Journal word and image

TL;DR: A picture is used in churches so that those who are ignorant of letters may at least read by seeing on the walls what they cannot read in books (codicibus).

Abstract: Pictures are used in churches so that those who are ignorant of letters may at least read by seeing on the walls what they cannot read in books (codicibus). What writing (scriptura) does for the literate, a picture does for the illiterate looking at it, because the ignorant see in it what they ought to do; those who do not know letters read in it. Thus, especially for the nations [gentibus], a picture takes the place of reading. … Therefore you ought not to have broken that which was placed in the church in order not to be adored but solely in order to instruct the minds of the ignorant.1

TL;DR: In contemporary critical terminology «ekphrasis» has come to be firmly associated with the subject of this journal: word and image as mentioned in this paper, and the examples that spring to mind are likely to include the Homeric Shield of Achilles and its many literary imitations, the rhetorical and allegorical descriptions of paintings written by later Greek prose authors, like Lucian and the Elder and Younger Philostratos or, from more recent periods of Western literary history, John Keats’ meditation on his tantalisingly still and silent Grecian Urn.

Abstract: In contemporary critical terminology ‘ekphrasis’ has come to be firmly associated with the subject of this journal: word and image. Mention ‘ekphrasis’ to an art historian, literary critic or classicist, and the examples that spring to mind are likely to include the Homeric Shield of Achilles and its many literary imitations, the rhetorical and allegorical descriptions of paintings written by later Greek prose authors, like Lucian and the Elder and Younger Philostratos or, from more recent periods of Western literary history, John Keats’ meditation on his tantalisingly still and silent Grecian Urn. This ‘genre’, or ‘trope’, of ekphrasis evokes a network of interlocking questions and interests, from the positivist pursuit of lost monuments described in ancient and medieval ekphrasis to the poststructuralist fascination with a textual fragment which declares itself to be pure artifice, the representation of representation.

TL;DR: The first decisive, western statements to this effect are found in two letters sent by Pope Gregory the Great to Bishop Serenus of Marseilles at the end of the sixth century, and variations on the concept appear in a multitude of Latin writings throughout the rest of the Middle Ages.

Abstract: Analyses of medieval art-theory often assert, correctly, that one of the preeminent doctrines of the artistic image’s role in western Christendom during the Middle Ages was the notion that pictures are valuable since they function as do books, and thereby help to teach the illiterate.1 The first decisive, western statements to this effect are found in two letters sent by Pope Gregory the Great to Bishop Serenus of Marseilles at the end of the sixth century,2 while variations on the concept appear in a multitude of Latin writings throughout the rest of the Middle Ages, including in the decrees of the sixteenth-century Council of Trent which responded to the Protestant Reformation. Pope Gregory’s remarks to Serenus of Marseilles were originally identified as the “classic” expressions of medieval western image-doctrine by Ernst Kitzinger, in a 1954 article concerning the origins of the Byzantine controversy over icons, and several scholars have indicated their agreement.3

TL;DR: The earliest ekphrastic poetry describes what doesn’t exist, save in the poetry’s own fiction as discussed by the authors, which has a long history which I need hardly recite in detail to this audience.

Abstract: The earliest ekphrastic poetry describes what doesn’t exist, save in the poetry’s own fiction. What Jean Hagstrum called the “iconic” poem (he reserved the term “ecphrastic” for a sort of dramatic monologue in which the picture or sculpture is itself made to speak) (1) has a long history which I need hardly recite in detail to this audience. It would inelude the shields of Herakles and of Achilles, so differently represented by Hesiod and Homer; the ivory cup given by the goatherd to the shepherd Thyrsis in Theocritus’ first idyll, whose description by the poet involves readings of feelings and intentions in the human figures depicted there even as all ekphrasis — poetic or art-historical — conti nues to do so today; the armor of Aeneas and the paintings in the Temple of Juno, both described with great regard to how Aeneas himself reads those images; the relief seulpture in Dante’s Purgatorio, the tapestries and frescoes in Ariosto and Spenser and — in a remarkable scene of reading and misreading — in Sha…

TL;DR: It is easy to be captivated by the lovable and endearing creatures that inhabit the modern picturebook, whether our taste for picturebooks was formed by the work of Beatrix Potter1 or by that of her distinguished successors as discussed by the authors.

Abstract: It is easy to be captivated by the lovable and endearing creatures that inhabit the modern picturebook. Whether our taste for picturebooks was formed by the work of Beatrix Potter1 or by that of her distinguished successors, we know, even if we often disavow it, this infatuation with the image of her Mrs Tiggy-Winkle (a hedgehog), Mary Chalmers’ Harry (a cat) or Cyndy Szekeres’ Pippa Mouse, Ernest Shepard’s or William Pene du Bois’ bears, Clement Hurd’s rabbits, or Bernard Waber’s Lyle (a crocodile) and Arthur (an anteater). Disarmed, entangled in a net of affection, we are almost ready to eat, as it were, out of the handling of the illustrator.