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Temporality and Mediality in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture
This interdisciplinary volume explores the ways in which time is staged at the threshold between the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Proceeding from the reality that all cultural forms are inherently and inescapably temporal it seeks to discover the significance of time in mediations and communications of all kinds.
By showing how time is displayed in diverse cultural strategies and situations the essays of this volume show how time is intrinsic to the very concept of tradition. In exploring a variety of medial forms and communicative practices they also reveal that while the beginning of the age of printing (around 1500) may mark a fundamental change in terms of reproduction and circulation artefacts and other historical traditions continue to employ earlier systems and practices relating time and space.
The volume features articles by leading researchers in their respective fields including studies on mosaics as a medium reflecting space and time; the triptych’s potential as a time machine; winged altarpieces mediating eternity; texts and images of the passion of Christ permeating past present and future; dimensions of time embedded in maps; a compendium of world knowledge organized by forms of time and temporality; the figuration of prophecy in times of crisis; the portrayal of time in architecture.
The volume thus provides a new approach to media and mediality from the perspective of cultural history.
René d’Anjou et les arts
Le jeu des mots et des images
Commanditaire cultivé et original René d’Anjou montre un intérêt pour toutes les formes de l’art. Non seulement auteur mais aussi lecteur spectateur concepteur ou metteur en scène et jouant même son propre rôle dans le cadre de ses funérailles et de ses tombeaux le prince apparaît comme le personnage central de la création artistique à sa cour. Dans cette perspective il s’agissait d’étudier ici la relation des arts figurés et de l’art dramatique et plus largement le dialogue entre les arts. Cependant il convenait de dépasser les réflexions d’Émile Mâle sur l’influence des Mystères sur les arts visuels et d’abandonner une vision de la production artistique en terme d’ascendance et de hiérarchie. Les interrogations ont donc porté principalement sur les processus de création des images leur fonctionnement et leurs significations et sur une problématique de transmission culturelle. Les arts figurés la littérature ou l’art dramatique participent en effet de références communes traitent les mêmes sujets et soulèvent parfois des questions identiques mais selon des modalités d’expression différentes. Souvent des interférences se créent entre plusieurs langages - écrit visuel ou oral - jouant ainsi sur les sens possibles de l’œuvre et mobilisant la culture du lecteur et/ou du spectateur. Les exemples retenus ont dès lors contribué à préciser la pluralité de ces intéractions qui questionnent en permanence sur le statut le rôle de l’image et sa relation à d’autres media. Cela a aussi permis de mettre en valeur la personnalité de certains grands artistes de la fin du Moyen Âge dont la polyvalence et la culture ont séduit le prince.
Rose-Marie Ferré est maître de Conférences en histoire de l'art du Moyen Âge à l'université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). Ses recherches portent sur les paramètres de la commande artistique et les questions d'iconographie. À cet égard elle interroge plus particulièrement le dialogue entre les arts et les problèmes de transmission culturelle.
Science et théologie dans les débats savants de la seconde moitié du XVIIe siècle
La Genèse dans les 'Philosophical Transactions' et le 'Journal des Savants' (1665-1710)
The second half of the 17th century witnessed a veritable revolution in communication in the Republic of Letters with the appearance of the first scientific periodicals the earliest and most important of which were established in 1665: the Journal des Savants and the Philosophical Transactions. Making use of the book reviews published in these two great scholarly journals sources still largely underexploited this book studies the relations between science and theology and more precisely the narrative of Genesis in the period leading up to the Enlightenment. Juxtaposition of the two journals connected respectively to the French Académie royale des sciences and the Royal Society permits a comparison between France a Roman Catholic country and England a Protestant one which changes the face of conventional wisdom. The pages devoted to the first decades of the Philosophical Transactions provide an original and welcome study which fills a gap on the subject. The problems raised by the exegesis of certain verses of Genesis evoke a broad range of theological philosophical scientific and sometimes even properly political questions. In book reviews the confrontation between scientific theories and the narrative of Genesis most often discloses little-known works and takes us off the beaten track. Indeed what posterity has retained as essential has not always received a wide circulation among contemporaries whereas forgotten authors once found in their own time a large audience through the intermediary of scholarly periodicals. After a systematic inspection the author has compiled a database on the scientific and theological content of the two scholarly journals. This has been conveniently placed at the reader’s disposal in the form of a CD-ROM attached to the volume.
Charters and the Use of the Written Word in Medieval Society
There have been periods of growth and of decrease in the quantity of writing produced in the medieval centuries. The present volume is concerned with qualitative developments asking: which developments can be distinguished in the roles played by writing in medieval societies? In which fields was writing used and by whom? Why did these changes take place? When attempting to answer these questions the scholar confronts basic questions about the sources at one’s disposal. Why were documents written? Why were they preserved and in what form? The volume pays especial attention to charters since these documents have been continuously present throughout the Middle Ages. They also had an impact on most layers of society.