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The book examines the process of symbolic and material alteration of religious images in antiquity, the middle ages and the modern period. The process by which the form and meaning of images are modified and adapted for a new context is defined by a large number of spiritual, religious, artistic, geographical or historical circumstances. This book provides a defined theoretical framework for these symbolic and material alterations based on the concept of iconotropy; that is, the way in which images change and/or alter their meaning. Iconotropy is a key concept in religious history, particularly for periods in which religious changes, often turbulent, took place. In addition, the iconotropic process of appropriating cult images brought with it changes in the materiality of those images. Numerous accounts from antiquity, the middle ages and the modern period detail how cult images were involved in such processes of misinterpretation, both symbolically and materially. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture and religious history.
A captivating study of translation, adaptation, and intellectual cross-pollination that situates the Castilian Hermes in the center of medieval Mediterranean cultural exchange Hermes Trismegistus, a Hellenistic conflation of the Greek Hermes (god of interpretative wisdom) and the Egyptian Thoth (god of wisdom) was considered by many in the medieval world as the father of culture. Between c. 300 BCE - c. 1200 CE various treatises were attributed to the legendary sage, becoming known as the Hermetica - a combination of diverse philosophical and spiritual systems, addressing subjects such as alchemy, magic, and astrology. The Hermetica circulated widely, with premodern translations in Latin, He...
Cultures of the Fragment places fragments at the center of reading and non-reading uses of Iberian manuscripts. The book contests the notion that fragments came about accidentally, arguing that most fragments were created on purpose, as a result of a wide range of practical, intellectual and spiritual uses of manuscript material.
This collection of essays explores the present and future of digital communication through a range of interdisciplinary approaches, all of which focus on the so-called metaverse. The metaverse is a combination of multiple elements of technology – including virtual reality, augmented reality, and video – where users "live" within a digital universe. The vision for this new universe is that its users can work, play, and stay connected with friends through everything. Such a vision is hinted at in existing phenomena such as online game universes.
This volume brings together cutting-edge research on modern Spanish women as writers, activists, and embodiments of cultural change, and honors Maryellen Bieder's invaluable scholarly contributions. The critical analyses are situated within their specific socio-historical context, and shed new light on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spanish literature, history, and culture.
Private and public relationships - frequently labelled as friendships - have always played a crucial role in human societies. Yet, over the centuries ideas and meanings of friendship transformed, adapting to the political and social climates of different periods. Changing concepts and practices of friendship characterized the intellectual, social, political and cultural panorama of medieval Europe, including that of thiteenth-century Iberia. Subject of conquests and 'Reconquest', land of convivencia, but also of political instability, as well as of secular and religious international power-struggles: the articulation of friendship within its borders is a particularly fraught subject to study...
The Spanish Arcadia analyzes the figure of the shepherd in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish imaginary, exploring its centrality to the discourses on racial, cultural, and religious identity. Drawing on a wide range of documents, including theological polemics on blood purity, political treatises, manuals on animal husbandry, historiography, paintings, epic poems, and Spanish ballads, Javier Irigoyen-García argues that the figure of the shepherd takes on extraordinary importance in the reshaping of early modern Spanish identity. The Spanish Arcadia contextualizes pastoral romances within a broader framework and assesses how they inform other cultural manifestations. In doing so, Irigoyen-García provides incisive new ideas about the social and ethnocentric uses of the genre, as well as its interrelation with ideas of race, animal husbandry, and nation building in early modern Spain.
In this groundbreaking study, Diana Berruezo-Sánchez recovers key chapters in the history of Afro-Iberian diasporas by exploring the literary contributions and life experiences of black African communities and individuals in early modern Spain. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, international trade involving chattel slavery led to significant populations of enslaved, free(d), and half-manumitted black African women, men, and children in the Iberian Peninsula. These demographic changes transformed Spain's urban and social landscapes. In exploring Spain's role in the transatlantic slave trade and its effects on cultural forms of the period, Berruezo-Sánchez examines a broad rang...
Portraying Authorship argues that the medieval Castilian writer Juan Manuel fashioned a seemingly modern authorial persona from the accumulation and synthesis of medieval authorial roles. In the manuscript culture of medieval Castile and across Latin Europe, writers typically referred to their work in ways that corresponded to their role in the bookmaking process: scribes took credit for preserving the works of others, compilers for combining disparate texts in productive ways, commentators for explaining obscure works, and authors for writing their own words. Combining literary analysis with book history, Anita Savo reveals how Juan Manuel forged his authorial persona, “Don Juan,” by ad...