Russian aesthetics

Author(s):  
Victor Terras

Aesthetics as a branch of philosophy, or in the sense of an explicitly stated theory of art, appeared in Russia no earlier than the seventeenth century, under the direct influence of Western thought. It developed in connection with the adoption of European art forms. Russian contributions in terms of original styles in all forms of art, as well as of certain aesthetic notions which may be credited to Russia, came in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and must be understood in context with European art and aesthetic thought. Russian art, music and literature, as well as the aesthetic notions guiding them, get their Russianness from the political and social background, a major factor in literature, and from a carrying over of traits found in Russian folk art, folk music and folklore, as well as in religious texts, iconography, architecture and music, whose Orthodox version is sharply distinct from their equivalents in the Roman Catholic West.

1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Blom

‘I acknowledge this Doctrine is not commonly received by Protestants, who (I humbly conceive) might reject it chiefly in opposition to the See of Rome, wherein such a multitude of monsters do swim…’ This is how the Congregationalist divine, Robert Dingley (1619-1660) summarized the characteristic Protestant attitude to the Roman Catholic belief in guardian angels in the preface to The Deputation of Angels, or The Angel-Guardian (1654, Wing D 1496).


2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-168
Author(s):  
Kirsten Dickhaut

AbstractThe machine theatre in France achieves its peak in the second half of the seventeenth century. It is the construction of machines that permits the adequate representation of the third dimension on stage. This optical illusion is created by flying characters, as heroes, gods, or demons moving horizontally and vertically. The enumeration indicates that only characters possessing either ethically exemplary character traits or incorporating sin are allowed to fly. Therefore, the third dimension indicates bienséance – or its opposite. According to this, the following thesis is deduced: The machine theatre illustrates via aesthetic concerns characterising its third dimension an ethic foundation. Ethic and aesthetics determine each other in the context of both, decorum and in theatre practice. In order to prove this thesis three steps are taken. First of all, the machine theatre’s relationship to imitation and creation is explored. Second, the stage design, representing the aesthetic benefits of the machines in service of the third dimension, are explained. Finally, the concrete example of Pierre Corneille’s Andromède is analysed by pointing out the role of Pegasus and Perseus.


Medicines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Eric Scott Sills

Female age has been known to define reproductive outcome since antiquity; attempts to improve ovarian function may be considered against a sociocultural landscape that foreshadows current practice. Ancient writs heralded the unlikely event of an older woman conceiving as nothing less than miraculous. Always deeply personal and sometimes dynastically pivotal, the goal of achieving pregnancy often engaged elite healers or revered clerics for help. The sorrow of defeat became a potent motif of barrenness or miscarriage lamented in art, music, and literature. Less well known is that rejuvenation practices from the 1900s were not confined to gynecology, as older men also eagerly pursued methods to turn back their biological clock. This interest coalesced within the nascent field of endocrinology, then an emerging specialty. The modern era of molecular science is now offering proof-of-concept evidence to address the once intractable problem of low or absent ovarian reserve. Yet, ovarian rejuvenation by platelet-rich plasma (PRP) originates from a heritage shared with both hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and sex reassignment surgery. These therapeutic ancestors later developed into allied, but now distinct, clinical fields. Here, current iterations of intraovarian PRP are discussed with historical and cultural precursors centering on cell and tissue regenerative effects. Intraovarian PRP thus shows promise for women in menopause as an alternative to conventional HRT, and to those seeking pregnancy—either with advanced reproductive technologies or as unassisted conceptions.


Author(s):  
Nicholas Hardy

This chapter considers the confessional and institutional factors that shaped the development of biblical criticism in seventeenth-century Rome. It concentrates on the German convert and noted scholar of Greek manuscripts, Lucas Holstenius, and his efforts to encourage the study of the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. These efforts were variously helped and hindered by Holstenius’s patrons and the Roman ecclesiastical authorities, depending on the extent to which they suited their religio-political ambitions. The same ambitions also had a bearing on the genres, publication formats and other modes of dissemination which Roman scholars used for their research, driving them to adopt habits of anonymity, discretion and dissimulation which were out of keeping with the practices of other participants in the contemporary republic of letters, and which differentiated them from later generations of Catholic scholars who advanced their intellectual agenda more openly and aggressively.


Author(s):  
Paul Seaward

The lives, and political thought, of Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, and Thomas Hobbes, were closely interwoven. In many ways opposed, their views on the relationship between Church and State have often been seen as less far apart, with Clarendon sharing Hobbes’s Erastianism and concerns about clerical assertiveness in the 1660s. But Clarendon’s writings on Church-State relations during the 1670s provide little evidence of concern about clerical involvement in politics, and demonstrate his vigorous adherence to a fairly conventional view among early seventeenth-century churchmen about the proper boundaries to royal interference in the Church; his worries about attempts to push further the implications of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs are evident in his writings against Hobbes, as are his even greater anxieties, exacerbated by the conversion of his daughter, the Duchess of York, about the dangers of Roman Catholic encroachment.


Author(s):  
Miranda Anderson

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a background to current research in medieval and Renaissance studies on topics related to distributed cognition and to consider how the various chapters in this volume represent, reflect and advance work in this area. The volume brings together 14 chapters by international specialists working in the period between the ninth and the seventeenth century in the fields of law, history, drama, literature, art, music, philosophy, science and medicine. The chapters revitalise our reading of medieval and Renaissance works by bringing to bear recent insights in cognitive science and philosophy of mind on the distributed nature of cognition. Together the chapters make evident the ways in which particular notions and practices of distributed cognition emerged from the particular range of sociocultural and technological contexts that existed during this period. This chapter attempts to put these contributions in their wider research context by examining how such topics have been approached by mainstream scholarship, earlier work in the cognitive sciences and by existing applications of distributed cognition theory. It draws out both more general features of distributed cognition and what was distinctive about medieval and Renaissance insights into (and superstitions about) the cognitive roles of the body and environment. Throughout this chapter, I reference the chapters in this volume that provide further information on topics covered or take forward the issues in question. In the concluding section, I turn to a fuller overview of the chapters themselves


Author(s):  
Noel Malcolm

Christianity—secret adherence to Christian religious practices by people who outwardly professed Islam—is known to have occurred in several parts of the Ottoman Empire; this essay concerns the crypto-Christians of Kosovo, who were very unusual in adhering to Roman Catholicism. Distinctions are made here between crypto-Christianity and a range of other practices or circumstances that have been partly confused with it in previous accounts: the fact of close social coexistence between Muslims and Christians; the existence of religious syncretism, which allowed the borrowing and sharing of some ritual practices; and the principle of ‘theological equivalentism’ (the claim, made by some Muslims, that each person could be saved in his or her own faith). These things were not the same as crypto-Christianity, but they involved different kinds of religious ‘amphibianism’, creating conditions in which crypto-Christianity could survive more easily. The story of Catholic crypto-Christianity in Kosovo and northern Albania begins with reports from Catholic priests in the seventeenth century. Contributory factors seem to have been the economic incentive for men to convert to Islam to escape the taxes on Christians, and the fact that women (who were not tax-payers) could remain Christian, as Christian wives were permitted under Islamic law. This essay then traces the history of the crypto-Catholics of Kosovo, who survived, despite the strong official disapproval of the Church, into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.


Author(s):  
Dabney Townsend

The German philosopher Baumgarten is known primarily for his introduction of the word ‘aesthetics’ to describe the affects of art and nature, which in the course of the seventeenth century replaced the older theory of beauty. Baumgarten derived the term from the Greek aisthanomai, which he equated with the Latin sentio (1739: 79). He understood it to designate the outer, external or bodily sense, as opposed to the inner sense of consciousness. Thus aesthetics is the realm of the sensate, of sense perception and sensible objects. Baumgarten understood his usage to be consistent with classical sources, but he was aware also that he was extending logic and science into a new realm. Baumgarten’s importance lay in adapting the rationalism of Leibniz for both the study of art and what came to be known after Kant as the aesthetic.


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