DRAWING ANALOGIES IN LATE MEDIEVAL EUROPE: AGENCY, DIVERSITY, INDIVIDUALITY, AND PLAYFULNESS

The article examines systematic expressions of analogical mapping in medieval Europe in their social context, aiming thereby to propose a model for a socio-cultural history of cognition. Mapping the main realms where extraordinarily systematic and repeated analogical mapping took place in late medieval European culture, this article follows the development of systems of analogical mapping from scriptural exegesis to commentaries on liturgy and contemplative treatises, to preaching manuals and moral literature in Latin and in the vernacular. I also trace the extension of its themes, from Christian doctrine to courtly love, secular society, and politics. These developments are explained in light of late medieval sociology of knowledge, arguing that the cognitive skill of analogical mapping thrived in informal scenes of knowledge transmission between professional knowledge agents and semi-educated audiences due to its flexibility as a learning mechanism and the ways it catered to the nobility’s growing attraction to agency, playfulness, inventiveness, and individuality.