Images, Improvisations, Sound, and Silence from 1000 to 1800 - Degree Zero
Images, Improvisations, Sound, and Silence from 1000 to 1800 - Degree Zero
edited by Babette Hellemans and Alissa Jones Nelson
Amsterdam University Press, 2018 eISBN: 978-90-485-2918-6 | Cloth: 978-94-6298-005-1 Library of Congress Classification BH39.I43 2018 Dewey Decimal Classification 111.850904
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The act of drawing a line or uttering a word is often seen as integral to the process of making art. This is especially obvious in music and the visual arts, but applies to literature, performance, and other arts as well. These collected essays, written by scholars from diverse fields, take a historical view of the richness of creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) in order to draw out debates, sometimes implicit and sometimes formally stated, about the production and reproduction of cultural meaning in a period of great change and novelty, between the beginnings of the medieval intellectual tradition and the imprint of the Enlightenment. The authors pose the following questions: Do tradition and creativity conflict with one another, or are they complementary? What are the tensions between composition and live performance? What is the role of the audience in perceiving the object of art? Are such objects fixed or flexible? What about the status of the event? Is the event part of creation, in the sense that it disturbs the still waters of historical continuity? These and other questions build on the foundation of Roland Barthes' concept of Degree Zero, offering new insights into what it means to create.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Babette Hellemans teaches Cultural History and Medieval History at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She has published books and articles in English, French and Dutch focusing especially on the French intellectual tradition, the relationship between religion, academic discourse and the anthropology of images.Alissa Jones Nelson completed her PhD at the Centre for the Study of Religion and Politics, University of St. Andrews, in 2009. She has published a monograph and several articles focusing on the politics of biblical hermeneutics and postcolonial theory. From 2011-2016, she was the Acquisitions Editor for Religious Studies at De Gruyter. She now works as a freelance writer, editor, and translator. She is based in Berlin.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ouverture: Degree Zero Between Past and FutureBabette HellemansIMAGESThe Two Bodies of the Virgin: On the Festival of Cirio de Nazaré Jean-Claude SchmittThe Three Ages of Man and the Materialization of an Allegory: Inquiries on an Object at the Threshold of ModernityAndrea von Hülschen-EschLapsus figurae: Remarks on Iconographic ErrorPierre-Olivier DittmarIMPROVISATIONSDrawing a Line and Questioning ArtNicola SuthorFall and Rise AgainIrit KleimanImprovisation as a Chief Pillar of the Poetic Art in Persian Literary TraditionAsghar Seyed-GohrabSOUNDIntending the ListenerRokus de GrootThe Sovereign Ear: Handel's Water Music and Aural HistoriographySander van MaasWhere Sound and Meaning Part: Language and Performance in Early Hebrew PoetryIrene ZwiepSILENCEWriting about Silence and the Secret in the Twelfth Century: Monastic Variations on a Biblical Theme Cédric GiraudAn Arrangement of Silence: Shaping Monastic Identity in Anselm of Canterbury's Letter CollectionsTheo LapDimidia Hora: Liminal Silence in Bernard of Clairvaux, Anselm of Canterbury, and Barack ObamaBurcht PrangerList of Contributors