scholarly journals Peter Howson and the Language of Salvation

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 76-99
Author(s):  
Caleb Froehlich
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Conversion Experience ◽  
Religious Paintings ◽  
The Grotesque

Abstract Since his conversion to Christianity in 2001, Peter Howson’s religious paintings have generally been met with critical incomprehension. A case in point was his 2012 exhibition Redemption, where reviewers suggested an irreconcilable incongruity between its grotesque imagery and redemption, the exhibition’s title. In response to this critical bewilderment, the present article argues for the appropriateness of the grotesque in Howson’s depictions of salvation by examining the significance of his conversion experience and providing a more sophisticated and developed analysis of the grotesque as his visual language. More specifically, it utilizes insights from an analysis of the content and practice of the artist’s belief system and a new taxonomy of the grotesque in a close reading of the Hades cycle, featured in Howson’s Redemption exhibition, in order to show how the artist communicates salvation through the grotesque. It is hoped that this article may serve as useful groundwork for other scholars engaging with Howson’s extraordinary religious art.

„Raps“

POETICA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 282-313
Author(s):  
Robert Stockhammer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
Cultivated Plant ◽  
Materiality Of Language

Abstract The recent controversy about the possibility of defining a new geological era called ‘Anthropocene’ has far-ranging consequences. The new notion forces us to rethink the dichotomy between the entities formerly referred to as men and nature and to conceive of their relation as an interrelation. The relevance of these considerations for literary studies is not limited to the anthropocene as a subject matter of literature, or to the possible use of literature as a means of enhancing the reader’s awareness of climate change. Rather, what is at stake is the relation of language to the new interrelation between man and nature, including the poetical and metalinguistic functions that emphasize the materiality of language. The present article explores the relation between the materiality of language and the materiality of things by way of a close reading of a single poem written by Marcel Beyer. Devoted to the cultivated plant rape, the literary traditions which this poem invokes reach beyond nature lyrics into georgic. An excursus recalls this genre of agriculture poetry and distinguishes it from pastoral, especially with regard to its use of language.

scholarly journals "La ventana indiscreta" de Alfred Hitchcock como Cineromanzo. La adaptación como transmedialización

2017 ◽  
pp. 110-124
Author(s):  
Jan Baetens ◽  
Domingo Sánchez-Mesa
Keyword(s):  
Women's Magazines ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Film Adaptations ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Creative Industry ◽  
Rear Window ◽  
Italian Film

A modo de expansión y aplicación del marco teórico y metodológico sobre inter- y transmedialidad propuesto por los autores en un artículo previo en Tropelías (n.27), este ensayo explora, tanto desde una perspectiva histórica como narratológica, el género del cine-foto-novela o cineromanzo, un tipo tremendamente popular, pero de escasa vida y ampliamente olvidado, de “cine narrado” o “cine impreso” de finales de los 50 y comienzos de los 60. Adoptando el lenguaje visual de la fotonovela así como las innumerables constricciones del contexto de publicación de revistas para mujeres de la época, el cineromanzo parece, a primera vista, un caso típico de lo que falla cuando las adaptaciones fílmicas se ven obligadaa a ser tan “fieles” como sea posible. En la práctica, sin embargo, el cine-foto-novela demostró ser capaz de generar diversas innovaciones. A través de un close-reading del cineromanzo de La ventana indiscreta, de Alfred Hitchcock (1954), se trata de demostrar esas capacidades creativas de una industria despreciada, al tiempo que se ilustra un proceso de transmedialización popular que precede al tiempo de las narrativas transmediales de última generación. Expanding on the theoretical and terminological framework on inter-  and transmediality proposed by the authors in a previous Tropelias contribution (n.27), this essay explores in a both historical and narratological perspective the genre of the film photo novel or cineromanzo, a widely popular, but short-lived nowadays largely forgotten case of “narrated cinema” or “cinema in print” of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Adopting the visual language of the photo novel as well as the countless constraints of the publication context of the women’s magazines of that day, the film photo novel seems at first sight a typical example of what goes wrong when film adaptations are obliged to be as “faithful” as possible. In practice however, the film photo novel proved capable of various innovations. This article offers a close-reading of the Italian film photo novel of Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), which demonstrates the creative possibilities of a despised creative industry while illustrating a popular transmedialization process which comes before the last generation transmedial narratives.

‘Till the whisper…You know…When you can't hear the words’: Narrated Memory and the ‘Fragmented’ Body in Samuel Beckett's Late Drama

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-155
Author(s):  
Michelle Charalambous
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
The Body ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Works

Samuel Beckett's interest in the experience of memory and the central role the body plays in the re-experience of the past has been most evident since the time he composed Krapp's Last Tape (1958), one of his most famous memory plays where the body can actually ‘touch’ its voice of memory. In this context, the present article provides a close reading of two of Beckett's late works for the theatre, namely That Time (1976) and Ohio Impromptu (1981), where the author once again addresses the relationship between the body and memory. Unlike his earlier drama, however, in That Time and Ohio Impromptu Beckett creates a ‘distance’, as it were, between memory and the body on stage by presenting the former as a narrative and by reducing the latter to an isolated part or by restricting it to limited movements. Looking closely at this ‘distance’ in these late plays, the article underlines that the body does not lose its authority or remains passive in its re-experience of the past. Rather – the article argues – the body essentially plays a determining role in these stripped-down forms as is shown in its ability to ‘interrupt’ and somatically punctuate the fixity of the narrative form memory takes in these works.

The Video Veronicas of Bill Viola

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Gold Surface ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Spiritual Experiences ◽  
History Of Interpretation ◽  
Religious Paintings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intrinsic Capacity

This chapter focuses on several video installations by Bill Viola. Starting in the late 1990s, Viola created a series of video installations that refer to or even closely restage well-known religious paintings. His work makes an interesting case as it seeks to define the conditions of spiritual experiences in the space of the contemporary museum or gallery. Memoria, 2000, or Unspoken: Silver and Gold,2001, are video portraits of emotional states of anguish and suffering projected on a veil or gold surface. Both installations cite the motif of Veronica’s Veil and engage with the complex history of interpretation of the acheiropoieticimage by combining it with a theatrical replay of states of extreme emotional tension. Viola borrows religious formats and iconic masterpieces of religious art in which the religious figures are substituted with anonymous contemporaries. The images function as an embedded frame, thus more as a device than as an image. Next to being a means of reflecting on the human condition, Viola’s engagement with religious art can be read as an attempt to comment on the history of the relatively young medium of video. Viola’s interest in spiritual motifs can be understood as a concern with the intrinsic capacity of the medium of video that can create overwhelming experiences and spiritual effects.

Meaning Generation

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-447
Author(s):  
Hongbing Yu
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Close Reading

Abstract Meaning generation reaches beyond the convenient code-based distinction between the encoding versus the decoding of information. What we need is a more comprehensive perspective that can encompass code-based communication and agency-oriented interpretation, both of which are treated as two subordinate mechanisms of meaning generation or signification. Based on a close reading of Saussure, there are only forms in signification; signs and signification are one. Given the complexity of its usage over the years, the term sign should be reevaluated. In its stead, the present article proposes using Sebeok and Danesi’s term model, although with some modifications, in order to shed a new light on meaning generation. The present article also demonstrates that cultural memory, or culture understood in the sense proposed by Lotman and Uspensky, coupled with emotions and human agency, act as three determinants of the process of meaning generation and make it a semi-autonomous process.

Film as Hierophany

Horizons ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-97
Author(s):  
Michael Bird
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Paul Tillich ◽  
Art Form ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Spiritual Reality ◽  
Andre Bazin

AbstractWithin the discussion of religious art there arises the fascinating question of how art can engender the awareness of those special (hierophanous) moments in culture where the sacred dimension breaks through into otherwise profane experience. This question requires a consideration of the peculiar relationship which a given art form has to its world (e.g., imitation vs. interpretation, recording vs. transformation).The special potency of cinematic art in its relationship to physical and spiritual reality, and to surface and depth, is the subject of the present article. While religion-and-film discussions frequently focus upon religious themes in film, the purpose of the following analysis is that of considering a theology of film, taking account of fundamental questions of cinematic theory. Among thinkers whose systems suggest possibilities for dialogue are theologian (Paul Tillich), a phenómenologist (Mikel Dufrenne) and a “school” of film theorists, including especially the followers of André Bazin.

Concealing the urban dominant: The socio-spatial dialectic and urban protest in Gonzalo Torrente Ballester’s La saga/fuga de J.B.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Michael L. Martínez, Jr
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Critical Pathway ◽  
Urban Protest ◽  
Gonzalo Torrente Ballester

In the post-Fordist world, cities emerged as increasingly contested terrains upon which capital and ordinary citizens struggled to control the urban process. Henri Lefebvre discerned this contestatory dynamic early on and in response developed the ‘urban’, a concept that cleaves a critical pathway towards a host of material, cultural and ideological processes that attach to capitalist modernity. Around the same time, the Spanish novelist Gonzalo Torrente Ballester was working to sketch the contours of his magnus opus La saga/fuga de J.B. Torrente would eventually come to recognize the roles that the urban process and the socio-spatial dialectic play in mediating contemporary urban life. The present article thus carries out first a close reading of Torrente’s personal journals to detail the ascendency of the ‘urban dominant’ as a central structuring component of his fictional writings. Thereafter, the critical analysis of La saga/fuga de J.B. will reveal that the ‘urban dominant’ stands concealed at the heart of this notoriously complicated novel. This urban cultural studies reading of La saga/fuga de J.B. will argue that, like Lefebvre, Torrente denounces capital’s static conception of space at the same time that he draws upon historical movements of urban protest for textual inspiration. And what will eventually emerge is that, beyond a master of the metafictional novel, Torrente was also an astute observer of everyday life in the urban context.

Roman Catholicism and Religious Pluralities in Portuguese (Iberian) History

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen Dix
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Catholic Tradition ◽  
Iberian History

AbstractThe religious history of Portugal is usually told as the history of a monolithic Catholic belief-system that excludes other religious options. Contrasting this tendency, there is also a political—anticlerical—construction that regards the Catholic tradition as the origin of economic, intellectual, or even ethical backwardness. Taken together, these presuppositions make it difficult to provide an impartial description of the religious situation in Portugal, both contemporary and historical. The present article intends to challenge those theological and political agendas and to replace their historical narratives with a more pluralistic picture of religion in Portugal.

SHNEI KETUVIM AND RABBINIC INTERMEDIATION

2002 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 386-410
Author(s):  
Azzan Yadin
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
General Rule ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Third ◽  
Presence Of God

AbstractThe present article argues that in the legal midrashim associated with the school of Rabbi Ishmael, the Mekhilta and the Sifre Numbers, "Two Verses Contradict and a Third Resolves" is not a general rule meant to resolve logical difficulties, as is generally assumed. The third verse resolution is employed in only two of the derashot that discuss biblical contradictions. A close reading of these derashot suggest that the issue at hand is not logical but theological and that in each case the third verse introduces a theological intermediary, denying the unmediated presence of God in the Tent of Meeting and at Sinai.

Situative Werkpolitik. Nietzsches Retraktationen der Geburt der Tragödie

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-172
Author(s):  
Axel Pichler
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Specific Work ◽  
Dynamic Character ◽  
Birth Of Tragedy ◽  
Ecce Homo ◽  
Subsequent Comparison

Abstract Nietzsche has repeatedly commented on his already published works, and thus continuously reinterpreted them, in order to shape their public reception and to foreground the communication of specific aspects of his works. As such, he followed a specific “work politics,” or Werkpolitik. The resulting retractions are not only revealing for the reconstruction of Nietzsche’s self-understanding, but also demonstrate both the development and the dynamic character of his thinking. In the present article, this is shown through a so-called “contrasting reading,” which contrasts a posthumous note about The Birth of Tragedy, the Attempt at a Self-Criticism from 1886, with the book itself and with the chapter in Ecce Homo that is dedicated to BT. Starting from a close reading of note Nachlass 1888, 17[3], which also takes into account the genesis of BT, I argue that Nietzsche’s self-commentaries combine his current philosophical reflections with work-political objectives. The subsequent comparison reconstructs the philosophical differences between the note and the texts mentioned above, thus demonstrating the dynamic character of Nietzsche’s philosophizing, which is often stated but seldom reconstructed on the basis of the actual texts.

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