Thank you thank you. Welcome. Patricia Clare Ingham is professor and chair of English in the NE University. She holds additional points in religious studies gender studies in the university's medieval Institute. She's coeditor of the field leading journal exemplar Yeah. Medieval early modern theory. Of exemplary of the Times Literary Supplement said it breaks into new territory while never compromising on squat scholarly quality. Exemplar received the twenty eleven Phoenix award for significant editorial achievement. From the Council of editors of learning journals. From two thousand and twelve to two thousand and thirteen in m was a fellow at the National humanity center near Durham North Carolina. Ingham is a recipient and a recent recipient of a new frontiers of creativity and scholarship grants from any any university. She is the author of numerous articles and essays on Chaucer designer of medieval romance and cultural and critical theory. Her work has appeared among other places in our thirty Yana literature compass studies in the age of Chaucer in college English. She is co-author with Alex Cody of the book The Witch and the hysteric a volume which discusses the Medieval with them. Of the strange one nine hundred twenty two stand in need in film accent. Also known as witchcraft through the ages. She co-wrote it with Michel Warren the important volume post-colonial moves medieval through modern. And with her. Are you colleague karma locker a guest edited a special volume on medieval and early modern Topi is in the Journal of medieval and early modern studies. Thing and is a founding collaborator. Of the energy disciplinary initiative for the humanistic study of innovation housed in Indiana University Ingham's first monograph was the two thousand. One University of Pennsylvania book sovereign fantasies of Korean romance and the making of Britain Her most recent book. The medieval new ambivalence and in Egypt innovation was published in twenty fifteen also from us. It is a book as one reviewer says quote It presents a sensitive and nuanced view of the relationship between the old. And the new. This past spring she gave a special master class on the book at the University of gone in June's Netherlands research school for medieval settings her talk tonight is curious novelties the powers of invention. In precarious times and this present presentation in draws on her work in the medieval new to operate deep read medieval history of two key terms novelty on the one hand and curiosity on the other in doing so she gains pursers on pressing questions about the work of humanistic inquiry. What is the place of humanistic study in the university. In our current age of innovation. How might attention to this history of invention help us to dream a sustainable future for ourselves and our look. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. Thanks to Cory and Sara for the invitation and for all their efforts in arranging to bring me here and it's such a rich. It's such a great pleasure to be here. I'm a California girl till the wheels fall off. So I'm very happy to be back in my home state and writing to be having a little allergic reaction to that I'm. So that ominous or Ammons as I should say. And so my paper tonight proceeds in two parts the first part addresses the novel. Tease of my title and offers a kind of critique of common sense notions of innovation that are current in today's innovating University and the second is a turn to with a creative impulse of curiosity by way of a curious figure associated in the Middle Ages with curiosity as well. The simian figure the medieval a state of the art take a look at the breathtaking illumination of porch and wheel. It appears as a half page illustration in bibliothèque Nationale F.R. hitting eighty six. A presentation manuscript of D.M.D. mesh shows remedy of fortune. Lined Fortuna see her here turns her majestic wheel as figures clamor up topple down or rest briefly on the height in the usual cycles of a stand and decline. For mill year as a traditional even standard example of medieval iconography fortune's wheel is usually taken as evidence for an outmoded old notion of time a way of thinking overly invested in repetition not change a pre-modern view of history as an unrelenting cycle of rise and fall. But look again at some distance from her wheel this fortune a wrecked ship the handle of a crank assisted by tooth edged a statement gears a state of the art technology. Presumably designed to make her labors less taxing. State of the art. I want to take that phrase literally as we examine together this altogether remarkable depiction of good old fortune's wheel. Recognizably medieval there nonetheless seems here a kind of Futurism. Combination of form and function that evokes for me the late twentieth century steampunk of that. Ik with its Tinkerbell craft making the mixture of the stylish and the technical and indeed we find here some of the real ism and detail of the technological Motta blueprint or prototype. Historians of science. Tell us that this illumination. Was composed before such mechanisms were in use in the West in advance that is of the actual existence of cranks or gears like those depicted here. The image is then on the one hand a rendering of technical know how at the cutting edge. State of the technical art escapement gears schema tied and ready to be made in metal. Yet the image is also and on the other hand visually stunning and super stylish it renders state of the art as art a superlative example of high end manuscript illumination fully realized colors vibrant proportions elegant design and figuration detailed and precise the doubleness state of the art as mechanical schematic and as artistic composition reminds us that far from inhabiting two distinct medieval cultures art and science shared a great deal. They were kissing cousins during the middle ages and design was crucial to both in the larger condition of fortune's wheel and illuminations of a fortune the medieval Fortuna cranking the gears. Is also fashioned noble kinswoman her representation consistently track the changing of that ix of sartorial style and here we see Fortuna dressed mode fashionable to put those of those things hanging hanging down from her sleeves sporting a sophisticated pointed shoe even Navia he. From the way she's standing. Even her braided hair and flowing blindfold seem to me a little fashion forward. In this stylish rendering cutting edge mechanics combined with a luminance figuration of the chic the guard. State of the art. I start with this phrase. Not only because it seems to me limos used for this particular illumination. But also because it alludes to a kind of history poised on the future in the sense your theme for the year on the edge of invention. The State of the art is the up to date edge with the yet to be and the depiction of Fortuna renders the millionaire in the A fortune's wheel for a temporality a timing that is in gear. It's also out of joint the image catches in the blink of an eye but Frederick Nieto would call the eternal return a repetition of something old a figure for recurrent and different here. Combined with the not quite yet the soon to be the just barely imagined. However paradoxical then we see here a futuristic version of times recursive movement this equivocal combination of repetition and invention the recurrent and the yet to be is the distinctly medieval rendering of the new and of newness and this is the view of the new fangled that one finds well repeatedly throughout the medieval archives and this is what my most recent monograph was about. Of course humanists who work on early material know that this new technology raises an old problem. One figured via the repetition of fortune's wheel in its larger iconic graphic tradition. Fortune's wheel raises enduring questions of fate and freedom and in this image the questions take on a particularly lethal form a gruesome kind of precariousness. If the mechanized wheel is fortunes own. Then can we ever hope to save the guys just about to be ground up in her gears. What does a more efficient fortune offer when the state of the art seems to mean an acceleration of nothing less than a deadly grind. What does it mean that even our most innovative technical inventions might end up cranking that same old wheel. Part one. Our Late Great Age of innovation and this is the critical part of today's version of the questions I just raised pressed upon it in the university and concerns over the deadening effect of new of the new instrumental drive for job training on our students or in the effect of our new of the new electronic devices and the the effect that they might have on human curiosity or empathy or note taking it often seems that we humans whether with our old technologies of books and paper and pencils and pens and hands. Or a new technologies electronic devices or software programs have only limited role to play in a state of the art. And the State of the art university. However enjoy able humanity's work might be we seem to have relinquished pride of place to more apparently quote useful pursuits and that useful is in scare quotes to fields like engineering or applied science STEM fields and in today's version of precarity students graduate students lecturers adjunct faculty along with certain kinds of field seem increasingly at risk for being ground up in the years. What does it mean to engage in the pursuit of curiosity in an economic era of increasing pressure toward technical specialization to what degree is innovation understood to be opposed to the so-called. Traditional disciplines like ours like the humanities to what degree is inventive curiosity enabled by the need to solve technical problems and to what degree just such needs hobble a wider consideration of the world. It's places and it's people's. Centuries old accounts of invention raise questions of particular cogency institutionally as well as an intellectually at moments of per carry the like these and things seem to have gotten worse. Ever since university strategic planners became hoodwinked by business models of creative destruction. And account of innovation whereby the achievement of the new is predicated upon a systematic rejection of what is quote a stablished traditional for milieu or and comfortable but the problem presses on good. Disciplined like history art history literature foreign languages literary study historical linguistic classics or medieval studies with particular force and precisely in so far as they are we seem to count as a synonym portrait vission the medieval my own field as the residual The outmoded as always. Yesterday's News in the context of the corporate university novelty then emerges as an increasingly problematical category a point that historian of technology. David Egerton has made quite eloquently. It's a mistake to believe aggression right that innovation has been central to public policy market liberalization has been much more significant or that innovation has in fact increased. Edgarton urges us to question the current overvaluation of innovation however defined and his work astutely challenges the opposition of tradition to innovation. Linking tradition which he challenges the link of tradition with triviality superfluity as well as. Regular equation of innovation with neo liberal definitions of economic progress. It may be too soon for Edgar's and critique to have fully met them. Hit the mark for assumptions about creative destruction remain surprisingly pervasive and regularly bought on the slimmest of evidence and the new partner with creative destruction is destructive disruptive innovation. So I'm sure you know even penetrating analyses of the ideologies of creative destruction into the humanities. As for example in L. and lose the culture of cool. Overstate the case lose investigations a very smart investigation of the place of the literary anesthetic in what has become he argues a regime of systematic innovation. Try to fight notions of creative destruction by redeploying them to serve it rather than hobble the arts and humanities radical artistic creativity the so-called destructive creativity of guard artists like Banksy you know they even as they govern the work of capitalist production. As such. Lou argues they offer a model of art able to Burt subvert the culture of innovation offering another chapter in the long history of radical artistic originality. That's all I would lose argument. My point is that this count doesn't count as smart as it is gives up too much ground. Regarding both creativity and new things for one thing Lou coordinates artistic acts of copying artistic appropriation sample in with act of destruction deployed by the most ambitious art to make history. When even sample in musical sampling figures as a tool of creative destruction rather than say an innovative act of ambivalent. AMASH we have but entirely the notion that innovation lays waste to what has come before. Medieval literary and artistic invention offered a stunningly ingenious alternative. And this is the model we need now I think more than ever to take the example with which I began. We need to register both aspects of Fortuna and her state of the art wheel traditional modes or figures alongside the technical breakthrough. The startling image the fashionable sleeve or hair do. What I want to suggest is that we might in fact return to the more equivocal way that old and new signified in the medieval record. For one thing the two concepts were not understood to be dichotomous or oppositional but innovation wasn't Instead explored in entirely different contexts through the contrast of in Guinea I'm which is idiosyncratic or whimsical cleverness on the one hand and consumer to know Convention and think conventional On the other or by way of an expansive set of debates on the importance and the excesses of certain kinds of curiosity I wish now to review the power and problems that copying and repetition posed for development in the Google artistic culture because I think these problems are still relevant. I'm headed toward an image of repetition associated with curiosity and repeatedly crafted by artist and river caters by theorists of style early and late a curious figure that comes to stand for curiosity itself the simian figure the medieval repeat the cycle we knew we work. The image of fortunes up to date mechanized years suggests something of the altogether equivocal notion of newness found over and over again in medieval texts and art. Such equivocation features in philosophical development conventionally thought to a prohibited innovation prohibited them from. Creatures. The medieval view or so the story goes opposes human creature witness to God's creativity by balancing a commitment to the creative power and freedom of the divine with an ex ethics concerns to limit the inventive power of His creatures. So everybody does then a medieval commitment to God's creation ex nihilo prohibit an acknowledgment of the creative power of His creatures and everybody tells everybody else that this Prokop ition lead to a full throated medieval distrust of the new in favor of a more modest human pursuit. Quote secondary and yet the record is in fact a lot more paradoxical ambivalent and canny on this score than the everybody's allow by most accounts the medieval view of invention healthy human making to be inferior secondary derivative. Even the most inventive humans can only enact a kind of repetition a reworking of things already in the world. Hue of stink Victor made the point early on delineating a hierarchy of creative agents God who operates acne Hello nature capital and who operate and in potential and humans human artists who produce following after nature human artifice is according to The View a means of forming new things that are quote mechanical that is adultery it as you put it. This will lead Franciscan and the Platonist Bonaventure philosopher and also head of a religious community to insist that quote While the soul is able to make new compositions of what it finds in the world. It cannot make new things. Yet in the decades that follow and after the advent of Aristotle's physics in the West such philosophical debates would both Channel and unleash cultural productivity in all. All kinds of technologies propelling scientific and artistic practice into the thirteenth century and beyond. While surveying some notions Orthodox notions of human creativity particularly as they relate to the danger of idols art historian Michael Camille. Unfortunately over emphasizes the question of secondary innocence of the artist creative power. In these theories here is Michael Camille and there are some images of monkeys making paper. So this is Camille the restriction of representation to a second order status. Explained not only the medieval artist. Uncertainty with depicting certain forms that do not seem to pertain to God's creation such as idols. But also the content but also the consistency with which he the artist clung to archetypal models copies of copies that forever security him within a safe cycle of duplication and secondary. Adapting and altering compositions. But really creating new ones. I love Camille's work but here he overstate the case the question of invention was handled much more well inventively than this. Implied as Camille's own work suggests. One would be hard class press to describe the image of fortune's wheel with which I began as an exercise in secondary and even as a representation of repetition this image beckons toward recycling as productive turning and returning as a driver for the new A veritable gear for copying for tradition reinvented what is legible in that image is less a medieval commitment to secondary and then the anticipation of a point that will later be made by a theorist named. The notion that repetition is in fact the way that something new comes into the world. And while the image alludes to a Venn. Durable tradition this fortune's wheel is nonetheless also a recomposition a reworking a rearrangement. And it shows just such critical acts to be crucial to the development of technical know how and artistic advance copying is a very old practice one of the primary ways that early artists pursued an interest in the new famously renewing the stories told by literate contemporary. Example and well known plot and poetic set pieces in the genre of romance for instance when I thirty all the stories got new ornaments all the time tales of emperors like Alexander or Charlemagne stories of famous lovers like florist and last floor or Lancelot or retold in verses newly replete with ingenious contrivances with statues that move figures of knights or ladies made out of copper or gold mechanical marvels that delight and entertain. Through such a creative act quote the obsolete took on a new luminati in the words of Alexander look past the pan suggestively recast any dichotomy of old to new as an act of glorious illumination and the new of much medieval poetry and art market its glamour with this kind of blase or splendid recreate ssion a world before now reworked at higher polish the process of creation and invention up and old and new then and now and to Dunning some time anachronistic effect. When Geoffrey Chaucer described luminously his heroine Chris A in widow's weeds from his the first book of his toy the increase a he gets the details of obsolete Trojan costumes exactly wrong. But this unconcerned for anachronism is drawn to the State of the art that it and poetic effect. Classical figures are regularly updated in the evil narrative as when and Mia's cast a high Chevelle rich shadow or thesea against compassion after the manner of a late medieval prince. These were once read signs of a poetic consciousness that couldn't register historical difference at all but now we know such gestures to be ways of refreshing. Otherwise outmoded details with a passion and for and power with the fashion and power of the moment and maybe the passion to. This is newness of now and that the old becomes Ryssdal And the hip freshly translated and elegantly adorned portion fortune's wheel as fashions wheel. So instead of tracking the new with a single minded purpose attempting to be the most original poet on the block the moderating pens of medieval writers model a radiant kind of artistic sustainability repurpose in words figures or story conditions. So it's a cultivate as Geoffrey Chaucer puts it new corn from old fields and while we're on the subject of remaking we might well remember that those early layers as the troubadours took their name from trouble are an old French word that means both invention and finding to discover something already made. These are the curious novelties of my title curious novelties because not just novel but also traditional curious novelty. Because these rearrangements are themselves luminous as State of the art they regularly startle and surprise. This model of invention has never died of course and is robustly on the rise again it can be easily observed in the reemergence of making and craft culture from websites like. You see at sea to recycle art from trash art to craft fairs and farmers' markets. From farm to table slow food traditions to craft breweries and distilleries these do it yourself project. Remind us of the long tradition of well sustainable invention of things made from bits and bobs left lying around of home mechanics of reworkings of puttering of the desire to build a better mousetrap. Home to an extensive culture of artistic copying medieval poets and makers can help us precisely because they help certain kinds of recycling and reuse in such high esteem yet. And at the same time because medieval art in literature was obsessed with recapitulation and reworking the culture also queried its darker side mindless repetition was a concern throughout the period and here that our simian friends come in for repetition and rearrangement was not only cited for its productive power. Even as poets reworked verses or recycled stories they worried over the limits of repetition the possibility of empty form poetic or liturgical and they railed against what they called quote imitation or deadening mimicry. Mindless actions were a real concern in the late Middle Ages writes art historian Christina nor more whether contracted with saints or slightly assimilated to current years simians were exploited to address that anxiety in fifty ninety five. Sir Philip Sidney defends poesy as the art of imitation and lays the cause of it ill repute at the feet of England's poet eight not poet. Praising the power of the poet requires it seems a counterattack on the poet the posers the fakers the witless mimics Sidney think that the ape can help him distinguish the artist from the dollars and those that were seeing. Beginning in the medieval and into the Renaissance period of a racialization. Poetic and artistic hierarchy that is we there's some links between that tradition and Henry Louis Gates is the signifying monkey which is a brilliant recasting of signification from folk preditions much in in line with some of what we see the beginnings of some of these sorts of things in. The medieval habit I'm talking about praising the power of the poet requires it seems a counterattack. Sidney think that can help him do this but by that time a long tradition critiquing certain kinds of repetition. As near a thing was already well advanced. It is of course true that references to apes regularly ground dismissive hierarchies of artistic production and we should be suspicious of those then as now the verb to configure the mere appearance of invention creation that's not inventive at all implicated in longstanding debate over my me says it's where obvious choices from classical times onwards and this is because as attested by Queenie. But stipulated in in an international host of folk traditions. It's more widely recognised to be terrific mimics. As early as the seventh century. However wrinkles appeared. In fact one of the most authoritative and include mental texts to raise the question of Simeon the militant with human does so only to contest the point. This is Isidore Seville who wrote a lot of etymologies and he writes a particular name from a Greek word meaning with push in noses because of their ugly noses. Others say that the name is from the perceived similarity to humans. But this is fault is it or is disavowal of their similarity to human marks the point as unconvincing. Because it relies on a false etymology. His somewhat wacky program of word history dependent on structures of linguistic similarity on cognate relations linguistic relations both real and imagined. And of course is it or is famous today among medieval or maybe not so much hurt him but. Famous among many of us today for his bad I'm ologies. Suggesting that despite his dedication to a search for truth similarities can be built in all kinds of ways and on all kinds of evidence and he suggests here. Even as he puts similitude under pressure. Isidore cannot seem to do without it. Alluding to the metaphysical view central not only to the use of the ape as a figure for bad art but also to a moral concern with human repetition as perverse and dull as mechanical as lifeless. And this is I think the back story to why we tend to think of repetition as deadening rather than in livening. It is or was of course no metaphysician And the problem of similarity between eight and humans is a metaphysical point of no small important. Humanity's created relation to the Creator God was established also on the grounds of similarity. But if apes were accordingly like humans who are accordingly like God then like this itself raises a couple in problem. Evidence of an app Urrea with the human and it Center similarity from above humanity's likeness to God converges on similarity from below. Apes likeness to humans. In short simian similitude threaten to call human exceptionalism into question the association of timea with the witless imitation with with Carol repetition was one way to corral this problem. And according to which mere mimicry is easily differentiated from good art. Well not so clear. Apt because all this talk about to me and similarity imply as all this talk implies throughout the period differences between kinds of simians between monkeys and fake apes seems to have been largely ignored in favor of the similarities between any and all monkey ish makers and their human cousins. So if you think to note about the medieval representation of eight. Representations from the Middle Ages suggest that aluminum eaters at the time weren't particularly careful about or all that invested in differences between the ape and the monkey and this despite the fact that Europeans knew that some simians had tails and others didn't. Despite the fact that monkeys with small tails known as Barbary apes from Gibraltar were kept as pets or in menageries and that's a well known across with cities of Europe. Some of it has to do with the French tradition in old French as in modern French both monkey and ape are denoted by the word Sanj. We don't exactly yet know the source for the earliest usage of the chair monkey in the West and all the the all the candidates the reasonable candidates have their problems. So the term monkey and ape are frequently used interchangeably in medieval studies to describe figures for milieu from the margins of manuscripts or used as ornamental decorations as in the example seen here of the famous monkey. Yes but the difference between monkeys and apes does produce is an issue of style. And you can see that kind of stylistic use his tail in this rendering considerations as to whether to depict tales or tale as creatures seem to suit a specific artistic context as here. Furthermore particular eight figures are monkeys have become a key way that art historians can identify a particular artist in the age of anonymous art. Medieval maker. Tended to render apes and monkeys and marginalia in particular style and the style of simians Sir Philip Sidney notwithstanding even operates regularly so art historians tell us as a specific kind of signature. So and paradoxically if you want to distinguish yourself as an artist of manuscript illumination become an eighth artist to pick figures of apes and repeatedly with that history in mind these contrasts between real poet the real poet and the a poet seems unconvincing. Less going to century before he wrote it would be very hard to tell the difference between the artist. From the a part or perhaps to put it more precisely a part of those artists who render apes repeatedly are the ones we today can even recognise as particular art. Style as we saw in the first half of the talk converges on the state of the art and in this context it would be fair to call these monkeys these signs of style more inventive and witty and witless Furthermore the question of which is to the point since evidence also suggests that to me and figures whether apes are monkeys. So it as representatives both for too little attention for empty repetition. But also for too much emblem of tightening the excesses of imagination of mindless pleasures without function. The figures themselves are anything but Goler witless and the activities of the hybrids in the margins of books of ours can hardly be called empty. I've been recently surveying a diverse array of these over the past month and one of the things that has struck me is that for all their apparent work as repeated tropes of empty repetition these figures are nearly always particular and usual and surprising. In fact they are so inventive that it's hard not to attend to them individually. So what are we to make of this apparent contradiction how can they both be so incredibly. Particular in the tent and. Demanding our attention and symbols for mindless repetition. We might start with an answer by recalling that these figures of monkeys in the margins are interesting exactly the in the same way they are helpful to us as teachers. Scandalous figures. Usually but not always of monkeys dressed up in human garb and doing things that humans do or that humans shouldn't do are everywhere as ornamentation these adulterations adorn religious texts in particular frequently found in books of ours or Salters or as misery cords on church pews. If you as a miniatures are marginalia the creatures are enormously. Imaginative hilarious even regularly obscene which is to say pedagogically useful extract does not and or suckle the breasts of nun like figures a few play warrants or drums an animal band others chase rabbits ride on the backs of nails or poke the pox your ear ends of their fellows with their noses or long handled. Drunkard monkeys farting monkeys kissing monkeys decorate textbook liturgical and I get active. And appear in other high cultural contexts too as a figure for the senses in the foreground of one of the famous Unicorn tapestries all of the suggest to me that even as a thing carry some associations with witless mimicry apes as marginal did not only or even mainly act as figures cautioning us about how not to be they served instead I think in ways that they critically do for my students as provocations to read to really read to think to pay attention particularly as images in the margins of liturgical work and these are books of ours that of the book of ours that you're looking at. So a look. Terkel a prayer that would be read every day. Particularly. In the margins of such work they were invented and this is my working hypothesis to enable human attention by in livening it. These were that is marginal reading companions capable of drawing readers to attention of jarring readers out of empty recitation or automatic reading a piece of work and it may seem paradoxical fantastical figures not meant to be resisted or overlooked by disciplined devout eyes but meant instead to assist readers precisely by reminding them what it means to pay attention. This is how I use them in my classes as provocations to mindfulness to reading and rereading calling to mind making readers mindful the power of attention they serve that is not as figures for repetitive deadness but as figures for inventive alive in this who are really really abundant a focused and teams sentience is certainly applicable to the role of the ape in the final medieval context I wish to evoke and my third curious novelty the association of the ape. And show you this one great one. The association of the ape with curiosity. Here the example is example most often cited as evidence. It's a sculpture from the north portal of shocked cathedral A in the sculpture a female robe just just or righteousness towers over an ape you can see the little. The lonely coming down there. The latter captioned as a curiosity toss the sculpture is grouped with other figures of the virtues and vices and are often read as like a Makiya here just as in curiosity are paired with figures for kindness. Again female overcoming cruelty a prone and somewhat angry lion you can see the angry line askance of Lee just just controlled her ate her sword ready to hand which marked the boundary between the two figures. Yes precisely ask about three the sore joints the two as well as separate them. The ape seems more than a little bit adoring Here he is not slinking or turning away but gazes up at just as his face in sharp contrast to the neighbor lion which seems a little bit more sat at the sword. Being vanquished by conquest. So here's a detail you can see. It's a neat compute not normally the way we think of the games of the vanquished or at least if the. Little monkey is vanquished he doesn't seem at all unhappy about the fact that be vanquished. And the eight seems to me quite particularized the particular animal here. Like many of those depicted in marginalia can be called beautiful. Note the detail of the ear. The upper incline of the line of the nose and the composition of the two together is altogether pleasing this particular renders the sculpture I think ambiguous its meaning much more equivocal than has been recognised. I don't have time here to rehearse the full range of debates over curiosity they occurred in the period but I do wish to note that from Augustan the great theoretician of curiosity onward the medieval discourse of curiosity was preoccupied with good and bad ways of paying attention here the attention of our monkey friend that our monkey friend devotes to righteousness seems to suggest a gaze focused lovingly adoringly on the right kind of figure this is not curiosity as simply a vice to be avoided as some people have argued in the Middle Ages. It was because not the ape as simply a figure for the mindless human this might be read instead as a relational image of curiosity as the figure for a certain brand of intersubjective and c and curiosity as a way of paying good attention to those around you. Jarring the memory of these monkeys act as a reminder that for miliary he can dull our wit to the complexities. Of one another or to the varieties of language or form or history or in our personal interpretation or reading in this context what we what we think we know may not be what is right before our eyes for true attention. We need repeated reading reading as a live as a barrel of monkeys. Experiment in this is my conclusion. The story of invention I've just told argues for reconsideration of curiosity in the context of current assumptions about the uses and pleasures of intellectual work of all kinds whether in the classroom or the library on the page or on the screen. Today curiosity seems also a perplexing concept in her manifesto her companion species. Donna hare away when curiosity. She calls it. Our first obligation and deepest pleasure. To two categories not usually uttered in the same breath. Ethic and enjoyment proponents of positive psychology like Todd Kashdan make curiosity unequivocally central to human cognition and well being but at the same time other educational psychologists. Link. Link disorder kinds of curiosity with especially risky. Dangerous and undesirable behavior in adolescence and in recent exhibition at London's welcome library Marina Warner and Brian Dillon have each noted the tensions and contradictions imbedded throughout modern accounts of curiosity. We no longer seem to talk about curiosity in virtually a simple terms in the way that they sometimes did in the in the middle ages and we no longer seem to emphasize the monkey. But we haven't entirely left that association behind either as the children's series Curious George and his man in the Yellow Hat make clear. In the you. Averse to the however this kind of witty playful mischievous curiosity seems a little at risk. To what degree is the pursuit of curiosity today driven in the innovating University toward the mindless drive of profit and patent. The current instrumental ism that dominate. But the notion of the university as a driver for innovation by way of the instrumentality of STEM disciplines is an affront as much to thoughtful scientists. As it is human and social scientists. We might instead I think think through the problems that curious monkeys address problems of complexities of sentience of ways of paying too much or too little attention. And here they converge on the crucial concern that I began with the precarity of human life. Fortune cranking those years as in twined with not positioned against the fashionable the up to the minute the day to day these questions about precarity about the problems and pleasures wrought by innovation are directly relevant at a time when our students worry about sustainability their own and the Globes. In contrast to a brand of invention legible in the medieval accounts of innovation and curiosity with their art. In contrast story a brand of innovation legible in these medieval accounts of innovation and carry our curiosity art as luminous EPP obsolescence or with the simians reminding us to pay attention this all seems to me utterly useful. So even as we display our bone a few days of digital humanist. Or engage multiple public to be a blog. Even as we help our students remember how well employers will they are with degrees in English or history or Spanish. Amen I say to all that we might still will fully deployed some of the old example. Of invention I've shown today. Why. So as to dislodge prevailing assumptions about the meaning of innovation or novelty. So as to reorient an approach to invention that depends on an opposition to the old so as to complicate and deepen an understanding of tradition as ripe for repurposing. Our students no less ourselves need to be inventive medieval monkeys now more than ever as a habit of mind common to all the liberal arts their kind of curiosity can reenergize debate over the value of the study of the humanities or the social sciences or the sciences the full liberal arts. We need to keep inventing ways for the university to cultivate this kind of curiosity in its fullest sense not only or mainly as a way to reverse engineer profit making. But as a means to keep us lively to help us not only survive difficult times but thrive as human persons. Thank you. Do you question. I'm I'm happy to I'm happy to have a conversation or you know questions comments. Maybe if we could help to light the house like so has that got me. This reminds me of when I was in high school and I was in the musicals and I couldn't see the beautiful face but if you get. Well there. I mean there is actually and there are others in the room that can do it as well actually I can. Really you know tell us a lot about wonder. But yes there is there is a very wholesome. Conversation in the like about different kinds of wonder on the one hand and the other one. There are two versions and one bad and what's good and right and and the question that the ethical question that was being formed around Wonder was really a question about appropriation. If you. You know that there are ways of wondering that become a really appropriate rather than kind of respectful difference. So that so. You know the Medieval you know medieval thinkers. You know that. You know the me talk of things we're very keen to think through the ethical challenges of all of these inclinations and to think about you know. The. Ways in which our desire to be hard to wonder might lead us. To misuse the wonderful things that you know we have. Wonder has taken also a kind of. Has gotten a new life. I think in a lot of different disciplines over the last few years the science of science has in a very strong way kind of reclaimed wonder and wonder in the natural world as a motivating force for scientific work. The kind of which is a kind of version of the kind of wide ranging curiosity curiosity unhooked from a kind of instrumental eyes. And game but rather thought as one of my friends who's a chemist says you know science for science think you know what get the science right and you know and then you know the invention will come. And you know one of the things that one of the reasons why I find curiosity. So particularly useful is because in it. Medieval in classical tradition Curiosity going back to zero who coined the term. It was linked at M A logically to care. Cura or care. And I think at the moment. One of the most pressing issues facing us today is the question of what it means to care for the planet one another. I mean these issues regard it with regard to the medical humanities the question of you know. Improvements in health and whether or not the. Health care To what extent is care a part of health care to what is that does care drop out in the service of. Cures that may not make prolonging life but not lead to quality of life. All these kinds of questions that have enormous ramifications with regard to the ethics of health care but also the. Economic health care etc So so it. It seems to me that we're at a time where we need to reconnect to the degree to which curiosity and debate about curiosity in the Middle Ages were very much debates about the kinds of knowledge that are were that we should be caring about and the kinds of questions that we should be caring about and it's the that he that makes you make me sort of favor curiosity at the moment rather than wonder. But. The active point that you're making is exactly right. I think and that part of what I think he turns to wonder and and curiosity and things like that are doing for us is reminding us of our own. You know care about the things we study right that you know we you know we. You know we want to reconnect to our own. In Champaign and in the world. One of my colleagues that in the end of Sanders has written this wonderful book called The History of all that sort of about nature writing and. The way in which. Every ethical act sort of starts from he argues a place of all which I think is very much. You know in line with your point about wonder. Thank you. Yes. Well that yes and again could talk about that. But. So yes Marvel could be dangerous and be worried about Curiosity the way curiosity featured in those debates was the degree to which and it goes from you know Augustan on words the great the degree to which our curiosity about marvelous things. Exotic things that sector could lead us to in the pursuit of pleasure without function without sort of used values. So it was so perfectly was and as you know superfluous kind of trivial in certain kinds of ways. Thomas Aquinas the great systematize or distinguishes curiosity talk. On the one hand from studio to toss on the other hand and studios to toss Judea snus is in his view a kind of sustained attention that is focused on where the pursuit Kiriakou talk in his view is a kind of attention focused on things that are so perfectly perfume. Pursuits not worthy pursuits. That's one answer but in the larger in the larger medieval context there are a whole set of sort of debate that are basically about what kinds of knowledge should we care about what kinds of knowledge. You know is what is deserving of our care and our careful attention and it seems to me that a lot of the debates that we're having in the university at least at my university today about the future of certain programs certain languages study of of languages. Are the same kind of debates about what kind of knowledge should we still be caring about what is the most you know these are these are. I actually think is it a base have been going on since the beginning of the university and they'll probably go on through that through its entire history but it does seem to me that that reminding ourselves that there were other moments in history when these debates were answered in certain ways and then there were responses to those answers can be incredibly helpful to us rather than thinking of of the standard you have curiosity as is the standard history intellectual his your curiosity is that in the Middle Ages it was a damn. And in the wake of modern science. It became a virtue not. Then and in some ways part of what I'm trying to do here is dismantle that. Intellectual history which has probably been told most influential Levi Hunt's Blumenberg the legitimacy of the modern age gracefully argues that curiosity got rehabilitated in the Renaissance and directed toward. Useful pursuit and that gave us speculative science and of course accordingly medieval science was you know superstition it wasn't real science it was right but actually there were all kinds of things related to alchemy that were early pre histories of chemistry that were all these ways in which these questions were much more complicated and issue of what kind of knowledge we should care about with a very much a live issue that all the scholastics were trying to work through in the midst of Aristotle the advent of Aristotle's you know. Physics his book on nature in the West which was in you know a very profoundly new way of thinking about the natural world so and say anything you want to say about wonder about marvels about it. Yeah right. A one. Yeah right. Right right. Yes right here. You know. It is you. It is used in both ways it is used both as the act of so being curious. And it is and curiosity talking in the Latin is used that way in Middle English which is mostly that the work that I study. Curiosity is used both as the thing that you're curious about. And as the act of being curious about you know the world in its fullness or why it became and. There's a scholar by the name of or now who's working on a linguistic history of the term curiosity from the late. Middle English period into the early modern period and one of the things that she noticed the way in which the Middle English term curiosity in England. Became increasingly used to think about a whole variety of issues related to ornament. So you would see discussions of architecture that would use curiosity as a way of distinguishing too much or to put ornaments from just enough ornament. So it could be sort of a way of critiquing making a kind of you know arc artistic critical point about the over ornamentation it's used to talk about linguistic style writerly style. It's also used to talk about a whole range of technical innovations and inventions new things and then used as a kind of jet generic term for a thing that is new a curiosity that hasn't been sort of seen before in you probably know that in the in in the early modern and then into the eighteenth century curiosities in the way you're talking. About became a kind of item to be collected in the famous cabinet of curiosities. That would began. You know emerging in various ways you know very Everybody had one in there you know in their house or cabinet of curiosities they collected or people had given him to give them from all over the world and it became increasingly in that regard associated with exoticism and things that you could you had never you could not imagine ever having seen before. What I think is so interesting about the monkeys the medieval monkeys is that the relationship to what counts as a novelty is I think slightly more complicated because monkeys were on the one hand particular that Gibraltar. Could arguably be called exotic you know non European right brought from Gibraltar or you know or brought from other places. But they were so popular as pets that they were you know the there's a great book. Some of you may know by Janssen came out in one thousand nine hundred twenty nine. I think nine hundred thirty two called ape and a Clore in the Middle Ages and Renaissance and and he talked about the the ubiquity of these monkeys. You know like an organ grinder's monkey or little Gibraltar apes. That would be at craft fairs and you know farmer's market and so it and in court. So it wasn't just that the elite were hanging around with you know. With these monkeys so to what extent I'm getting back to the question of exoticism to what extent that the that the does the. Does the monkey become a kind of association with. The exotic and to what extent is that sort of. You know complicated and in that tradition and in the final thing to say it's just that recent book that came out a couple of years ago by a critic of a. Benteke C.N.I. argues that under the conditions of late capitalism. I don't know what you know I'm not sure what I think of it yet but under conditions like capitalism she argues the curious has been replaced by the Interesting. It's a book called R. is that it categories and her or her argument is that are is that a categories are now no longer no longer include curious. That's curious. Instead. They include That's interesting. So when we say you point that that sort of later formation of what would have been the curious. Before. So it does still seem to be that. Concept that becomes incredibly convoluted in any attempt to define it and in that way. I think it's a little different from the Marvel in the wonder. I mean I you know I think there were various attempts to categorize Marvel's and wonders but curiosity. Seems to keep sort of. You know circulating in excess of any attempts to kind of corral it and keep it in within certain bounds. So and that's one of the reasons I find it so interesting. Thank you. I have a right that it did so that. The term that was used would not have been authentic to the it would have been UK Tory TA Right which is a kind of version of authority and and certainly maintaining a kind of. D.D. a logical link to your authorities was crucially important although somebody like Chaucer makes up his sort of you know gives false authorities all the time right. So yes it was that well maybe not all the time but frequent number of times. So yes it was important. Your authorities were important but not in some kind of inert or derivative way the second category that that I think is relevant here is one that I mentioned very briefly in Gainey I'm so in Gainey I'm Is it the etymological ancestor to our to engineer. But also the animal logical and sector to engine ingenuity. It meant sort of idiosyncratic. An idiosyncratic kind of version of something so individualized in a certain kind of way and it was caught contracted with. Convention or things conventional so. Are and I'm not sure what you what period you work on but. But later. Thinkers and later theorists of a medic like Emanuel conned will use in gaining him as one of the etymologies of his kind of woolly term genius and constant notion of genius of the genius that is an artist that is paradoxically both completely unique and idiosyncratic but also the new rule the one who should be imitated right. That paradoxical set apart but also imitative right is. There's a way in which cock. Use of genius has this Porky medieval etymology and linked to. In gaining him. And in the Middle Ages in Guinea I'm was also a little bit of a worrisome category because you could be too. You could be too idiosyncratic. And there were ways in which too much idiosyncrasy. You were you know you were not being authentic or you were not engaging being you know tying yourself to the authorities that went before you. I think part of what my work has been trying to suggest is that those structures the complexity of those structures was as much about reworking. Terms already present as it was about maintaining a tie to a tradition. So it was as much about trying to. You know. Do a new version. Of the story of TROs increase a or whatever as it was right and there were concerns about fidelity to tradition in some corners more than in others. So. But aka entity that term was not there was nothing quite like authenticity and the reason I say that is just because of the way in contemporary in the way you know and when my students think about you know literature or you know or their own creative writing and the authenticity of their own creative writing that tends to come more out of the sort of. Individual originality rather than it here into a kind of tradition so I'm not sure what your field is but.