Artefacts and Errors: Acknowledging Issues of Representation in the Digital: Imaging of Ancient Texts

It is assumed, in palaeography, papyrology and epigraphy, that a certain amount of uncertainty is inherent in the reading of damaged and abraded texts. Yet we have not really grappled with the fact that, nowadays, as many scholars tend to deal with digital images of texts, rather than handling the texts themselves, the procedures for creating digital images of texts can insert further uncertainty into the representation of the text created. Technical distortions can lead to the unintentional introduction of ‘artefacts’ into images, which can have an effect on the resulting representation. If we cannot trust our digital surrogates of texts, can we trust the readings from them? How do scholars acknowledge the quality of digitised images of texts? Furthermore, this leads us to the type of discussions of representation that have been present in Classical texts since Plato: digitisation can be considered as an alternative form of representation, bringing to the modern debate of the use of digital technology in Classics the familiar theories of mimesis (imitation) and ekphrasis (description): the conversion of visual evidence into explicit descriptions of that information, stored in computer files in distinct linguistic terms, with all the difficulties of conversion understood in the ekphratic process. The community has not yet considered what becoming dependent on digital texts means for the field, both in practical and theoretical terms. Issues of quality, copying, representation, and substance should be part of our dialogue when we consult digital surrogates of documentary material, yet we are just constructing understandings of what it means to rely on virtual representations of artefacts. It is necessary to relate our understandings of uncertainty in palaeography and epigraphy to our understanding of the mechanics of visualization employed by digital imaging techniques, if we are to fully understand the impact that these will have

Landscape and reality in Apuleius' Metamorphoses

Postprin

Hephaistos’ shield and Achilles’ delight: a study of Iliad XVIII and XIX

Stephen Scully talk at the University of Dallas, 2010

Oscar Wilde as a temporal designer : a case study of the picture of Dorian Gray

Since the publication of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, there have been great amounts of ideological criticism both for and against the author and the work. Critics have variously evaluated the work from different perspectives; however, these studies have largely targeted the thematic aspects of the novel, while little serious attempt has been made to examine the narrativity of this great work. As a result, the narrative structure of this novel still remains quite untouched. As a partial fulfillment, the present paper has examined the temporal structure of the novel. The analysis indicated that temporality is one of the very functional elements of the work. In fact, much of the meaning or the effect the author intends to converse through each action, character, or dialogue is firstly embedded in a proper and effective temporal setting. Moreover, the analysis ascertained that the well-set temporal structure of the work has resulted in (1) Ekphrasis, (2) Characterization, and (3) Reader manipulation. According to the paper, these three elements dramatically carry out the influentiality of this great novel

El espejo de la ekphrasis Más acá de la imagen. Más allá del texto.

Since the Second Sophistry the ekphrasis, the literary description of images, has been assimilated. From the point of view of art criticism the author of this work proposes a new ekphrasis in a defense of description, like a constitutive element of criticism or propedeutic resource. The hypotiposis, the formation of pictorial images through words, will be also studied. In the base of the ekphrasis, as in the hypotiposis, is the description. This work leads us through three related aspects of the development of the ekphrasis: the relations between description and narration; the exchanges between titles and works; and finally, the tensions between the descriptive and interpretative functions. The validity of the ekphrasis in front of the contemporary artistic experience will be discussed considering the incompleteness principle of G.C. Argan and the principle of the transparence of S. Sontag. The connection between image and text, understood as a crossroad full of parallelisms, is taken as a fundamental part of the epistemology of criticism

Beyond the Imagery: The Encounters of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky with an Image of the Dead Christ

Through an analysis of Kierkegaard’s and Dostoevsky’s approaches to the theme of the death of Christ – one of the major leitmotifs in the debate of their contemporaries conveyed through theological and philosophical considerations, but also expressed in novels and in art – I show how the thinkers comprehended and articulated in their works the religious challenges awaiting the modern man

Non-pareille? Issues in Modern French Photo-Essayism

[FIRST PARAGRAPH][L]’esthéthique sait depuis longtemps que l’image, contrairement à ce que croit et fait croire la machine d’information, montre toujours moins bien que les mots toute grandeur qui passe la mesure: horreur, gloire, sublimité, extase. (Comolli and Rancière 1997, 66) It may seem odd, in a general analysis of the modern French essay accompanying photography, that there is no reproduction of photographs. This is however a deliberate choice, and not one without precedent, as the collection of Michel Butor’s photo-essays into one photo-less volume shows. For it would seem in this age of the image – dubbed by essayists as diverse as Debray (1992), Flusser (2000 [1983]), Gervereau (2000), Glissant (1994) as the televisual era – the written word has tended to be downplayed. This is no more the case than in the photo-essay, a sub-genre largely overlooked and under-theorised, generally subsumed within photo-journalism, and in which photographic sequences are preferred to written text (see Mélon, in Baetens and Gonzalez 1996, 138–55)