| The revaluation of the sense of touch is one of the most revealing intellectual phenomena of the early modern period. After over a millennium of neglect, accorded the last place in the hierarchy of the senses, touch acquires substantive epistemological, aesthetic, ontological, and moral prevalence in early modern discourse. It does so, I argue, to the extent that it becomes one of the foundations of a new cultural paradigm. Whereas the history of the "lower sensorium" has been the object of close attention lately, what has not yet received proper scrutiny are the negotiations between early modern authors and their classical sources that initiated such radical changes in the intellectual mindset of the period. It is only through a comprehensive study of the vindication of touch that we can understand the shift from authority to experience, the new conception of the human body and its place in the universe, and the aesthetic sensibilities that make this period exceptional in its provocative amalgam of literature, philosophy, science and religion. |
