Allegory Studies

Curated colloquy with an initial cluster of contributions by Jason Crawford, Walter Melion and Bart M. Ramakers, Michael Silk, and Nicolette Zeeman. // "What has allegory to do with personification, and personification with allegory? Are we justified in speaking, as we often do, of 'allegorical personifications' and 'personification allegory,' or does such usage, however widespread, obscure fundamental differences between the two? Why is it that the notion of allegory emerges already with some of the earliest known readers of Greek mythological poetry in the sixth century BCE, whereas full-scale personification narrative does not seem to appear until Prudentius' _Psychomachia_ in the fifth century CE? Can the histories of these concepts be brought into meaningful alignment? Can the premise of their close interrelatedness withstand rigorous theoretical scrutiny? In revisiting such questions, this colloquy hopes to spark fresh debate on what is not merely an unresolved terminological issue, but a fundamental conceptual problem with immense implications for our understanding of Western art and literature from classical antiquity to the present day."

Dans les études comparées « droit et littérature » ou « économie et littérature », on cherche souvent en priorité ce que la littérature peut nous apprendre sur le droit ou l’économie. C’est prendre un risque : celui d’oublier la
dimension littéraire des textes étudiés. À plus forte raison, c’est prendre le risque de passer à côté d’un fait précieux, à savoir que la littérature est autre chose qu’un instrument talentueux assigné à la valorisation des thèmes qu’on lui livre : la littérature est plus que cela ! Elle sait elle-même user des autres – en l’occurrence, user du droit et de l’économie comme d’instruments, les mettre à son service. Il n’est pas rare que, ne cherchant pas à représenter ces deux univers, elle les détourne de leurs fins, les vide de leurs fonctions manifestes, mais en conserve mécanismes, raisonnements et vocabulaire : la littérature tire du droit et de l’économie des éléments de poétique qu’elle s’agrège et qui la renforcent, sans qu’elle se soucie de nous apprendre nécessairement quelque chose sur ces deux disciplines, objet de son pillage.
PLAN de l'article :
    Balzac/Piketty : la ruse de la Littérature
    L’inversion (des valeurs) de M. de Norpois : Qu’est ce que la littérature ?
        La carrière littéraire : à quel taux placer sa vie ?
        M. de Norpois ? Un bon inverti en vaut deux
        Tante Léonie ? Une valeur à investir
        L’« action nominative de la Compagnie des Eaux » : Contre Sainte‑Beuve appliqué
    Détournement du droit et de l’économie par la Littérature
    La Peau de chagrin : la vie est consomptible par le premier usage
        La lettre de change : qu’est-ce que la vie ?
        Le droit fantastique
        La Peau comme instrument du droit : une condamnation du littéralisme
        Confusion entre vie, argent et temps : d’une usure à l’autre
    « La fille de cuisine était une personne morale » : le droit, auxiliaire de la littérature

Three Sonnets with similar themes are juxtaposed within this academic essay. Each is an allegorical representation in some aspect, and two of these sonnets share a title, while having been written six years apart. These sonnets were that of Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophil and Stella", Charlotte Smith's "Sonnet 4: To the Moon" and Helen Maria William's "To the Moon".

In art history, allegory is a controversial and problematic topic. Allegory, or
personification, visually embodies abstract concepts and ideas. Namely, the sphere of the literal and the symbolic are juxtaposed in this single theme; this caused definitional, methodological, and interpretational problems and contradictions. Because of its wide use in Western art, these problems need some analysis and clarification in order to be as fruitful as possible for art historical studies.

From its invention by the ancient Greeks and Romans, through the Middle Ages, and then the Renaissance, ending up in current times, allegory has taken various characteristics, becoming multifaceted and ambivalent. Its nature can be synthesised as follows: either readily understood and clear – conveying explicit moral or didactic messages – or obscure and ambiguous – hiding complex and/or more allusive meanings. As the product of classical antiquity, allegory was originally conceived as a figure of speech to sway the viewer. Its moral and straightforward side was adopted by the Church and by state institutions to display moral, religious, or civic notions to the public. During the Renaissance, particularly at the end of the 15h century and first half of the 16th century, it started to become more problematic, sophisticated, less clear and explicit. Methodological and interpretational issues emerge distinctly from certain examples of Venetian art.

Some case studies have been interpreted as allegories because of their ambiguity and vagueness, although it is likely that they are not. Allegory’s ambivalence, whether clear or obscure, begun to be irrespective of its context and/or presumable function. This is due to the fact that allegory’s nature is mainly dependent on the individual artist’s style and technique. It is highly probable that most of the issues of allegory emerge from the advent of the Venetian school. This imbued allegory with fine colour techniques, lyricism, and allusiveness, rendering it more ambiguous and evocative.

More than 20 years after presenting his first interpretation of the mosaic from the House of Aion in a paper entitled “Uwagi na temat mozaiki z Domu Aiona w Nea Paphos (Cypr)” (Meander 9/10, 1987, p. 421-438, in Polish, and translated to English: « The Immortality of the Human Soul and the Dionysiac Mysteries in the 4th Century Allegory [in Connection with the Interpretation of the Mosaic from the “House of Aion” at Paphos in Cyprus]»), where he proposed reading the five mythological panels (1. Leda and Zeus; 2. Dionysus on Mount Nysa; 3. The Dionysian thiasos; 4. Apollo and Marsyas; 5. The Apotheosis of Cassiopeia) as an allegory of the destiny of the human soul and body, starting with conception and ending with the liberation of the soul and its apotheosis, the author now enhances his initial interpretation with numerous reflections concerning the historical context of this work of art, created in the years 320-360.
If, according to the author, the mosaic is a “Hymn” in honour of the pagan gods, Man (his soul) and his place in the (pagan) universe, then at the same time it polemicises with the Christian faith and its God, Jesus Christ.
The author puts forward numerous new solutions relating to the mosaic’s iconography and iconology. Analysis of the mosaic also leads him to propose a solution to the as-yet unanswered question regarding the absence of images of the crucified Christ in Christian art of the 3rd and 4th centuries, up until 420/430, when the first images of Christ on the cross appear.
CONTENTS:
Introduction
1. Research to-date (recap)
2. Description of mosaic (recap)
2.1. Composition of five mythological scenes
2.2. Brief iconographic description of mythological panels
2.3. Outline of individual iconographic elements and their respective roles
2.4. The pagan gods’ air of majesty and dignity as an expression of piety
3. A few words about the pagan reaction
4. An apology of pious human life according to pagan principles and a polemic on the Christian model of Man and his theological idol, Jesus Christ
4.1. Divine intervention in the act of human conception (allusion to/polemic on the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary)
4.2. The Epiphany of Dionysus (an allusion to the Epiphany of Christ – Theou Pais)
4.3. The procession and dissemination of Dionysian order (allusion to/polemic on Christ’s entry into Jerusalem)
4.4. The error of Marsyas (polemic on/allusion to the error of Jesus the Messiah): arrest, sentencing for arrogance and lack of piety (asebeia) and condemnation to a martyr’s death
4.5. The anabasis (or anagoge psyches) of a ‘beautiful soul’ (allusion to/polemic on the Ascension of Christ)
5. A few words on the mosaic programme prior to final conclusions
Final conclusions

Abstract − Around 1486 Cecilia Gallerani was introduced to the court of Ludovico il Moro, becoming soon her favourite mistress. In 1491 she gave him the son Cesare, immediately legitimized as a Sforza. Her portrait painted by Leonardo da Vinci, celebrated in a sonnet by the courtisan Bernardo Bellincioni (c. 1490), is nowadays identified with the Lady with an ermine in the Czartoriskji Museum at Krakow. It may be interpreted also as a sort of political allegory due to the presence of the heraldic animal, alluding to Ludovico’s investiture (in the late 1486) to
the chivalric decoration entitled to San Michele and called Armellino, instituted by the King of Naples.
Key words: allegory, ermine, Moor, Sforza, Aragon

Riassunto − Cecilia Gallerani fu introdotta intorno al 1486 alla corte di Ludovico il Moro, divenendone ben presto la favorita e dando alla luce nel 1491 Cesare, prontamente legittimato. Il ritratto che di lei dipinse Leonardo da Vinci, celebrato in un sonetto encomiastico del poeta cortigiano Bernardo Bellincioni risalente al 1490 circa, si identifica unanimemente nella stupenda Dama con l’ermellino oggi nel museo Czartoriskji di Cracovia. Esso è anche interpretabile come allegoria politica sforzesca per la presenza dell’animale araldico, allusivo al conferimento dell’ordine cavalleresco di San Michele o dell’Armellino, ottenuto dal re di Napoli alla fine del 1486.
Parole chiave: allegoria, ermellino, Moro, Sforza, Aragona

The article traces the emergence of the myth of the Middle Ages as the 'age of allegory' - from the formative developments of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through its classic statement in the work of Jacob Burckhardt, to its consolidation at the hands of John Addington Symonds and other British and American authors - and discusses its continuing influence on English literary historiography.

This is a more elaboret and developped version of the first paper published in Polish : M.T. Olszewski, Uwagi na temat mosaiki z Domu Aiona w Nea Paphos (Cypr), Menander XLII, 9-10, 1987, pp. 421-438 (translated to English : The Immortality of the Human Soul and the Dionysiac Mysteries in the 4th Century Allegory (In Connection with the Interpretation of the Mosaic from “House of Aion” at Paphos in Cyprus), see on academia.edu

The author proposes a new interpretation of the iconographical and iconological programme of five panels mosaic from the House of Aion at Nea Pahos in Cyprus. He proposes reading the five mythological panels (1. Leda and Zeus; 2. Dionysus on Mount Nysa; ; 3. Apollo and Marsyas; 4. The Dionysian thiasos; 5. The Apotheosis of Cassiopeia) as an allegory of the destiny of the human soul and body, starting with conception (Leda and a Swan)  and ending with the liberation of the soul and its apotheosis (the apotheosis of Cassiopeia).
The author rejects the interpretation of W.A. Daszewski, (Dionysos der Erlöser, Mainz am Rheim 1985) proposed in 1985 and his order of interpetation the five mythological pictures (1. Dionysus on Mount Nysa; 2. Leda and Zeus; 3. The Apotheosis of Cassiopeia; 4. Apollo and Marsyas 5. The Dionysian thiasos). Daszewski would like see in Dionysos - a newly born supreme god, the universal savior.
see also a new article: M.T.Olszewski, The iconographic programme of the Cyprus mosaic from the House of Aion reinterpreted as an anti-Christian polemic, in: Et in Arcadia Ego. Studia memoriae professoris Thomae Mikocki dicata, Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw 2013, pp. 207-239, Pls 74-86.

Christopher Buck, “Sapiential Theosis: A New Reading of Ephrem the Syrian’s Hymns on Paradise.” Journal of the Assyrian Academic Society 9.2 (1995): 80–125. 

ABSTRACT

A fresh reading of the Hymns on Paradise (HdP) discloses how Ephrem the Syrian reworked soteriological presuppositions and thought-forms current in fourth-century Syria to effect a transformation of the doctrine of theōsis (deification), freeing it from its substantive categories, to lay emphasis on divinization at the sapiential level. See, for instance, HdP XII.15, where Ephrem states that “the human person can become / the likeness of God, / endowed with immortal life [i.e. theōsis] / and wisdom [i.e. sapience] that does not err” (HdP XII.15, HyP 166). While the form of the doctrine with its anthropological considerations was kept intact, the manner of Ephrem’s affirmation of theōsis was tantamount to its sophistication, in what amounted to a reformulation of the doctrine itself. In Ephrem’s eschatological scheme—which exalts form over substance—body, soul and spirit are rarefied beyond physicality, while corporeality is maintained. Even the argument for the body’s afterlife existence—the instrumentality of the senses being required for the soul’s ability to perceive—is effectively undermined by the obviation or precluding of the senses in the soul’s immediate cognition of the delights of Paradise. This innovation lent Ephrem’s doctrine of theōsis a greater potential for realization, in which eschatological Paradise came to enjoy a more edifying immediacy among the faithful.

The Resurrection, therefore, in Ephrem’s conception of it, is not simply an “arising” in the sense of revivification. It is an “arising” in the sense of a spiritual ascent, in which the whole tripartite being of man is “raised” to new life and to new heights. In what manner may we conceive of this? In this present life, in what really amounts to a realized eschatology for Ephrem, “the mind ... is spiritual” and it is the mind in mystic transport, and, at the eschaton, something like the mind into which the resurrection body is transformed, that can attain the environs of Paradise and, by the blessing of its Creator, enter into its Garden. There is in fact the suggestion that the metaphors Ephrem employs for his portrayal of Paradise may be decoded. From HdP VI.6 and elsewhere, we may thus infer: Symbols of Paradise (Symbol = Referent): Bud = Heart; Produce = Rational Speech; Fruit = Words (Deeds, VI.11); Plants = Truth; Sweet Scents = Love; Blossoms = Chastity (VI.12); Beauty = Mind (VI.13); Flowers = Virtuous Life (VI.13); Garden = Free Will (VI.13); Earth = Human Thought (VI.13); Trees = “Victors” (VI.14); Treasure Store = Hidden Mysteries (VI.25).

Paradise and paradigm:

Images and ideas are the twin hemispheres of the religious mind. The bicameral interaction of the imaginal and the abstract focus the believer on the archetypes of belief. To give a more complete description of any religious worldview, concepts should be complemented by conceits. In Ephrem, the Church is imagistically conceived of as Paradise. Since it is an extended metaphor, its imagery is extensible. Individually and collectively, paradise imagery can represent different facets of church life and experience. The phrase from the Lord’s Prayer—“on earth, as it is in Heaven”—perfectly expresses both imagistically and ideologically the Ephrem’s artifice at work in the HdP.

Ephrem’s Paradise is at once ecclesiastical and eschatological. Its imagery expresses a paradigm of purity. This is a purity that “cures.” It cleanses the soul of the “disease” of mortality. It restores primordial immortality. Life in Paradise, in both worlds, is for the pure. The pure in heart are Christians who are sexually pure and morally stainless. On this point, perhaps Ephrem and Bardaiṣan might agree. In a quote from Theodore bar Koni, Bardaiṣan, in one of his lost songs, taught: “And lo, the natures, all of them—with created things they hastened, to purify themselves and remove what was mingled with the nature of evil” (Segal 1970, 38). Although Ephrem rejects Bardaiṣan’s creation myth, the pursuit of ethical purity in both systems is, in nonascetic terms, comparable. In fine, Syriac Christianity’s response to Late Antiquity is the quest for purity, in which chrism, baptism, and the Eucharist become the ointment, fountain, and elixir of immortality, while the imagery of Paradise ennobles the sanctified soul.

Artigo publicado como parte do catálogo da mostra "Clássicos Africanos: A primeira geração de cineastas da África do Oeste" realizada na CAIXA Cultural do Rio de Janeiro (Brasil) de 19 de novembro a 01 de dezembro de 2019. O artigo (p. 49-64) trata sobre a relação entre as narrativas de filmes realizados por cineastas africanos e as narrativas de tradição oral, atentando, sobretudo para a presença de alegorias como o principal legado deixado por essa tradição nas produções cinematográficas.

Abstract: Le village de Shahba, devenu la colonie romaine de Philippopolis, est situé à quatre-vingt dix kilomètres au sud de Damas et à vingt kilomètres au nord de Suweida’ en Syrie du Sud. Sa notoriété et son développement sont dus à l’empereur Philippe l’Arabe qui a transformé la petite bourgade où sa famille s’était installée, en une petite, mais riche cité de 244 à 249 lors de son règne.
La mosaïque polychrome qu’on pourrait appeller mosaïque de la « Fête Nocturne Pannychis » - à cause de sa représentation personnifiée - a été quelque peu oubliée par la littérature scientifique. On trouve cependant quelques brèves descriptions dans les travaux de J. Balty, de J.-Ch. Balty, de H. Hatoum, de L. Abad Casal, de H. Sichterman et d’A. Kossatz-Deismann. À ma connaissance, elle n’a été publiée que par petits fragments. Seul J.-Ch. Balty, dans un article du LIMC consacré à la personnification abstraite d’Euphrasia, propose une rapide interprétation de la mosaïque en expliquant le sens des mots « pannychis » et « euphrasia ».
La mosaïque de Pannychis n’est plus malheureusement en place, on peut néanmoins supposer, vu le thème représenté, qu’elle devait probablement orner une salle à manger (triclinium ou œcus).
Cette mosaïque rectangulaire, abritée au musee de Shahba, est composée d’une large bordure géométrique, de six petits panneaux représentant des personnifications inscrites sur les cotés courts du tapis, et d’un grand tableau central avec une effigie des trois Grâces (Charites) mis en valeur dans une belle bordure géométrique de ruban torsadé. Les tableaux angulaires représentent les Quatre Saisons. En commençant par l’angle gauche dans la rangée inférieure et en suivant le mouvement contraire à celui des aiguilles d’une montre, les Saisons sont placées en ordre suivant : Theros (l’Été), Methoporon (l’Automne), Heimon[e] (l’Hiver) et Ear (le Printemps). Entre l’Été et l’Automne, l’artiste a placé le buste de la personnification féminine de Pannychis – de la Fête Nocturne. Entre les personnifications du Printemps et de l’Hiver, le portrait en trois quart de la personnification féminine d’Euphrasia – (la Gaîté, la Joie dans un festin, la Réjouissance) a été placée.
Quel sens se cache derrière toutes ces images et à quelle idée elles font allusions ? Si le tableau central est le plus grand, il n’est que complémentaire par rapport aux panneaux latéraux. La clé du programme de la mosaïque est la personnification de Pannychis – de la Fête Nocturne. La personnification de la Gaîté – Euphrasia fait son pendant.
Que sait-on de ces faites nocturnes que les citoyens romains hellénisés en Orient célébraient en se réunissant en grand nombre ? Une source inestimable dans la recherche sur l’histoire des mentalités grecques sous la domination romaine est l’auteur grec d’Éphèse connu sous le nom d’Artémidore de Daldis, spécialiste de l’oniromancie. Il est célèbre grâce à son manuel d’interprétation des rêves (Onirocriticon) rédigé probablement à Éphèse à la fin du IIe siècle. Artémidore parle des Fêtes nocturnes vues dans les rêves. La fête nocturne est célébrée très joyeusement par ses participants. C’est une fête bruyante avec danse et musique. C’est l’occasion pour tout le monde de se rassembler et de faire de nouvelles connaissances. De plus, cette fête permet aux jeunes de dépasser certaines interdictions et d’exprimer leurs sentiments. Les nouveaux couples formés durant cette fête nocturne peuvent confirmer leur engagement par un mariage. Artémidore effectue des rapprochement entre la Fête nocturne et la réunion de personnes, le mariage, la gaîté, la bonne humeur, l’abondance et l’acquisition des biens (pour les pauvres). Le Pannychis et l’Euphrasia sont présents ensemble dans le texte d’Artémidore comme sur la mosaïque de Philippopolis. Sa description met l’accent sur des éléments caractérisant la Fête Nocturne : la joie, la bonne humeur et l’abondance (de la table et des boissons) que les fêtes offrent aux participants. La signification des Charites est complémentaire de celle qui est évoquée par les personnifications de Pannychis et d’Euphrasia. Le tableau de la mosaïque de Philippopolis fait sans doute allusion aux fêtes nocturnes que le propriétaire envisageait d’organiser, et sans aucun doute organisait dans sa demeure.
La mosaïque de la Fête Nocturne de Philippopolis qui ornait probablement un triclinium rappelle ce qu’on rencontre dans d’autres salles à manger chez les riches propriétaires. La théorie du caractère allusif à la vie de l’aristocratie de l’époque romaine (et de ses nouveaux riches) dans la décoration interne des maisons et des villa a de plus en plus de partisans parmi les chercheurs. La mosaïque de Philippopolis ressemble à la décoration des salles à manger qui évoquent la fête, les festins, la boisson, la bonne nourriture, la musique et la danse, tout les ingrédients d’un banquet réussi.

The chapter inquires whether allegory—redefined in my previous work
in phenomenological terms, as a structure which supports the appearance
of two things in the same space at the same time—provides a
method and a mode for reading the Dreaming of the Aboriginal Peoples
of Australia without appropriating it into Western modes of knowledge.
The project strives to respect the difference of Aboriginal ontology
as expressed in the publicly shared aspects of the Dreaming, and
in the literary presentations of it in works like Kim Scott’s Benang:
From the Heart and That Deadman Dance. Rather than treating the
Aboriginal way of being as “other,” this paper approaches it as simply
different, and will use the Western theories of difference not only to
consider the workings of the Dreaming through a Western theoretical
model but simultaneously to question the premises of that Western
model and remain, as much as possible, in the space of difference that
forms the threshold between Euro-American and Aboriginal ways of
experiencing the world.

A long-standing tradition of the theories of the passions of the soul informed medieval thinking about man’s emotions in general, and about love, the most important and powerful passion, in particular. St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiæ contains the most thorough study of passions in the Middle Ages. Considering the pedagogical influence of the Dominican order, and the resurgence of Thomism in fifteenth-century Castile, it is likely that Aquinas’s treatise influenced the representation of passions in Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de amor. In contrast to the postromantic celebration of love’s power, under the influence of philosophical naturalism that pervades the Aristotelian-Thomistic system of thought, love between a man and a woman was regarded as a deplorable expression of sensitive appetite guided by a desire for sexual intercourse. A comparative reading of Cárcel de amor and of Aquinas’s treatise reveals that San Pedro portrays characters who are subjected to amorous passions. Furthermore, San Pedro turns Dante’s synecdoche of Gallehault, the knight who mediated the disastrous love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, into a protracted and comical allegory of El Auctor’s inept mediation between Leriano and Laureola. San Pedro thus critiques the role of amorous fiction and of its authors in a culture that ascribes to literature a primarily didactic and mimetic function. He implicitly illustrates the Platonic idea about the perils of poetry due to the poets’ reckless representation and instigation of passions.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the complex development of the key as an unusual attribute of Lucina in Renaissance iconography, which appears to have been influenced by several semantic fields and emerged as a visible phenomenon of a deeper cultural dynamic. The works of artists such as Jacopo Zucchi, Lorenzo Lotto, and Raphael, together with the mythographic treatises of antiquarian scholars such as Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, Giovanni Pierio Valeriano, Vincenzo Cartari and Baccio Baldini, will be examined for the purpose of retracing all aspects of this evolutionary path. What emerges is new material concerning the different perspectives on Lucina during the sixteenth century, including new symbolic readings derived from the philological and textual interpretations that influenced the iconographic building method of that time.

Since the seminal work of Charles Singleton in the 1950s, the subject of allegory has been at the controversial heart of Dante scholarship. The debate focuses on the Commedia and in particular on the question of whether Dante is there writing an allegory “of theologians,” that is, an imitation of the fourfold model of Scriptural signification, or not. Around this central question several others are arrayed. Is the “letter” of the “holy poem” to be taken as “true” like that of the Bible or as a “beautiful lie”? If the Commedia is modeled on the Bible, does it include all or some of the three allegorical senses (allegorical or Christological; moral or tropological; anagogical or eschatological) attributed to Scripture in the exegetical tradition? Is it more appropriate to talk about the Commedia in terms of allegory per se or rather in those of the typological ordering of God's two books - the Bible and creation as a whole - sub specie aeternitatis , which provides the ontological and epistemological basis out of which the fourfold scheme is developed? Most of what has been written - far more than can be summarized here - has been aimed at determining the Commedia's intrinsic mode of signification and has consistently begged the question of how Dante might have come to displace into the domain of lay vernacular poetry an exegetical practice designed for exclusive application to Holy Scripture, and what might the wider significance of such an extraordinary displacement have been.

The Allegory (ἀλληγορία) was a literary, philosophical and aesthetic resource widely used by Western cultural tradition. It enriched the mental and artistic universe to the point of becoming a poetic topos (τόπος). Artistic. The objective of this work is to discuss the importance of allegory for Literature and Art. From the Ancient World to the Baroque.

Como parte do conjunto de filmes produzidos em língua portuguesa, feitos em regime de coprodução, e considerando a influência dos movimentos diásporicos na constituição das narrativas audiovisuais contemporâneas, esta comunicação propõe um olhar sobre a obra do cineasta guineense Flora Gomes na perspectiva de compreender como a utilização de recursos alegóricos na narrativa fílmica indica novas possibilidades de circulação e análise das obras.

International conference exploring and promoting the notion of allegory studies as an emergent nexus of interdisciplinary scholarship, held at the University of Warwick on 7 November 2013, with delegates from a number of universities in the UK, as well as Israel, Switzerland, the US. Further information at the conference website: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/emforum/events/allegory.

Transcript of my Blogger-post of September 8, 2014 "Déjà-vu (3): repetitions of TIZIANO's 'Allegory of marriage'", with 7 additional Comments till April 20, 2017, including an interactive timeline presentation and mapping 'myHistro' of 18 artists from the 15th to the 19th century, who copied this painting dated ca. 1533, 121 x 107 cm, Musée du Louvre in Paris, inventory n°754.
See also the corresponding Slide Presentation in Academia.edu
https://www.academia.edu/8234062/TIZIANOs_Allegory_of_marriage_1533_and_its_many_repetitions_till_the_19th_century

Derek Jarman was a multifaceted artist whose intermedial versatility reinforces a strong authorial discourse. He constructs an immersive allegorical world of hybrid art where different layers of cinematic, theatrical and painterly materials come together to convey a lyrical form and express a powerful ideological message. In Caravaggio (1986) and Edward II (1991), concomitant perspectives. In Caravaggio, through the use of tableaux of abstract meaning and by focusing on the detailing of the models' poses, Jarman re-enacts the allegorical spirit of Caravaggio's paintings through entirely cinematic resources. Edward II was a king, and as a statesman he the theatrical basis of Christopher Marlowe's Elizabethan play bringing it up to date in a successfully abstract approach to the musical stage. In this of existential phenomenology as advocated by Vivian Sobchack and Laura U. Marks, in order to address the relationship between the corporeality of a means to convey intradiegetically the sense-ability at play in the cinematic touching the spectator in a supplementary fashion. The two corporealities favour an inter-artistic immersion achieved through coenaesthesia.

The article explores the concept of 'hiraeth' on the basis of Fflur Dafydd's novel 'Atyniad'. 'Hiraeth' is the Welsh term signifying the feeling of nostalgia and the sense of loss and the article argues that the representation of the concept in Dafydd's novel has the form of an allegory. In "New Perspectives in Celtic Studies", Eds. Aleksander, Bednarski, Paweł Tomasz, Czerniak, Maciej, Czerniakowski, Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Thesis written to satisfy the requirements for the Master of Arts degree at the Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto (2012).

This piece uses "tripping," broadly conceived, as a conceptual metaphor for methodology and research processes within the humanities and social sciences. It uses drug theory and theories of qualitative methods to read Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas as an allegory of methodological questions and processes. As such, it is also an original product of applied narrative methods, and an argument for the use of creative writing approaches in the humanities.

Il mio intento è di esaminare, seguendo un percorso cronologico, i cambiamenti sostanziali nell’allegoria dell’orso dai secoli passati ad oggi, passando attraverso le tradizioni popolari e le trasformazioni indotte dal Roman de Renart e dalla sua diffusione.

In an often quoted but imperfectly understood passage in John Milton’s Paradise Regain’d, Satan professes to doubt whether the kingdom portended for Christ is ‘Real or Allegoric’. This article takes this passage, the only instance of the term allegory in the whole of Milton’s poetry, as a starting point for a reconsideration of Milton’s attitude towards the complex and controversial theological, political, and aesthetic issues raised by this term in early modern Protestant culture. Specifically, the article examines the usage of the term in Milton’s early prose writings and its abandonment from 1645 onwards; Milton’s familiarity with the disputes surrounding Galatians 4:24, a biblical verse of central importance in early modern treatments of the subject; and an overlooked tradition in Protestant commentary according to which allegorical reading was introduced into Christianity by Satan, in order to obscure the true meaning of scripture. Having firmly aligned Milton with the anti-allegorical tendency in Protestant thought, the discussion returns to Paradise Regain’d to demonstrate how this anti-allegorism informs a number of key passages in the poem, and briefly discusses its broader implications for the ongoing debates about the representational mode of Milton’s biblical epics.

  ---  This article was awarded the Review of English Studies Essay Prize for 2014, and is freely accessible at the following link:  http://res.oxfordjournals.org/content/66/275/403.full.pdf+html

RETHINKING ALLEGORY
The Warburg Institute
30 October 2015

http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/colloquia-2015-16/rethinking-allegory

Over the past several decades allegory has emerged as a prominent subject across a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Allegory is all that traditional scholarship has said it is: a rhetorical figure, a mode of literary and artistic representation, a religious as well as secular hermeneutic practice. It is, however, much more than that: a protean cultural force which has left a deep imprint on the Western tradition, and whose full impact is only beginning to come to light. Hosted by the Warburg Institute, one of the key sites for the study of the allegorical tradition, this colloquium aims to showcase some of the most exciting research in contemporary allegory studies and further the vibrant current debate on the subject.

Keynote: Brenda Machosky (University of Hawai'i - West O'ahu). Speakers: Andreas Beyer (University of Basel), Matthias Bruhn (Humboldt University, Berlin), Jason Crawford (Union University), Anthony Ossa-Richardson (Queen Mary, University of London), Kristen Poole (University of Delaware), Michael Silk (King's College London).

Organisers: Karen Lang and Peter Mack (University of Warwick), and Vladimir Brljak (University of Cambridge).

A trama escritural desta tese tece-se ao redor das elaborações em torno da
abordagem ecfrasal, assim como ela se apresenta em Johann Joachim
Winckelmann. O historiador da arte alemão assume em seus textos um olhar melancólico diante dos fragmentos e ruínas do passado da Antiguidade e se fixa nestes rastros e vestígios no intuito de aceder ao objeto irremediavelmente perdido da Arte Antiga. A História da Arte é marcada assim pela morbidez deum desejo melancólico à procura de uma “verdade” estética. Convocam-se, assim, à cena desta proposição teórica, a contribuição da teoria lacaniana e da filosofia de Jacques Derrida. Em Lacan, enlaçam-se Sujeito e Linguagem, com implicações diretas sobre o estatuto da verdade para o discurso histórico.Derrida, por sua vez, ao problematizar o lugar e as implicações da escritura,ocupará um lugar determinante naquilo que a escrita encerra como espaço de uma textualidade em que se fabrica o tecido mesmo do passado.
Nesta tese, propomos uma releitura da escritura de Winckelmann à luz de uma revisão da Alegoria, a partir de suas potências figurativas para a constituiçãodo saber em torno dos objetos, fenômenos e manifestações da arte. Em nosso retorno ao texto winckelmanniano, sugerimos que já nas páginas de Reflexões sobre a Arte Antiga e História da Arte Antiga entre os Gregos subsista a ideia de uma História da Arte como potência propositora de mundos, em última instância, ficcionais, que triunfa.
Em nossa aposta investigativa, interessa-nos como este modelo alegórico se inscreve no discurso ao redor da Arte, pois a verdade histórica se tece e searticula como um exercício de fictio e poiesis.

L’obiettivo  del  presente  contributo  è  di  interpretare  un  corpus  di  sermoni  pronunciati  da Savonarola  a  Firenze  a  più  riprese,  principalmente  nel  periodo  tra  il 1495  e  il 1497.  Il  filo conduttore è rappresentato dalle metafore animalistiche dietro le quali il frate cela i principali attori  della  contemporanea  ribalta  politica  fiorentina:  dai  «cani  stizziti»  come  simbolo  della fazione  degli  «arrabbiati»  (i  cattivi  cittadini,  vale  a  dire  gli  ottimati  avversi  all’oligarchia medicea)  alla  stessa  cittadinanza  fiorentina  figurata  come  preda  in  guisa  di  lepre  (secondo sermone del ciclo sui Salmi, 11 gennaio 1495), sino alla metafora della Chiesa come leonessa che accudisce  i  propri  cuccioli  (nei  quali  sono  adombrati  preti  e  prelati  corrotti),  tra  i  quali  per istigazione  dei  cattivi  cittadini  potrebbe  essere  elevato  a  tiranno  un  «leoncello  leone» (sermone XL del ciclo su Ezechiele, 12 marzo 1497). La parte finale del contributo è dedicata a un’analisi  iconografica  della  Crocifissione  mistica  di  Botticelli  (Cambridge,  Mass.,  Fogg  Art Museum), dipinta  tra il 1498  e  il 1500  o  subito  dopo,  sotto la viva  influenza  della predicazione savonaroliana,  con  speciale  riguardo  alla  presenza  di  figure  animali:  il  piccolo  leone  fustigato dall’angelo e il canide (un cane rabbioso o un lupo rapace) che sguscia dal manto della Maddalena penitente.

Resumo: Embora o discurso alegórico já tenha sido fruto de muitas discussões teóricas no âmbito de estudos literários e culturais, ainda são poucos os estudos que buscam compreender seu funcionamento em produções audiovisuais. Partindo do pressuposto de que a alegoria, para além de um recurso de figuração da linguagem, tem a capacidade de estruturar a narrativa fílmica, esse artigo com base na análise do filme Republica di mininus (2012), do cineasta bissau-guineense Flora Gomes, propõe compreender a alegoria para além da inserção casual ao longo do filme, compreender o seu potencial enquanto elemento estruturante da narrativa fílmica.
Palavras-chave: Cinemas africanos; Análise; Alegoria.

Most studies of the history of interpretation of Song of Songs focus on its interpretation from late antiquity to modernity. In My Perfect One, Jonathan Kaplan examines earlier rabbinic interpretation of this work by investigating an under appreciated collection of works of rabbinic literature from the first few centuries of the Common Era, known as the tannaitic midrashim. In a departure from earlier scholarship that too quickly classified rabbinic interpretation of Song of Songs as allegorical, Kaplan advocates a more nuanced understanding of the approach of the early sages, who read Song of Songs employing typological interpretation in order to correlate Scripture with exemplary events in Israel's history. Throughout the book Kaplan explores ways in which this portrayal helped shape a model vision of rabbinic piety as well as an idealized portrayal of their beloved, God, in the wake of the destruction, dislocation, and loss the Jewish community experienced in the first two centuries of the Common Era. The archetypal language of Song of Songs provided, as Kaplan argues, a textual landscape in which to imagine an idyllic construction of Israel's relationship to her beloved, marked by mutual devotion and fidelity. Through this approach to Song of Songs, the Tannaim helped lay the foundations for later Jewish thought of a robust theology of intimacy in God's relationship with the Jewish people.

Derek Jarman was a multifaceted artist whose intermedial versatility reinforces a strong authorial discourse. He constructs an immersive allegorical world of hybrid art where different layers of cinematic, theatrical and painterly materials come together to convey a lyrical form and express a powerful ideological message. In Caravaggio (1986) and Edward II (1991), Jarman approaches two European historical figures from two different but concomitant perspectives. In Caravaggio, through the use of tableaux of abstract meaning and by focusing on the detailing of the models’ poses, Jarman re-enacts the allegorical spirit of Caravaggio’s paintings through entirely cinematic resources. Edward II was a king, and as a statesman he possessed a certain dose of showmanship. In this film Jarman reconstructs the theatrical basis of Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan play bringing it up to date in a successfully abstract approach to the musical stage. In this article, I intend to conjoin the practi...

Conférence proposée dans le cadre des "Paroles d'Art" organisées par l'association étudiante d'Histoire de l'art de l'université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès.

Quatre thématiques évoquées :

- Des femmes pour incarner des lieux : secourues par un roi protecteur

- Des femmes pour couronner les rois, l'importance des Victoires & Renommées

- Des femmes pour incarner les vertus des souverains avec le cas particulier de la Justice

- Les métaphores du Mal : femmes monstrueuses combattues par les souverains

L'articolo è parte di una breve sezione dedicata dalla rivista a un omaggio collettivo allo studioso savonaroliano Donald Weinstein, a seguito della sua scomparsa.

[seguendo il link è possibile raggiungere il sito LIBRAweb dell'Editore Fabrizio Serra, dove è consentito effettuare il download dell'articolo]

http://www.libraweb.net/articoli3.php?chiave=201604101&rivista=41&articolo=201604101019

Brown's The Persistence of Allegory: Drama and Neoclassicism from Shakespeare to Wagner establishes how a consistent engagement with allegorical forms unites European drama across national and historical boundaries as well as between different arts, and how it animates neoclassicist efforts to regenerate itself in classical antiquity. With seven main chapters each focusing on a different classical revival, from the paintings of Claude Lorrain through the death of the Gesamtkunstwerk in Wagner, Brown establishes that neoclassicism encompasses comedy, clowning, the imitation of Greek tragedy, Senecanism, perspectivist and spectacular approaches to stage sets, court masque and opera; she explains why extraordinary innovations in psychological realism – typically accorded priority in studies of neoclassicism – remain bound up with concurrent allegorical modalities. Brown makes the case that we should consider neoclassicism a flexible, synthetic form, or a " wave " of interrelated movements that by turns extend and impede each other. While the movements of the wave vary, they do so recurrently and distinctively: for in their shifting appropriation of allegory, they draw the tide of secularization and its consequences, including the composition of modern subjectivity. In her extensive coordination of works, or what she, following Goethe, calls their morphological analysis, Brown orients her study with conscientious scholarly scrutiny. Indeed, in the current context of escalating partition between and professionalization of academic disciplines, this is an almost unthinkable book; those of us who still hold the idea of a necessary connection between thorough scholarly labor and comprehensive structural interpretation must fear that it will be among the last of its kind. In order to make the rigorous argument, rather than the sweeping claim, for the subterranean unity of European drama, Brown works with texts from a remarkable number of languages; she acknowledges in the Preface that she learned several of them to write this book. Before concluding that dramatic forms retain a common set of concerns, Brown investigates competing and incompatible practices within neoclassicism from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, offering incisive accounts of Neoaristotelianism, Renaissance Neoplatonism, and indigenous morality plays. Thus she can make plain both how they combine and how they continue to compete, as in Shakespeare and Italian pastoral, to present an approach that comes to be integral for aesthetic and epistemological modernity. In so doing, Brown undercuts earlier explanations of domestic tragedy that rest upon the assumption of its simplistically mimetic, Aristotelian nature. Likewise, Brown's readings ultimately make clear

Upper image: Segments from Fig. 4/4 to the "orartie van de Professor L. Wolsogen over syndroom en de nytlegging van de felue gadaen …" (1674) by an anonymous artist. The animals are based on illustrations by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder to Aesop's Fables. (Print now is located at British Museum, BM Satires 1047, reg.no.: 1868,0808.3286).  Lower image: Segments from an illustration by Henry Holiday (woodcut by Joseph Swain) to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876). --- Holiday depicted "Care" and "Hope" as allegorical (female) figures. This paper shows their relation to the allegories "Religion" and "Liberty".

Update 2015-04-23: The date is 2015-01-03, not 2014-01-03