Article
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Disease, War, Identities in a(nother) TV series on the Borgias
Adéla KOŤÁTKOVÁ
Original title: Malaltia, guerra, identitats en una (altra) sèrie de televisió sobre els Borja
Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Keywords: Borgia family, Disease, Historical fiction, Identities, War.
When representing the Borgias, a part of the most recent historical fiction tends to avoid the black legend that has accompanied the surname over the centuries. In this article we review the mechanisms through which a television series presents the family as active protagonists of the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern period, as promoters of the Renaissance, not only with regard to artistic and intellectual interests, but also to the evolution of diseases and therapies or in the management of military conflicts. We also check how the creators of the series project their preconceptions on the ethnolinguistic identities of the characters.
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The episode of the lepers in Jaufre
Anton Maria ESPADALER
Original title: L’episodi dels leprosos al Romanç de Jaufré
Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Keywords: Leprosy, Medical Therapy, Occitan Literature, Sexual Disease.
The Occitan Roman of Jaufré offers the most complete description of a human being affected by leprosy in all medieval literature. From its behavior and treatment derives a medical knowledge, absent in pious texts, and it is observed that, while understanding leprosy as a Sexually Transmitted Disease, the author does not make any criticism of it.
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War and Disease. Between Pericles´s Funeral Oration and the plague of Athens
Antonio CORTIJO
Original title: Guerra y enfermedad. Entre el Discurso fúnebre de Pericles y la plaga de Atenas
Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Keywords: Athens, Funeral Oration, Plague, Thucydides, War.
Pericles’s Funeral Oration in 431 BC praises Athens’s values (dialogue, citizens’ participation, democracy) against Spartan oligarchy during the Peloponnesian War. Only a few months after the oration was delivered, a terrible plague decimated Athenian democracy and ended Pericles’s life.
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Senses and the original sin in the thinking of John Wyclif
Cecilia DEVIA
Original title: Los sentidos y el pecado original en el pensamiento de John Wyclif
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
Keywords: John Wyclif, Middle Ages, Original Sin, Senses.
The main purpose of this article is to present an approach to the relationship between the senses and the original sin in the thinking of John Wyclif (c. 1328-1384). It will begin by making a brief outline of the link between senses and sins in the Middle Ages, to continue with a succinct exposition of the extremely versatile figure of Wyclif and its context. The first sections will be based on updated bibliography, while the last one will especially rely upon the English thinker’s Tractatus de statu innocencie, from 1376. It will be devoted to select and analyze the passages in which the author addresses the senses, both before and after the fall of Adam and Eve, and with theirs, that of all humanity.
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The mouth and the sweetness. Some remarks on taste metaphors in Hildegard of Bingen’s book Scivias
María José ORTÚZAR ESCUDERO
Original title: La boca y lo dulce. Algunas reflexiones sobre de la tropología del gusto en el libro Scivias de Hildegarda de Bingen
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
Keywords: Christian authors, Hildegard of Bingen, Sense metaphors, Taste, gupulochyvy481.
Several studies on the visions of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) emphasize their "otherness" with respect to the sensible world and the bodily experience. For some years, though, also the importance of the sensory language in religious texts has been highlighted. This paper explores the sense metaphors, particularly the taste metaphors, in Hildegard's first visionary work, Scivias. In this writing, she associates the taste of sweetness as well as food itself mainly with two subjects: the sin and Christ. This use of taste metaphors has biblical and patristic backgrounds. 12th Century authors like the Cistercian Bernhard of Clairvaux and the Benedictines Honorius Augustodunensis and Rupert of Deutz use as well taste metaphors to illustrate the fall into sin and the return to God through Christ. Thus, the sense of taste seems to offer them a basis for understanding human condition. Furthermore, the use of taste-metaphoric reveals the possibility of experience the divine by means of the sensibility of the human body.
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The voice of women in the Libro de Apolonio
Carina ZUBILLAGA
Original title: La voz de las mujeres en el Libro de Apolonio
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
Keywords: Female voice, Libro de Apolonio, Middle Ages, Sense of hearing.
The sense of hearing, which together with the sense of sight is associated with cognition in the Middle Ages, will be treated in this work based on the theme of the voice of women in the Libro de Apolonio, one of the representative texts of the Castilian “mester de clerecía”. The characters of Luciana and Tarsiana –wife and daughter of the protagonist Apollonius– sing, tell riddles and recite stories in numerous textual episodes that lets distinguish them as unique heroines with knowledge associated with the clerical culture of the Hispanic early thirteenth century. The study of the expressive and affective power of the female voice in these adventure stories is fundamental to highlight the tensions in the medieval vision about women, their sensitivity and the possibility of a singular voice.
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Mozart’s (1756-1791) Violin and Piano Sonata in E Minor K304: thematic and formal relations of the Schemata
Aline Mendonça PEREIRA; Ernesto HARTMANN
Original title: A Sonata para Violino e Piano K304 em Mi Menor de Mozart (1756-1791): relações temáticas e formais das Schemata
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Galant Style, Schemata, Sonata, Violin and Piano Sonata in E Minor K304, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
This paper analyses the relations between form and Schemata in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s E Minor Violin Sonata K304 (1778). Since this work is the composer’s sole composition in this genre in minor mode and has been attributed with remarkable expressive features once it was conceived during his travel to Mannheim, Munich and Paris – travel that coincide with his mother death – it’s compositional strategies and process are of particular interest. For this reason, through an approach via the Musical Schema concept, we seek to establish logical relations between the composer’s choice for Schemata disposition, form and unity in the work. We conclude that the either reiteration of internal variation process (especially increasing chromatism) in the Schema as the sharing of a set of Schemata on both movements of the work not only support the motivical but also the textural and aural unity, displaying aspects yet not much explored in the compositional process of this First Vienna School master.
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The analogy and its forms on the Thomas’ de Vio (1469-1534) De nominum analogia
Nicolás ARIEL LÁZARO
Original title: La analogía y sus formas en el De nominum analogia de Tomás de Vio (1469-1534)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Analogy, Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Thomas de Vio Cardinal Cajetan.
This work studies the analogy’s estructure and its forms as was conceibed by Thomas de Vio on his Tractatus de nominum analogia. As it is well known, the Cardinal preferred the analogy of proportionality to be used in the fields of metaphysics, i. e. the notion of “ens”, and desestimated the analogy of intrinsic denomination (recovered later by Suárez). On the other hand, Cajetan writes a paper to offer a clear notion about the forms that the analogy should be understood according to Aquinas’ and Aristotle’s original doctrines. After we present the way that the Philosopher studied this topic, and after we had presented Aquinas’ ideas, we will go deeply into the differences between all the mentioned authors. Finally, our conclusions.
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The art of deceiving: the Mandrake, as Machiavelli’s political lesson
Nilo Henrique Neves dos REIS
Original title: El Arte de engañar: la Mandrágora como lección política de Maquiavelo
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Fraud, Machiavelli, Political thinking, The Mandrake.
The comedy The Mandrake is inserted in the role of the political writings of Niccolò Machiavelli in that it also maintains a relationship with the concepts of the corpus maquiavellicus, mainly approaching The Prince. This interlacing allows us to understand how fraud becomes an expedient in the actions of the characters for the achievement of their private projects. However, it is imperative that they construct virtuous discourses that legitimize their actions, for, insofar as their goals can sometimes be considered ignominious by tradition, such actions must be enveloped in illusions that must replace reality by staging for an actor, who seeks to gain collective acquiescence to legitimize the pursuit of his glory. The piece shows how fraud is used to achieve an end and, at the same time, without hurting dominant values. The plot arises under the pretext of causing the comical, but showing the tragedy of politics, and being perhaps an instrument of reflection to understand how well-hidden private interests can be pursued without offending collective interests. Thus, in this way, this writing intends to demonstrate that reading The Mandrake is another way of getting to know Florentino’s political thinking.
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Images of the body in the rhetorical ethos of Cicero (106-43 a. C.) and Descartes (1596-1650)
Giannina BURLANDO
Original title: Imágenes del cuerpo en el ethos retórico de Cicerón (106-43 a. C.) y Descartes (1596-1650)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body images, Cicero, Descartes, Rhetoric.
The main hypothesis of the study tries to establish that there are images of bodies, which play the role of figuring a certain rhetorical ethos in both Cicero and Descartes. Both are critical authors of the rhetoric inherited from their predecessors, who in turn build their new rhetorical ethos. The first section shows a rhetorical ethos permeated by images of neo-academicist bodies of the mythical-epic type that mirror the vital culture of Cicero. The second to the fifth section includes the perspective and images of neo-Renaissance mathematical-geometric bodies in the work of Descartes, in both cases, the images of bodies have sign value of their times.
