Description du projet
Les maladies mentales au Moyen-Âge grec
Comment la société grecque du Moyen-Âge percevait-elle les maladies mentales? Le faisait-elle en termes surnaturels? Le projet MadByz, financé par l’UE, étudiera les perspectives médicales byzantines sur les troubles mentaux. Il explorera leur incidence sur les récits, les perceptions et les expériences en matière de maladie mentale pendant le Moyen-Âge grec. En s’appuyant sur des recherches précédentes menées dans le domaine de l’histoire de la médecine et de la «folie» dans l’Antiquité, le projet mènera l’étude systématique d’un vaste éventail de sources. Cette étude servira de tremplin pour mieux comprendre l’histoire et la circulation des principales idées scientifiques pendant le Moyen-Âge. MadByz aura un impact sur la manière dont nous observons le passé et le présent des maladies mentales, en remettant en cause nos perspectives et hypothèses sur les questions essentielles de stigmatisation et d’institutionnalisation.
Objectif
This proposal explores Byzantine medical views on mental disorders and their impact on narratives, perceptions and experiences of mental illness in the Greek Middle Ages. The Byzantine world is most notably absent from cultural and historical surveys on madness and medicine in pre-modern societies. And yet Byzantium tells us a story worth hearing. Byzantine responses to cognitive and behavioral disorders capture the biological, psychological and social complexity of mental illness resonating with the epistemic pluralism advocated by global mental health studies. By investigating how medical concepts trickle down and affect folk concepts of madness, MadByz challenges the master narrative according to which the Greek Middle Ages understood mental illness only in supernatural terms. By contrast, this proposal argues that Byzantine naturalistic understandings of mental illness are part of a cluster of different discourses on insanity, testifying to the coexistence of varied views on mental disorders. MadByz builds on the experienced researcher’s previous research in the field of history of medicine and on “madness” in ancient times, expanding his expertise and providing new training opportunities in Byzantine Greek, Narratology and Disability Studies. By offering a systematic study of a wide array of sources, MadByz is an essential stepping-stone toward a better understanding of the history and the circulation of key scientific ideas in the Middle Ages. By engaging with the entanglements and conflicts between concepts of mental disorders, MadByz also looks at the place occupied by the mentally ill within their socio-familiar and broader institutional framework. In so doing, MadByz impacts on the way we look at the past and at the present of mental illness, questioning our views and assumptions on key issues of stigmatization and institutionalization, as well as of segregation and inclusion, which are at the heart of mental health policies promoted by the OECD and the EU
Champ scientifique
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Régime de financement
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinateur
5230 Odense M
Danemark