Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages

This book considers one of the less obvious (but arguably more important) passions – wonder – and the ways in which that emotion intersected with skepticism in the Middle Ages. Through an in-depth analysis of medieval responses to marvels, it thus builds upon earlier studies of wonder, most notably Caroline Walker Bynum’s seminal article on the topic, and a rich tradition of doubt scholarship.(1) In this book, Keagan Brewer makes a convincing case for rejecting broad-brush generalisations, such as that the Middle Ages was a period of universal credulity, and instead offers a far more multifaceted and variegated picture, whereby there existed a range of possible responses to wondrous phenomena, with wonder and skepticism by no means mutually exclusive.