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Blood beliefs in early modern EuropeMatteoni, Francesca January 2010 (has links)
This thesis focuses on the significance of blood and the perception of the body in both learned and popular culture in order to investigate problems of identity and social exclusion in early modern Europe. Starting from the view of blood as a liminal matter, manifesting fertile, positive aspects in conjunction with dangerous, negative ones, I show how it was believed to attract supernatural forces within the natural world. It could empower or pollute, restore health or waste corporeal and spiritual existence. While this theme has been studied in a medieval religious context and by anthropologists, its relevance during the early modern period has not been explored. I argue that, considering the impact of the Reformation on people’s mentalities, studying the way in which ideas regarding blood and the body changed from late medieval times to the eighteenth century can provide new insights about patterns of social and religious tensions, such as the witch-trials and persecutions. In this regard the thesis engages with anthropological theories, comparing the dialectic between blood and body with that between identity and society, demonstrating that they both spread from the conflict of life with death, leading to the social embodiment or to the rejection of an individual. A comparative approach is also employed to analyze blood symbolism in Protestant and Catholic countries, and to discuss how beliefs were influenced by both cultural similarities and religious differences. Combining historical sources, such as witches’ confessions, with appropriate examples from anthropology I also examine a corpus of popular ideas, which resisted to theological and learned notions or slowly merged with them. Blood had different meanings for different sections of society, embodying both the physical struggle for life and the spiritual value of the Christian soul. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 develop the dualism of the fluid in late medieval and early modern ritual murder accusations against Jews, European witchcraft and supernatural beliefs and in the medical and philosophical knowledge, while chapters 5 and 6 focus on blood themes in Protestant England and in Counter-Reformation Italy. Through the examination of blood in these contexts I hope to demonstrate that contrasting feelings, fears and beliefs related to dangerous or extraordinary individuals, such as Jews, witches, and Catholic saints, but also superhuman beings such as fairies, vampires and werewolves, were rooted in the perception of the body as an unstable substance, that was at the base of ethnic, religious and gender stereotypes.
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Walter Benjamin und die Kunst des GraphischenMatsui, Takaoki 16 June 2008 (has links)
Als Bild- und Medientheoretiker hinterließ Walter Benjamin nicht nur die berühmte „materialistische“ Auratheorie, sondern auch scheinbar esoterische Theorien der bildenden Kunst. Der Zusammenhang und Inhalt der beiden Theorien können erhellt werden, wenn wir genauer sehen, wie er sich dort mit der Beschreibung der Kindheit beschäftigte. Der Ursprung seiner Auratheorie liegt in seiner „Tagebuch“-Literatur, wo er in die melancholisch gefärbten Visionen der „Jugend“ zu versinken pflegte. Der topologische Aufbau dieser Visionen – ihre eigenartig „photo-graphische“ Struktur – soll mithilfe der Zweiten Topik Freuds analysiert werden. Und aufgrund dieser Analyse werden wir eine Revision der üblichen (übersimplifizierten) Gegenüberstellung von seinem historischen Materislismus und dem „apolitischen Formalismus“ Clement Greenbergs vornehmen. Greenbergs Kunstkritik dient aber auch zur Entschlüsselung der „esoterischen“ Bildtheorien Benjamins. Die letzteren verwirren uns vor allem deshalb, weil dort das Sehen der Kinder zuerst (um 1915) irreführender Weise nach den üblichen Dichotomien der Romantik (Linie / Farbe; männlich / weiblich; erwachsen / kindlich…) beschrieben worden war; ihren eigentlichen Inhalt konnte Benjamin erst präzisieren, als er – anhand seiner Betrachtungen der graphischen „Horizontalität“ und nach seinen Spekulationen über das magische Wesen von „Zeichen“ und „Mal“ (1917) – eine Trichotomie der Bildgattungen (Malerei / Graphik / getuschtes Bild) aufgestellt hatte. Wir rekonstruieren diese Theorieentwicklungen nicht nur durch detaillierte Bild- und Textanalysen, sondern auch unter Heranziehung seines „materialistischen“ Spätwerks (der Passagenarbeit und der „Berliner Kindheit“), da erst im letzteren der einzigartige Zusammenhang zwischen seinen frühen Bildtheorien und seiner Geldtheorie als „Konstellation“ sichtbar werden sollte. / Walter Benjamin’s writings on visual arts include not only the famous „materialistic“ essays on aura but also seemingly esoteric notes on painting and the graphic arts. The content and correlation of all these writings become clear once we grasp how they perform the task of describing childhood experience. His theory of aura was prefigured in his philosophical „Diaries“ where his struggle with his depression was often followed (or interrupted) by dreamlike visions of "youth". The discursive structure of these visions – which will prove to be a strangely „photo-graphic“ one – is to be analyzed by using the second Freudian topology as a comparison. Through this analysis we will be able to reconsider the well-known (oversimplified) antagonism between his historical materialism and the „apolitical formalism“ of Clement Greenberg from a new viewpoint. Greenberg’s criticism helps us also to decipher the „esoteric“ texts of Benjamin. They puzzled scholars especially because they described children’s vision at first (about 1915) misleadingly in accordance with the conventional dichotomies of Romanticism (line / color; masculine / feminine; adult / child…); Benjamin could specify their original implication only after he had set up – based on his reflexions on the „horizontality“ of the graphic arts, and by speculating further on the magic nature of „Zeichen“ and „Mal“ (1917) – a trichotomy of genres (painting / the graphic arts / ink and watercolor illustrations). We will reconstruct this development of his theory not only through detailed analyses of related works of art but also in view of his „materialistic“ late writings (the Arcades Project and „Berlin Childhood“), for it is only there that we find out an essential relation – a singular „constellation“ – of his early art theory and his theory of money.
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Zrcadlo reality v obrazech snů 19. a 20.století. Tvůrčí individualita versus chaos doby / The Mirror of Reality in the Imagery of Dreams of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Creative Individuality versus the Chaos of the TimeŠmejkalová, Adriana January 2018 (has links)
ANNOTATION: The work The Mirror of Reality in the Imagery of Dreams of the 19th and 20th Centuries - Creative Individuality versus the Chaos of the Time is based on the assumption that dreams are inseparably linked to the concept of existence in human life (Michel Foucault). The study touches on the ways in which dreams are depicted in visual culture that does not coincide with chronologically organized historical events, but is an expression of a free alliance between artists in the European space and centuries of common experience. These works are generally socially critical, exposed to unimaginable pressure from public censorship. The artist must pretend it is only an innocent game, a crazy idea, a whim. At the same time, these paintings are not an expression of boundless imagination, but they are subject to the firm rules of spatial construction of the painting. This is due to the traditional delimitation of dark depths - the underworld of Virgil's Saturn myth of pre-Roman culture, alternating with the vertically felt open heavens as variants of the original Plato's The Myth of Er, which in the 20th century paintings is replaced by the idea of an open landscape with illumination on the low horizon. The work deals with the work of Albrecht Dürer, his copperplate Melancholia I (1514) and his so-called...
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