The Hand to the Sword like the Mind to the Word: Learning Embodied Knowledge from Late Medieval Fencing Books
(2025) Journal for the History of Knowledge — p. 00 (00) (2025)
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- Authors
Leblanc, Hélène 
- Abstract
- Embodied knowledge is a rising concept in many fields of knowledge. As such, it requires a major work of historicization. This article aims to make a breakthrough in this direction by examining the case of fencing books. It takes its starting point in the coincidence, suggested by Pamela Smith, between today’s notion of embodied knowledge and the pre-modern notion of art. However, while the focus has been previously on the productive arts, it is important to recognize that a pre-modern notion of art is a broad spectrum that also includes gestural arts such as fencing. The article will consider, without any pretension of completeness, three late medieval fencing books: The Liber de Arte Dimicatoria (Leeds, Royal Armouries FECHT 1, also and best known as MS I.33); Fiore de’i Liberi’s Fior di Battaglia, and the manuscript Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Cod. Hs. 3227a. The inquiry will be guided by the following question: what are the specifics of the communication, through books, of fencing qua embodied knowledge?
- Affiliations
Université de Lyon LabEx COMOD
Citations
Leblanc, H. (2025). The Hand to the Sword like the Mind to the Word: Learning Embodied Knowledge from Late Medieval Fencing Books. Journal for the History of Knowledge, 00 (00). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/232630 (Original work published 2025)