Reading scent in medieval England

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We experience the world through our senses, and smells evoke powerful emotions for individuals and communities.I interrogate smell as a social and historical phenomenon, asking how smell was understood in medieval Englandand investigating the meanings of scent first emerging in English, to recover the lost significance of scent throughclose readings of Middle English vernacular texts.Responding to historical discourse of medieval smell, I take a literary approach to track the transmission of ideasabout the senses from classical thinkers to English laypeople. Within this framework of sensory knowledge, Iundertake three literary case studies that examine how smell was imagined in the vernacular, provide a newembodied perspective on canonical texts, and highlight the literary and cultural value of overlooked texts.Engaging with innovations in modern heritage studies, I establish an interdisciplinary position on how smell canexpand our engagement with the medieval past