The Rhetorical Occasions of Gothic Sculpture

Lately I have become interested in medieval sculpture, a medium of art which seems to open up an unusually wide range of issues appropriate to the heroic scope, if not exactly the intellectual interests, of Sophus Bugge. My concern is not so much the medium itself, as the intellectual predicament of its study. In this lecture I have chosen to focus on Gothic sculpture, of which many fine examples survive in wood in Scan-dinavia and especially Norway.1 My concerns will not be stylistic, iconographic or technical. Instead I will consider the agency of sculpture, how its function relates to its purpose, and how that purpose is social. To shed light on these matters I propose to consider rhetorical engagement

Dancing with death. A historical perspective on coping with covid-19

In this paper, we address the question on how societies coped with pandemic crises, how they tried to control or adapt to the disease, or even managed to overcome the death trap in history. On the basis of historical research, we describe how societies in the western world accommodated to or exited hardship and restrictive measures over the course of the last four centuries. In particular, we are interested in how historically embedded citizens' resources were directed towards living with and to a certain extent accepting the virus. Such an approach of “applied history” to the management of crises and public hazards, we believe, helps address today's pressing question of what adaptive strategies can be adopted to return to a normalized life, including living with socially acceptable medical, hygienic and other pandemic‐related measures

Infectious Fear: The Rhetoric of Pestilence in Middle English Didactic Texts on Death

This article examines literary references to bubonic plague in a sample of late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English texts that are didactic in tone and address the theme of death, including Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale”, John Lydgate’s “Danse Macabre” and the anonymous The Castle of Perseverance and “A Disputation between the Body and Worms”. Although there have been broad surveys of bubonic plague in Middle English literature, as well as studies of isolated texts, this article is the first to examine the role of pestilence in a group of texts linked by theme and authorial intention. It contributes to current understanding of the disease in late medieval literature and culture, showing how authors utilised the idea of pestilence as a frightening cause of sudden death and as a form of rhetoric serving to encourage readers to reflect on mortality, the spiritual health of the soul and the prospect of salvation. Whereas previous research has shown that doctors, priests and writers interpreted the pestilence as a divine punishment for sin, this study demonstrates how that belief could be exploited for rhetorical purposes. The rhetoric of pestilence emerges as a powerful contemplative tool urging readers to practise self-examination, penitence and a more active, strategic approach to death

Both “illness and temptation of the enemy”: melancholy, the medieval patient and the writings of King Duarte of Portugal (r. 1433–38)

Recent historians have rehabilitated King Duarte of Portugal, previously maligned and neglected, as an astute ruler and philosopher. There is still a tendency, however, to view Duarte as a depressive or a hypochondriac, due to his own description of his melancholy in his advice book, the Loyal Counselor. This paper reassesses Duarte's writings, drawing on key approaches in the history of medicine, such as narrative medicine and the history of the patient. It is important to take Duarte's views on his condition seriously, placing them in the medical and theological contexts of his time and avoiding modern retrospective diagnosis. Duarte's writings can be used to explore the impact of plague, doubt and death on the life of a well-educated and conscientious late-medieval ruler

Creating and curating an archive: Bury St Edmunds and its Anglo-Saxon past

This contribution explores the mechanisms by which the Benedictine foundation of Bury St Edmunds sought to legitimise and preserve their spurious pre-Conquest privileges and holdings throughout the Middle Ages. The archive is extraordinary in terms of the large number of surviving registers and cartularies which contain copies of Anglo-Saxon charters, many of which are wholly or partly in Old English. The essay charts the changing use to which these ancient documents were put in response to threats to the foundation's continued enjoyment of its liberties. The focus throughout the essay is to demonstrate how pragmatic considerations at every stage affects the development of the archive and the ways in which these linguistically challenging texts were presented, re-presented, and represented during the Abbey’s history

Magnificentia in parvis : microarchitecture et esthétique médiévale

Dans son appel à contribution pour cette conférence, Jean-Marie Guillouët attirait l’attention sur l’essai séminal de François Bucher, « Micro-architecture as the Idea of Gothic theory and style », publié en 1976 dans la revue américaine Gesta . En dépit de ses nombreuses qualités, l’essai de Bucher présente certaines difficultés qui caractérisent encore notre domaine de façon plus générale et demandent à être abordées. Ce sera mon point de départ. Mais nous ne pouvons pas nous contenter d’une théorie de la microarchitecture, dans la mesure où ce que nous en disons doit s’accorder avec une compréhension esthétique plus large de l’art médiéval. L’intérêt de la microarchitecture, et de la question négligée de l’échelle, est précisément qu’elle ouvre sur une enquête plus large et c’est pourquoi je voudrais faire ici quelques propositions, que d’autres contributions dans ce recueil viendront peut-être confirmer

La Línea de la Belleza en el Gótico: motivos y estética medieval

This contribution is concerned with the use and agency of line in Gothic and later art. At the creative height of the Gothic period in England, in the 13th and 14th centuries, curvilinear aesthetics lay at the heart of a number of creative achievements in the figurative arts and architecture. Thought needs to be given to how such linear aesthetics were understood and experienced historically. Starting with the affinity between ‘line words’ and textile manufacture, the paper moves to the idea of the ‘motif’ (or topic) as an originating point of invention. Some motifs or topics enjoyed a long history. One was the linea serpentinata, which here is tracked forwards from Dürer and Lomazzo to Hogarth, and then back to the so-called ‘ogee’ or double-curved S-line in Gothic art. The question of the continuity of gender and moral evaluation of line is finally placed in the wider and more enriching perspective of occasion or contextual understanding and experience.Esta contribución se centra en el uso y en la capacidad de actuación de la línea en época gótica y después. En el momento más creativo del período gótico en Inglaterra, en los siglos XIII y XIV, una estética curvilínea permea un buen número de logros artísticos en las artes figurativas y en la arquitectura. Se hace necesario reflexionar sobre cómo se entendió y se experimentó, históricamente, esa estética lineal. Comenzando por la afinidad que guardan el vocabulario relativo a la línea y el relacionado con las manufacturas textiles, el artículo pasa a la idea de “motivo” (o tópico) entendido como un punto que genera la invención. Algunos tópicos o motivos conocieron una larga trayectoria. Uno de ellos fue la linea serpentinata, que se rastra aquí desde Durero y Lomazzo hasta Hogarth, para retrotraerse después a la ogee o doble curva en forma de S en el arte gótico. La cuestión de la continuidad de su enjuiciamiento moral o de su asociación a un género específico se abordará, finalmente, desde una perspectiva más rica, que contempla el factor de la ocasión para su compresión y su experiencia contextual