BOOK REVIEW A sense of the past: exploring sensory experience in the pre-modern world

On his arrival in the Caribbean in October 1492 Christopher Columbus experienced a sensory explosion: fragrant scents, tropical fish, sweetly singing multi-coloured birds and encounters with unknown peoples whose erotic nakedness, incomprehensible language and apparent lack of social organization clashed with his perception of mankind (Fig. 1). As far as we can determine from the European sources and surviving archaeology, the indigenous islanders on their part were astounded by the sound of cannon firing, their first meeting with a chicken, speaking paper (writing), brass tacks and bells and the taste of sugar and other new foods. Much has been written on this first encounter between European and Caribbean peoples, but focusing on its sensory impact as David Abulafia does in a new book helps to explain the subsequent sordid tale of slavery, disease, ambition and greed far better than can any political or commercial history (Abulafia, 2008). Sensory history is a fairly new historical approach. The first of the three works reviewed here: Mark C. Smith’s aptly titled Sensory History (2007), provides a much-needed international overview of the approach, covering the period from antiquity to the 12th century. The other two works: Hubbub (2007) by Emily Cockayne, and The Senses in Late Medieval England (2006) by Chris Woolgar, focus on England between the twelfth and the eighteenth centuries. Although each book differs in style, each historian argues that sensory experience is historically and culturally contingent: people of different times and places hear, see, taste, touch and smell in distinctive ways. Each historian is influenced to some degree by anthropological arguments that sensory and emotional experience is never universal. Although historians can reflect on the nature of sensory experiences through analysis of texts or artefacts, they cannot recover a sense of how the past actually smelt or felt. Even if we were able to build a time machine, our own culturally shaped senses would prevent us from experiencing medieval London like a medieval person. Although historians of the senses are aware of the fundamental contribution of neuroscientists to understanding brain function, they argue that they cannot be reduced solely to physiological processes. Some sensory historians ignore science completely, but others remember that mainstream explanations of sensory perception at any given time and place do influence how that world is experienced. As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s work shows, modern science enables us to imagine our senses as HUBBUB Filth, Noise and Stench in England 1600–1770 By Emily Cockayne 2007. New Haven and London: Yale University Press Price: £25/$35 (Cloth), £10.99/$18 (Paper) ISBN: 9780300112146 (Cloth), 9780300137569 (Paper) SENSORY HISTORY By Mark M. Smith 2007. Oxford: Berg Price: £55 (Cloth), £16.99 (Paper) ISBN: 9781845204143 (Cloth), 9781845204150 (Paper)