The Biblical King David and His Artistic and Literary Afterlives

1998 ◽  
Vol 6 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 313-347
Author(s):  
Martin O'Kane
Keyword(s):  
Good Effect ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
King David ◽  
Cultural Approach ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe story of David has occupied the minds of biblical critics and fired the imagination of artists over the years. David's status as founder of a dynasty of kings is highlighted in Jewish and Christian traditions and his multifaceted personality has found expression in many and varied artistic forms. The central focus in this article is the way in which the figure of David has been represented in art and literature generally, but with specific reference to Allan Massie's King David, A Novel (1995) as an interpretation of the biblical story of David. By way of introduction some general comments are offered on the attraction and appeal of the biblical narrative for both artist and writer. Such comments help to situate the discussion of the David narrative within the wider cultural approach, an approach used to good effect in the works of Mieke Bal, Cheryl Exum and Larry Kreitzer.

scholarly journals Nielsen's 'Saul and David' as Tragedy: The Dialectics of Fate and Freedom in Drama and Music

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anee-Marie Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Voice Leading ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
Illegitimate Child ◽  
Harmonic Language ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Instrumental Works ◽  
The Way

In previous studies of Carl Nielsen’s opera Saul og David , Einar Christiansen’s libretto as been compared to the biblical story, and the similarities and differences duly noted. Recently, Pat McCreless suggested that, beyond the biblical narrative, Saul and David might constructively be viewed as a tragedy. Indeed, in this paper I will demonstrate that this perspective illuminates not just Christiansen’s take on King Saul’s demise, but also Nielsen’s methods of underscoring it musically. My title alludes to Paul Ricoeur’s The Symbolism of Evil in which the author states: ‘Without the dialectics of fate and freedom, there would be no tragedy.’ In other words, tragedy depends on the tension between forces beyond a person’s control, and actions taken of his own volition that may postpone, but ultimately cannot alter, his fate. I will argue that Nielsen was drawn to this subject for his fi rst opera in part because Saul’s struggle against the inevitable unfolds in much the way his music does: ‘fate’ is the tonal goal, and ‘freedom’ is the volatile harmonic language and serpentine voice-leading that thwart progress toward that ineluctable goal. This is perhaps why many reviewers have noted the opera’s symphonic nature; Nielsen’s instrumental works depend on these same techniques precisely because he infused all of his compositions with drama. He once admitted as much: ‘I have always felt strongly attracted by the ‘dramatic’ in art, for is not all art actually dramatic?’ It is also tempting to consider the dialectics of fate and freedom in regard to Nielsen’s life at the time that he was writing Saul og David . He was just over thirty when he began, yet already had one illegitimate child, a wife and three kids depending on him. Attempting to develop a career that requires imagination and inspiration, while burdened with the mundane necessities of making a living and raising a family, he may have identified intuitively with Saul’s sense of entrapment, and viewed him more sympathetically than the less complicated David. Saul’s humanness surely resonated with Nielsen’s own.

scholarly journals ‘God kan net doen wat God wel doen’: Petrus Abelardus se Megariaanse argument in Theologia ‘Scholarium’, Opera Theologica III

2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Beukes
Keyword(s):  
Specific Reference ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
Restricted Access ◽  
Master Argument ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
The Way

‘God can only do what God does do’: Peter Abelard’s Megarian argument in Theologia ‘Scholarium’, Opera Theologica III Peter Abelard’s contribution to a constellation of central themes in post-Carolingian medieval philosophy, namely on causation, necessity and contingency, with its discursive undertone of the relation between potentiality and actuality, is worked out in a rather informal way in one of his later works, Theologia ‘Scholarium’. Typical of the fusion of philosophical questions and theological premises in medieval philosophy, Abelard addresses the issue by asking whether God can only do what God does. Abelard argues that God can do or not do or omit doing only those things which God does do or does not do or omits doing and that God can do or can not do or omit doing those things only in the way or at the time at which God does and not at any other. Given Abelard’s fragmented and restricted access to the Aristotelian corpus regarding causality, how did he come to this Aristotelian-orientated conclusion? This article stresses the ancient quality of Abelard’s argument from another angle, reminiscent of the so-called Master Argument of the Megarians, with specific reference to the dialectical legacy of Diodorus Cronus, according to whom what can be is what is: what is, in turn, is what must be. Actuality, for the Megarians, exhausts potentiality. The path of actuality cannot be undermined or compromised by issues of potentiality. God’s actions are thus for both the Megarians and Abelard strictly determined and determining. God, in the end, can only do what God does. This article contributes to scholarship in medieval philosophy or theology by making this connection explicit and by thoroughly exploring the link between Abelard and his ancient predecessors.

Global Thefts of Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald West
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Family Resemblances ◽  
African Perspective ◽  
The Subject

This chapter takes its starting point from the African experience, across a range of African contexts, of Africa as both the subject and object of biblical narrative. When the Bible came to Africa, it came with well-established colonial metanarratives, constructed in part from biblical narratives. These colonial metanarratives were in turn partly reconstructed by the engagement with African others, from both a European and an African perspective along two diverging trajectories, with biblical narrative making a contribution to both. This chapter focuses on the capacity of biblical narrative, biblical story, to be both incorporated into “local” metanarratives and to shape these metanarratives. The contexts that are the focus of this chapter are largely “third world” contexts, across which there are significant family resemblances and important contextual differences.

scholarly journals Art (and) Criticism: Hart Crane and David Siqueiros

Text Matters ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 229-243
Author(s):  
Alicja Piechucka
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Hart Crane ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The article focuses on an analysis of Hart Crane’s essay “Note on the Paintings of David Siqueiros.” One of Crane’s few art-historical texts, the critical piece in question is first of all a tribute to the American poet’s friend, the Mexican painter David Siqueiros. The author of a portrait of Crane, Siqueiros is a major artist, one of the leading figures that marked the history of Mexican painting in the first half of the twentieth century. While it is interesting to delve into the way Crane approaches painting in general and Siqueiros’ oeuvre in particular, an analysis of the essay with which the present article is concerned is also worthwhile for another reason. Like many examples of art criticism—and literary criticism, for that matter—“Note on the Paintings of David Siqueiros” reveals a lot not only about the artist it revolves around, but also about its author, an artist in his own right. In a text written in the last year of his life, Hart Crane therefore voices concerns which have preoccupied him as a poet and which, more importantly, are central to modernist art and literature.

The Artist as Reader of the Bible. Visual Exegesis and the Adoration of the Magi

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 337-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin O'Kane
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
Image Viewer ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
Visual Exegesis ◽  
Textual Meaning

AbstractThe article explores the processes at work in a painting's engagement of its viewer in biblical subject matter. It accentuates the role of the artist as an active reader of the Bible and not merely an illustrator of biblical scenes, the dynamic that occurs in the text-reader process as paradigmatic for the image-viewer relationship and the important role of the developing tradition that felt the need to change or rewrite the biblical story. The processes are explored in terms of hermeneutics and exegesis: hermeneutics defined as 'the interweaving of language and life within the horizon of the text and within the horizons of traditions and the modern reader' (Gadamer) and exegesis as 'the dialectic between textual meaning and the reader's existence' (Berdini). Applied to the visualization of biblical subject matter, the approaches of Gadamer and Berdini illumine the key role given to the viewer in the visual hermeneutical process. The biblical story of the adoration of the Magi (Matt. 2: 1-12), the first public and universal seeing of Christ and one of the most frequently depicted themes in the entire history of biblical art, is used to illustrate their approach. The emphasis in the biblical narrative on revealing the Christ child to the reader parallels a key concept in Gadamer's hermeneutical aesthetics, namely Darstellung, the way in which a painting facilitates its subject matter in coming forth, in becoming an existential event in the life of the viewer.

Courtesan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity Chaplin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
General Sense ◽  
High Class ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
French Art ◽  
The Way

La Parisienne is frequently associated with prostitution, whether in the narrow sense of the streetwalker or courtesan or the general sense of the object and subject of consumption. Tracing her development in nineteenth-century art and literature, this chapter examines the way the Parisienne as courtesan is re-presented in cinema in Charles Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris (1923), Alain Cavalier’s La Chamade (1968), and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001). Cinematic courtesans have their prefigurations in both real life courtesans of the Second Empire, as well as in representations in French art, literature, and visual culture (Manet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Balzac, Zola, Dumas fils). Motifs associated with the Parisienne courtesan include the familiar tropes associated with Paris as a demimonde: desire, pleasure, and consumption. Alongside these tropes are the visual and narrative motifs on which the iconography of the Parisienne courtesan is based: fashion or style (often conceived to denote luxury and leisure), transformation (usually from provincial to high class), ambiguity (insofar as her class origins, motivations, and emotional allegiances are generally obscure), and the ménage à trois (films featuring Parisienne courtesans often involve the choice between an earnest but poor lover and a rich benefactor).

Funk & Wagnalls Practical Standard Dictionary of the English Language and Louis Zukofsky’s Thanks to the Dictionary

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
Craig Dworkin
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
The Political ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
King David

Chapter 1 focuses on Louis Zukofsky’s 1928 Thanks to the Dictionary, which retells the Biblical story of King David through language drawn primarily from a single dictionary page. Previous critics have been unable to locate the particular editions of the two dictionaries used by Zukofsky, but with those source texts read in tandem with Zukofsky’s poem, we are able to determine his method of composition and to dispel the notion that his work is the result of aleatory chance. Moreover, a close comparison of his source texts reveals telling deviations from the putative one-page rule, including an elided reference to Karl Marx, underscoring the political resonance of David in the era of Stalin, and a buried reference to Ricky Chambers which transforms the genre of Zukofsky’s poem into an elegy.

scholarly journals Picturesque Farming: The Sound of ‘Happy Britannia’ in Colonial Australia

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Denney
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Great Emphasis ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
The Way

This essay examines the way in which the British landscape tradition influenced perceptions of sound, noise and silence in colonial Australia, focusing on representations of rural soundscape in art and literature. It argues that poets and artists attempted to recreate an image of Australia as a new ‘Happy Britannia’, a noisy society engaged in virtuous agricultural labour. But this image was opposed to the prevailing taste for picturesque landscape, which accorded little value to human activity and placed great emphasis on silent, rural scenery. Accordingly, colonial perceptions of soundscape were ambivalent, as human-produced noise was heard as both a sign of the progress of civilisation and an obstacle to the spread of cultural refinement.

Some Points of Contact between the Biblical Deborah War Traditions and Some Greek Mythologies*

2011 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-334
Author(s):  
Daniel Vainstub
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
Military Commanders ◽  
Mountain Goat

AbstractThis paper examines three features common to the biblical narrative of Deborah and Cretan myths. In the biblical story two heroines, Deborah and Jael, bear names of fauna, bee and ibex (mountain goat), respectively. Deborah/bee’s prophetic gift enables her to determine the auspicious moment for a victorious battle. Jael/female ibex, gives milk in a special vessel to Sisera, who, fleeing for his life, ironically takes refuge in the tent of Jael, who kills him. In ancient Greece, “Melissa”, which means “bee”, is a common epithet for prophetesses, especially those who provide oracles to military commanders, as did the prophetess of Delphi. In Cretan versions, Melissa has a sister named Amaltheia, which means “mountain goat”. When a prominent fugitive, the deity Zeus, takes refuge in her cave, she likewise gives him milk in a special vessel. In both tales the word for the special vessel expresses plenty.

High Performance Ferrocement Laminate Strengthening Technology

2013 ◽  
Vol 779-780 ◽  
pp. 88-95
Author(s):  
Shou Ping Shang ◽  
Long Li
Keyword(s):  
High Performance ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Structural Member ◽  
Good Effect ◽  
Simple Construction ◽  
Construction Methods ◽  
Work Effect ◽  
The Way

High Performance Ferrocement Laminate (HPFL) is a new strengthening structure method which needs to imbed the shear dowel on the strengthened material in order to ensure the associated work effect of high performance ferrocement laminate and the original structural member. This paper introduces the measures and examples of high performance ferrocement laminate. The way has the characteristic of good effect, low cost and simple construction methods, and it is suitable for the vast areas which need resisting earthquake.

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