Abstract: This essay approaches Marshall McLuhan's media investigations in relation to his solid humanistic background. In the late 1930s, his doctoral studies at Cambridge University, UK, introduced him to the liberal arts of the trivium, while alerting him on the achievements of the most daring avant-garde movements of the inter-war period. A few years later, as a young Professor of English at the University of Toronto, McLuhan started to apply "the method of art analysis to the critical evaluation of society" (The Mechanical Bride, 1951) hoping to generate "light" and not "heat" in the "collective public mind". His original approach to old and new technological environments captured the attention of many artists and critics at a time of fast cultural and societal change. Soon, McLuhan's own 'method' became a case study, if not a model, for artists as different as Quentin Fiore and Sorel Etrog. This essay retrieves the roots of McLuhan's explorations, discusses the role it played in the making of some original artistic experiments of the late 1960s/1970s, and the role that humanistic thought can play in the investigation of a complex media reality.

Key words: humanistic tradition, vorticism, laws of media, storytelling