"This book approaches the meaning of personhood historically by way of some fascinating liminal phenomena in medieval poetry, hagiography, and other discourses. These phenomena concern not individuals in their solitude but interpersonal relations at a certain pitch of intensity, where the boundaries between persons seem to blur. Some of them are little known, others familiar but little studied. All raise tantalizing questions about the nature of persons in relationship. Why, for example, did the myth of the separable heart take such a firm hold in romance literature, from lovers who exchange hearts on parting to mystics who exchange hearts with Jesus? Why did Augustine represent his pedagogical ideal as a mutual indwelling of teacher and student? What special traits gave both saints and demoniacs their ability to read minds? Why were mothers who died in childbirth buried in unconsecrated ground? All these phenomena, diverse as they are, exemplify a kind of selfhood more permeable than we are used to imagining"--