabiles mixturae <==Bernard== three hybrids:
1- mixture of God and man
2- mixture of woman and virgin
3- mixture of belief and falsity (in our hearts)


(Attar seductively drawn to the wonderful deformed beauty of saints of early sufism)


[title]
failed exorcism


[3]
(Bynum providing a) medieval theory of wonder in the *literature of enlightenment*:
history writing
travel accounts
story collection
عجایب‌المخلوقات ajayebnameh: the encyclopedic tradition of the ancient world known as *paradoxology: collection of oddities (monsters, hybrids, distant races, marvelous lands, [telegram beasts, instagram animals]) + antique notions of portents or omen: unusual events that foreshadowed the (usually catastrophic) future + accompanied by a vague sense of dread [it gives you goosebumps]
+ (Ehsan master of) [*]fabulae: (story) told without claims to their ontological status =/= historia
}==> theory of wonder: [@apass]
1. *response to facticity*
2. *response to the singular*
3. *is deeply perspectival*

•William of Newburgh --> (some sort of) probatio (testing, evidence) --base--> rimari (probe, pry into فضولی، با اهرم بلند کردن) =/= admirari (to wonder at)
•Gervais of Tilbury --> facts ==induce==> marvel ~= res gestae (deeds or historical accounts) =/= stories (fabulae, lies) [~= *you cannot be amazed by what you don't believe* (stories of ghosts, vampires, migration of quail, flight of squirrels, etc.)]
•John of Salisbury --> *marvellous singularity* (collection of advice for courtiers and princes) ~ wonder: response to majesty (hidden wisdom, significance) =/= generalizing = moralizing (inductio exemplorum, citing of instructive general causes --> forensic)
•

credible deeply unusual singular event ==> admiratio

[*]perspectival: reaction of a particular “us” to an “other” that is “other” only relative to the particular “us” (<-- this is why ajayebnameh is interesting)
•James of Vitry --> ***cyclopses who all have one eye marvel as much at those who have two eyes as we marvel at them*** (1200)
•Gosswin of Metz & John Mandeville --> turning such perspectivalism into gently ironic comments on themselves
•William of Rubruck --> barefoot travel through harsh terrain and climate required by Franciscan asceticism seems as monstrous a practice in the East as certain Eastern customs appear when reported “back home”
•



**(how? can w[...]