Healing Touch: Clothed Images of the Virgin in Early Modern Portugal

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-78
Author(s):  
Diana Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Healing Touch ◽  
Devotional Art ◽  
Healing Power ◽  
The Many ◽  
Santa Maria

Over the last decades there was a growing interest in religious materiality, miraculous images, votive practices, and how the faithful engaged with devotional art, as well as a renewed impetus to discuss the long-recognized association between sculpture and touch, after the predominance of the visuality approach. Additionally, the neglected phenomenon of clothing statues has also been increasingly explored. Based on the reading of Santuario Mariano (1707–1723), written by Friar Agostinho de Santa Maria (1642–1728), this paper will closely examine those topics. Besides producing a monumental catalogue of Marian shrines and pilgrimage sites, this source offers a unique insight into the religious experience and the reciprocal relationship between image and devotee in Early Modern Portugal, and is a particularly rich source when describing the believers’ pursuit of physical contact with sculptures. This yearning for proximity is partly explained by the belief in the healing power of Marian sculptures, which in turn seemed to be conveniently transferred to a myriad of objects. When contact with the images themselves was not possible, devotees sought out their clothes, crowns, rosary beads, metric relics, and so forth. Items of clothing such as mantles and veils were particularly used and so it seems obvious they were not mere adornments or donations, but also mediums and extensions of the sculptures’ presence and power. By focusing on the thaumaturgic role of the statues’ clothes and jewels, I will argue how the practice of dressing sculptures was due to much more than stylistic desires or processional needs and draw attention to the many ways believers engaged with religious art in Early Modern Portugal.

scholarly journals Handling the Theme of Hands in early Modern Cross-over Contexts

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Anne Sophie Haar Refskou ◽  
Laura Søvsø Thomasen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Human Hand ◽  
Complex Phenomenon ◽  
Comparative Analyses ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Textual Culture ◽  
The Many ◽  
Frequent Presence

The human hand is a complex phenomenon within the contexts of early modern visual and textual culture. Its frequent presence in early modern texts and illustrations - as well as the many different types of described and depicted hands - raises a number of questions as to its functions and significances. In this article, we examine the role of the hand and two of its familiar functions –pointing and touching – against diverse and diverging understandings of human perception and cognition in the period focussing particularly on relations between bodies and minds. Through comparative analyses of cross-over examples from both medicine, manuals and drama – primarily John Bulwer’sChirologia and Chironomia, William Harvey’s de Motu Cordis and extracts from Shakespeare’s plays – we explore the questions implied by hands and their contributions to the knowledge probed and proposed by these texts and illustrations.

scholarly journals THE INNER LIVES OF EARLY MODERN TRAVEL

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK R. F. WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Grand Tour ◽  
Cultural Engagement ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Many ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

AbstractThis article assesses the role of memory, interiority, and intergenerational relations in the framing of early modern experiences and narratives of travel. It adopts as its focus three generations of the Clerk family of Penicuik, Scotland, whose travels through Europe from the mid-seventeenth century onward proved formative in the creation of varied ‘cosmopolitan’ stances within the family. While such widely studied practices as the ‘Grand Tour’ have drawn on discourses of encounter and cultural engagement within the broader narratives of the ‘long’ eighteenth century, this article reveals a family made deeply anxious by the consequences of travel, both during and after the act. Using diaries, manuscript correspondence, memoirs, and material objects, this article reveals the many ways in which travel was fashioned before, during, and long after it was undertaken. By shifting focus away from the act of travel itself and towards its subsequent afterlives, it explores the ways in which these individuals internalized what they experienced in the course of travel, how they reconciled it with the familiar, quotidian world to which they returned, and how the ‘cosmopolitan’ worldviews they brought home were made to inform the generations that followed.

Sex in an Old Regime City

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Hardwick
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Double Standard ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Double Standard ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Reproductive Consequences

Based on extensive archival research, the extraordinary stories of ordinary people’s lives in this book explore many facets of young people’s intimacy from meeting to courtship to the many occasions when untimely pregnancies necessitated a range of strategies. These might include marriage but could also be efforts to induce abortions, arrangements for out-of-wedlock delivery, charging the father with custody, leaving the baby with a foundling hospital, or infanticide. Clergy, lawyers, social welfare officials, employers, midwives, wet-nurses, neighbors, family, and friends supported young women and held young men responsible for the reproductive consequences of their sexual activity. These practices of intimacy reframe our understanding of multiple aspects of the Old Regime. Young people’s intimate experiences challenge the belief that disciplining female sexuality was a critical early modern goal of state formation and religious reformation. They suggest rethinking the history of a sexual double standard in local and long contexts, the history of marriage, and the role of law in the politics of communities and institutions. The lives of young people also reshape many more specific debates, for instance, about the history of emotions, infanticide, attitudes to illegitimacy, pre-modern workplaces, and the body. The book reveals the important role of the young people’s working communities, where the norm was local management of intimacy with a heavy emphasis on pastoral care and pragmatic acceptance of the inevitability of out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

The Cultural Geography of St Paul’s Precinct

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roze Hentschell
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Study ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Business Practices ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Many ◽  
Geographical Space

This chapter is a cultural study of St Paul’s Cathedral precinct in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It discusses the physical properties of Paul’s, including the nave, Paul’s Cross pulpit, the bookshops in the churchyard, and the many and varied uses and occupations of the precinct and church, including sermons, secular business practices, and criminal activity. While recent scholarship has attended to various discreet spaces in and around the cathedral, this chapter discusses the religious and secular space and activities as mutually constitutive rather than distinct. Influenced by studies of cultural geography, the chapter investigates the role of the cathedral precinct in constructing the identity of the early modern Londoner through a discussion of the effects that geographical space has on human behaviour.

Health Hazards

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-133
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Currie
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Good Health ◽  
The Body ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Visual Evidence ◽  
Ideal Body ◽  
The Many ◽  
Medical Treatises

Studies of early modern dress frequently focus on its connection with status and identity, overlooking clothing’s primary function, namely to protect the body and promote good health. The daily processes of dressing and undressing carried numerous considerations: for example, were vital areas of the body sufficiently covered, in the correct fabrics and colours, in order to maintain an ideal body temperature? The health benefits of clothing were countered by the many dangers it carried, such as toxic dyes, garments that were either too tight or voluminous, or harboured dirt and diseases that could infect the body. This article draws on medical treatises and health manuals printed and read in Italy and England, as well as personal correspondence and diaries, contextualised with visual evidence of the styles described. It builds on the current, wider interest in preventative medicine, humoral theory, health and the body in the early modern period by focusing in depth on the role of clothing within these debates.

On Future Directions in Pathology

1982 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 274-277
Author(s):  
Benjamin F. Trump ◽  
Irene K. Berezesky ◽  
Raymond T. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Transmission Electron Microscopy ◽  
Clinical Pathology ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Diagnostic Pathology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Transmission Electron ◽  
Organ Systems ◽  
The Many

The role of electron microscopy and associated techniques is assured in diagnostic pathology. At the present time, most of the progress has been made on tissues examined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and correlated with light microscopy (LM) and by cytochemistry using both plastic and paraffin-embedded materials. As mentioned elsewhere in this symposium, this has revolutionized many fields of pathology including diagnostic, anatomic and clinical pathology. It began with the kidney; however, it has now been extended to most other organ systems and to tumor diagnosis in general. The results of the past few years tend to indicate the future directions and needs of this expanding field. Now, in addition to routine EM, pathologists have access to the many newly developed methods and instruments mentioned below which should aid considerably not only in diagnostic pathology but in investigative pathology as well.

The future role of the psychiatrist in Europe – a UEMS perspective

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (01) ◽  
pp. 35-42
Author(s):  
M. Hermans
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Future Role ◽  
Personal Opinion ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many

SummaryThe author presents his personal opinion inviting to discussion on the possible future role of psychiatrists. His view is based upon the many contacts with psychiatrists all over Europe, academicians and everyday professionals, as well as the familiarity with the literature. The list of papers referred to is based upon (1) the general interest concerning the subject when representing ideas also worded elsewhere, (2) the accessibility to psychiatrists and mental health professionals in Germany, (3) being costless downloadable for non-subscribers and (4) for some geographic aspects (e.g. Belgium, Spain, Sweden) and the latest scientific issues, addressing some authors directly.

“All in a Garden Green”: Shakespeare's Staging of Garden Imagery

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-252
Author(s):  
Deborah Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Audience Interaction ◽  
The Many ◽  
Green World

This essay draws attention to the surprising lack of scholarship on the staging of garden scenes in Shakespeare's oeuvre. In particular, it explores how garden scenes promote collaborative acts of audience agency and present new renditions of the familiar early modern contrast between the public and the private. Too often the mention of Shakespeare's gardens calls to mind literal rather than literary interpretations: the work of garden enthusiasts like Henry Ellacombe, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, and Caroline Spurgeon, who present their copious gatherings of plant and flower references as proof that Shakespeare was a garden lover, or the many “Shakespeare Gardens” around the world, bringing to life such lists of plant references. This essay instead seeks to locate Shakespeare's garden imagery within a literary tradition more complex than these literalizations of Shakespeare's “flowers” would suggest. To stage a garden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries signified much more than a personal affinity for the green world; it served as a way of engaging time-honored literary comparisons between poetic forms, methods of audience interaction, and types of media. Through its metaphoric evocation of the commonplace tradition, in which flowers double as textual cuttings to be picked, revised, judged, and displayed, the staged garden offered a way to dramatize the tensions produced by creative practices involving collaborative composition and audience agency.

John Cranko's Antigone (1959): A Ballet Lost and Found

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Henrietta Bannerman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jean Racine ◽  
World War ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Detailed Consideration ◽  
Lost And Found ◽  
The Many ◽  
Tragic Drama ◽  
The Relationship

John Cranko's dramatic and theatrically powerful Antigone (1959) disappeared from the ballet repertory in 1966 and this essay calls for a reappraisal and restaging of the work for 21st century audiences. Created in a post-World War II environment, and in the wake of appearances in London by the Martha Graham Company and Jerome Robbins’ Ballets USA, I point to American influences in Cranko's choreography. However, the discussion of the Greek-themed Antigone involves detailed consideration of the relationship between the ballet and the ancient dramas which inspired it, especially as the programme notes accompanying performances emphasised its Sophoclean source but failed to recognise that Cranko mainly based his ballet on an early play by Jean Racine. As Antigone derives from tragic drama, the essay investigates catharsis, one of the many principles that Aristotle delineated in the Poetics. This well-known effect is produced by Greek tragedies but the critics of the era complained about its lack in Cranko's ballet – views which I challenge. There is also an investigation of the role of Antigone, both in the play and in the ballet, and since Cranko created the role for Svetlana Beriosova, I reflect on memories of Beriosova's interpretation supported by more recent viewings of Edmée Wood's 1959 film.

The Many Voices of Lydia Davis

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Evans
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Marcel Proust ◽  
Gustave Flaubert ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Michel Leiris ◽  
The Many

The Many Voices of Lydia Davis shows how translation, rewriting and intertextuality are central to the work of Lydia Davis, a major American writer, translator and essayist. Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2013, Davis writes innovative short stories that question the boundaries of the genre. She is also an important translator of French writers such as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert. Translation and writing go hand-in-hand in Davis’s work. Through a series of readings of Davis’s major translations and her own writing, this book investigates how Davis’s translations and stories relate to each other, finding that they are inextricably interlinked. It explores how Davis uses translation - either as a compositional tool or a plot device - and other instances of rewriting in her stories, demonstrating that translation is central for understanding her prose. Understanding how Davis’s work complicates divisions between translating and other forms of writing highlights the role of translation in literary production, questioning the received perception that translation is less creative than other forms of writing.

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