of shadow, with some forty further nuances, ranging in connotation from the extremely positive to... more of shadow, with some forty further nuances, ranging in connotation from the extremely positive to the direly negative, deriving from those primary meanings. And yet the role that shadows play in artistic expression is not very well established. In one of the few books on shadows for a general audience, Roberto Casati suggests that shadows have been scarce in Western art until recently because they are so hard to render effectively (156). There is a similar difficulty regarding the study of shadows. Either shadows are so often used figuratively and unconsciously, like dead metaphors, that audiences don't even see them, or they are so pervasive and so varied in their application that they elude our conceptual grasp almost as readily as they do our hands. Art historian Victor Stoichita's A Short History of the Shadow describes the shadow as a self-reflection, as a proof of human incarnation, as a witness to the artist's presence, as a dark double, as an image of human identity, and, in modern art, as an artistic free agent, as important as "the real thing" (132-133). In The Reverse of the Visible, cultural critic Max Milner proposes an infinity of shadow nuances, depending on the artist or writer, from Leonardo's gentleness to Caravaggio's brutality to the horror of Goya, from the saving darkness of St. John of the Cross to the psychological abyss of Novalis (434-435). And if we turn from meanings to shadow-shapes, Roberto Casati has proposed over fifteen categories of shadow form and function based on the visual information that they convey-including shadows that reveal the texture of what they fall on, shadows of things that protrude, shadows that are clearly inaccurate, shadows that copy the features of the caster exactly, and so on ("Methodological Issues", 169-171). Similarly, there is no consensus about how to approach shadow research. Are we seeking to see something or to understand why we cannot see it? Some shadow-studies, for example, present themselves as explorations of vision, as narratives of sight and insight, seeking to bring what is covered by darkness (or even darkness itself) into the light of our understanding (see Goẗz , Gombrich, and Stoichita). But other critics claim, almost paradoxically, to leave in the dark the subject of their inquiries, rendering homage to obscurity by celebrating in it qualities that our ingrained preference for light has prevented us from appreciating. They extol the value of subliminal nuances that they try to tease out. Milner, for example, states that a survey of shadows in art is impossible, and so he studies a host of individual images, hoping, he says, to put some shadow-holes in the wall of visibility that surrounds us (10). Seeing light as a prison, he speaks of shadow as a reserve, a resource. Similarly, Michael Baxandall has argued provocatively that, while shadows provide much information to us, it is important to let them do their work at the edge of our consciousness. We can understand them better, he says, if we don't focus too intently on them. He concludes a demanding book on "Enlightenment shadows" by warning, "The comedy is that as soon as we are addressing shadow we are liable to denature it.. . It becomes something other than the shadow of usual experience simply by being addressed as itself "(145). Baxandall suggests that we maintain a relaxed "inattentiveness", as he calls it, as a way of registering how shadows imperceptibly work on us when we experience a work of art. 1 But that inattention enables the shadows that are controlled so consciously in art to escape our critical scrutiny. One such case is the fore-shadow as it is used in literature. Since literary foreshadows must be noticed, however slightly or subliminally, in order to do their narrative work, they challenge Baxandall's notion that "inattentiveness" is perhaps the best way to deal
“Ut pictura poesis”: this phrase from the Roman poet Horace has been widely invoked down through ... more “Ut pictura poesis”: this phrase from the Roman poet Horace has been widely invoked down through the ages: “As is the picture, so is the poem.” For centuries poets have written about paintings, and painters have illustrated scenes from the poets. But Horace seems to be claiming something more profound than that, provoking perennial arguments about the fundamental similarity—or difference—between the two arts. In this essay I will look at some of the most common ways that literary works and visual images have been perceived as parallel yet intersecting enterprises. Then I will focus specifically on the role that words have played within works of visual art, particularly in the past century. Finally, I will offer my own interpretation of Horace’s phrase, suggesting that words and images do not just lead parallel lives. Rather, they simply cannot do without each other.
Preface Introduction Part 1: Arthur in Medieval France 1. Life in La Mort le roi Artu Charles Mel... more Preface Introduction Part 1: Arthur in Medieval France 1. Life in La Mort le roi Artu Charles Mela 2. The King's Sin: The Origins of the David-Arthur Parallel M. Victoria Guerin 3. Desire, Meaning, and the Female Reader: The Problem in Chretien's Charrete Roberta L. Krueger 4. Aspects of Arthur's Death in Medieval Illumination M. Alison Stones Appendix: Survey of Manuscripts Illustrating Arthur's Death Part 2: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 5. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Passing of Judgment Marie Borroff 6. Leaving Morgan Aside: Women, History, and Revisionism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Sheila Fisher 7. The "Syngne of Surfet" and the Surfeit of Signs in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight R. Allen Shoaf Part 3: Spenser's Arthur 8. The Passing of Arthur in Malory, Spenser, and Shakespeare: The Avoidance of Closure A. Kent Hieatt 9. Arthur, Argante, and the Ideal Vision: An Exercise in Speculation and Parody Judith Anderson 10. "Beauties Chace": Arthur and Women in The Faerie Queen Sheila T. Cavanagh Part 4: The Pastness of Arthur in the Victorian Era 11. Tennyson and the Passing of Arthur John D. Rosenberg 12. Ideological Battleground: Tennyson, Morris, and the Pastness of the Past Jonathan Freedman 13. Victorian Spellbinders: Arthurian Women and the Pre-Raphaelite Circle Carole Silver 14. The Last Idyll: Dozing in Avalon William E. Fredeman Appendix: Survey of Arthurian Subjects in Victorian Art
America has created a new form of urban settlement. It is higher, bolder, and richer than anythin... more America has created a new form of urban settlement. It is higher, bolder, and richer than anything man has yet called city. ... Most Americans till speak of suburbs. But a city's suburbs are no longer just bedrooms. They are no longer mere orbital satellites. They are no longer sub.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 160.39.117.57 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 00:39:58 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RESPONSE Contextualizing Suburbia WILLIAM SHARPE LEONARD WALLOCK WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE RESPONDENTS FOR THEIR THOUGHTFUL
... gratuitously, kills him. Clay is of the earth, able to be molded, and the red haired, skimpil... more ... gratuitously, kills him. Clay is of the earth, able to be molded, and the red haired, skimpily dressed Lula is a lulu, a whore of Babylon, an image of white America, who tempts and destroys. Looks could kill. The Lingering Look. ...
of shadow, with some forty further nuances, ranging in connotation from the extremely positive to... more of shadow, with some forty further nuances, ranging in connotation from the extremely positive to the direly negative, deriving from those primary meanings. And yet the role that shadows play in artistic expression is not very well established. In one of the few books on shadows for a general audience, Roberto Casati suggests that shadows have been scarce in Western art until recently because they are so hard to render effectively (156). There is a similar difficulty regarding the study of shadows. Either shadows are so often used figuratively and unconsciously, like dead metaphors, that audiences don't even see them, or they are so pervasive and so varied in their application that they elude our conceptual grasp almost as readily as they do our hands. Art historian Victor Stoichita's A Short History of the Shadow describes the shadow as a self-reflection, as a proof of human incarnation, as a witness to the artist's presence, as a dark double, as an image of human identity, and, in modern art, as an artistic free agent, as important as "the real thing" (132-133). In The Reverse of the Visible, cultural critic Max Milner proposes an infinity of shadow nuances, depending on the artist or writer, from Leonardo's gentleness to Caravaggio's brutality to the horror of Goya, from the saving darkness of St. John of the Cross to the psychological abyss of Novalis (434-435). And if we turn from meanings to shadow-shapes, Roberto Casati has proposed over fifteen categories of shadow form and function based on the visual information that they convey-including shadows that reveal the texture of what they fall on, shadows of things that protrude, shadows that are clearly inaccurate, shadows that copy the features of the caster exactly, and so on ("Methodological Issues", 169-171). Similarly, there is no consensus about how to approach shadow research. Are we seeking to see something or to understand why we cannot see it? Some shadow-studies, for example, present themselves as explorations of vision, as narratives of sight and insight, seeking to bring what is covered by darkness (or even darkness itself) into the light of our understanding (see Goẗz , Gombrich, and Stoichita). But other critics claim, almost paradoxically, to leave in the dark the subject of their inquiries, rendering homage to obscurity by celebrating in it qualities that our ingrained preference for light has prevented us from appreciating. They extol the value of subliminal nuances that they try to tease out. Milner, for example, states that a survey of shadows in art is impossible, and so he studies a host of individual images, hoping, he says, to put some shadow-holes in the wall of visibility that surrounds us (10). Seeing light as a prison, he speaks of shadow as a reserve, a resource. Similarly, Michael Baxandall has argued provocatively that, while shadows provide much information to us, it is important to let them do their work at the edge of our consciousness. We can understand them better, he says, if we don't focus too intently on them. He concludes a demanding book on "Enlightenment shadows" by warning, "The comedy is that as soon as we are addressing shadow we are liable to denature it.. . It becomes something other than the shadow of usual experience simply by being addressed as itself "(145). Baxandall suggests that we maintain a relaxed "inattentiveness", as he calls it, as a way of registering how shadows imperceptibly work on us when we experience a work of art. 1 But that inattention enables the shadows that are controlled so consciously in art to escape our critical scrutiny. One such case is the fore-shadow as it is used in literature. Since literary foreshadows must be noticed, however slightly or subliminally, in order to do their narrative work, they challenge Baxandall's notion that "inattentiveness" is perhaps the best way to deal
“Ut pictura poesis”: this phrase from the Roman poet Horace has been widely invoked down through ... more “Ut pictura poesis”: this phrase from the Roman poet Horace has been widely invoked down through the ages: “As is the picture, so is the poem.” For centuries poets have written about paintings, and painters have illustrated scenes from the poets. But Horace seems to be claiming something more profound than that, provoking perennial arguments about the fundamental similarity—or difference—between the two arts. In this essay I will look at some of the most common ways that literary works and visual images have been perceived as parallel yet intersecting enterprises. Then I will focus specifically on the role that words have played within works of visual art, particularly in the past century. Finally, I will offer my own interpretation of Horace’s phrase, suggesting that words and images do not just lead parallel lives. Rather, they simply cannot do without each other.
Preface Introduction Part 1: Arthur in Medieval France 1. Life in La Mort le roi Artu Charles Mel... more Preface Introduction Part 1: Arthur in Medieval France 1. Life in La Mort le roi Artu Charles Mela 2. The King's Sin: The Origins of the David-Arthur Parallel M. Victoria Guerin 3. Desire, Meaning, and the Female Reader: The Problem in Chretien's Charrete Roberta L. Krueger 4. Aspects of Arthur's Death in Medieval Illumination M. Alison Stones Appendix: Survey of Manuscripts Illustrating Arthur's Death Part 2: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 5. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Passing of Judgment Marie Borroff 6. Leaving Morgan Aside: Women, History, and Revisionism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Sheila Fisher 7. The "Syngne of Surfet" and the Surfeit of Signs in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight R. Allen Shoaf Part 3: Spenser's Arthur 8. The Passing of Arthur in Malory, Spenser, and Shakespeare: The Avoidance of Closure A. Kent Hieatt 9. Arthur, Argante, and the Ideal Vision: An Exercise in Speculation and Parody Judith Anderson 10. "Beauties Chace": Arthur and Women in The Faerie Queen Sheila T. Cavanagh Part 4: The Pastness of Arthur in the Victorian Era 11. Tennyson and the Passing of Arthur John D. Rosenberg 12. Ideological Battleground: Tennyson, Morris, and the Pastness of the Past Jonathan Freedman 13. Victorian Spellbinders: Arthurian Women and the Pre-Raphaelite Circle Carole Silver 14. The Last Idyll: Dozing in Avalon William E. Fredeman Appendix: Survey of Arthurian Subjects in Victorian Art
America has created a new form of urban settlement. It is higher, bolder, and richer than anythin... more America has created a new form of urban settlement. It is higher, bolder, and richer than anything man has yet called city. ... Most Americans till speak of suburbs. But a city's suburbs are no longer just bedrooms. They are no longer mere orbital satellites. They are no longer sub.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 160.39.117.57 on Tue, 16 Feb 2016 00:39:58 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RESPONSE Contextualizing Suburbia WILLIAM SHARPE LEONARD WALLOCK WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE RESPONDENTS FOR THEIR THOUGHTFUL
... gratuitously, kills him. Clay is of the earth, able to be molded, and the red haired, skimpil... more ... gratuitously, kills him. Clay is of the earth, able to be molded, and the red haired, skimpily dressed Lula is a lulu, a whore of Babylon, an image of white America, who tempts and destroys. Looks could kill. The Lingering Look. ...
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