Abstract

In medieval epistemology, self-examination is intimately tied to the search for a knowledge that transcends the self. Introspection can lead to intellectual and spiritual ascent. The “inward journey” of a poem like Piers Plowman is directed not only inward but also outward and upward, toward the external and transcendent. Self-exploration, however, is not universally depicted as leading to ascent: it is dangerous, beset by narcissistic traps, by the possibility that the self will seem an end sufficient to itself and become the sole and ultimate object of its own attention. The medieval status of self-examination is, in other words, strongly ambivalent, as we see in treatments of that instrument of self-reflection par excellence, the mirror. The story of Narcissus and its cautionary lessons were well known to the later Middle Ages. But medieval authors had access not only to narcissistic mirrors. Holy Scripture and the ordered universe are mirrors reflecting the divine plan, and the self's place within that plan. The human soul is sometimes figured as a mirror in which God can be known. Looking in mirrors we see not only ourselves but a broad range of phenomena beyond the self