Article
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The Construction of Space(s) and Identity(s) in Medieval Literature: Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales as a Case Study
Mourad EL FAHLI
Published in Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
Keywords: Christendom, Cultural Interchange, Europe, Heathendom, Identity, Infidels, Representation.
This paper examines the engagement of medieval literature in the construction of identities, particularly those of Europe and Muslims. While the former is represented as a unified Christian space, the latter is depicted as an external threat that endangers God’s plan and kingdom. Hence, medieval literature distinguished two opposing spatiality’s namely Christendom and Heathendom. Such spatial configuration deliberately overlooked internal schisms and antagonisms that characterized medieval Europe and instead opted for an ideal utopian vision, which has its origin in crusading discourses that emphasized unity in the face of “infidels.” To examine these issues, the paper takes as an example Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which is considered by many as one of the most influential medieval literary works. Medieval ideological othering has-ad still- shaped understandings and configurations of the various contacts between West and East and between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The paper further enriches the discussion by a focus on cross-cultural interchange that informs Chaucer’s oeuvre, particularly the influence of Medieval Arabic scientific studies on his conception of lovesickness. Such interchange paradoxically problematizes the western condemnatory attitude towards Islam.
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Resenha de АУРОВ, Олег Валентинович (ред.-сост.) Теология и политика. Власть, Церковь и текст в королевствах вестготов (V - начало VIII в.). Исследования и переводы. Москва, Издательский дом .Дело., 2017. - 352 с.
Olga PISNITCHENKO
Original title: AUROV, Oleg Valentinovich (org.). Teologia e Política. Poder, Eclésia e texto nos reinos visigodos (desde o início do século V até o início do século VIII). Investigações e traduções. Moscou: Editora Delo, 2017, 352 p.
Published in Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
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Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
Antonio Celso RIBEIRO, Ricardo da COSTA
Original title: La Música en la Edad Media y en el inicio de la Edad Moderna
Published in Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
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The Medieval Aesthetics: Image and Philosophy
Susana BEATRIZ VIOLANTE; Ricardo da COSTA
Original title: La Estética Medieval: Imagen y Filosofía
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
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Ethics and Aesthetics of Music in Ramon Llull’s Philosophy
Ricardo da COSTA
Original title: Ética e Estética da Música na filosofia de Ramon Llull (1232-1316)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Medieval Aesthetic, Medieval Music, Middle Ages, Ramon Llull.
Brief exposition of the importance of Music in Western aesthetic thought. From Plato, and later, in the Middle Ages, San Isidore of Seville, Guido of Arezzo and Ramon Llull, all thinkers who did meditations on the importance of the aesthetics of harmonic sounds for human existence. In relation to Llull, we deal with the subject from the works Doctrina pueril (c. 1274-1276), Fèlix o el Libre de meravelles (c. 1289), Arbre de Ciència (c. 1295-1296), Ars generalis ultima (c. 1305), Ars brevis (1308) and especially, the Libre de contemplació en Déu (c. 1273-1274).
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The medieval music: between sound number science and beautiful art
Celina A. LÉRTORA MENDOZA
Original title: La música medieval: entre ciencia del número sonoro y arte bella
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Ethics of Music, Harmony, Medieval Music, Melody, Science of Sound.
It is almost a topic both in the history of music and in the history of acoustic science, that in antiquity music was understood especially as the science of sound number, forming part of the quadrivium, and establishing a connection we would say natural between music understood as harmony and rhythm and mathematics and astronomy, discarding the concrete aspect of musical interpretation and its effects. It is also a topic to say that in the Renaissance period there are two new phenomena: the physical (and not only mathematical) consideration of the “sound number”, with the study of vibrations or acoustics, on the one hand. On the other, the incorporation of music into the world of fine arts (that is, considering its sensitive and affective aspect, as “capturing the beautiful”), which would not have happened before, neither in Antiquity nor in the Middle Ages. Without discussing the point related to Antiquity, given that the documentation on this matter is very scarce and susceptible of diverse interpretations that cannot be verified, and focusing on the Middle Ages, an attempt will be made to provide arguments in favor of the following theses. That in the Middle Ages, especially since the 12th century, a process of approach between the consideration of "the mathematical" and the "beautiful" begins, while two concepts of beauty are analyzed and discussed: as splendor of order and as splendor of form. In this way the splendor formae would be a way from which to privilege the musical beauty of the melody. That in this process, long, complex and with many inflection points, two lines can be highlighted: the monastic religious song and the court music (possibly the upper troubadour). In both cases a greater appreciation of the melody gradually appears, seeking to produce a feeling of beauty to bring the soul (that is, the spirit) closer to the superior (religious or the beautiful human) from the materiality of sound.
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The difficulty in distinguishing beauty and art in some medieval expressions
Susana BEATRIZ VIOLANTE
Original title: La dificultad en la distinción de belleza y de arte en algunas expresiones medievales
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Art, Beauty, Perspective in art, Philosophical perspective, Ugliness.
To flee from common places, it would be necessary to determine what is understood as beauty, distinguishing how this concept has been modified in relation to geographical space, periods of historical time and what the different centers of power have instituted as such. Something extremely complex because, fundamentally, I consider that it cannot be defined beyond than what generates an “aesthetic” tension that drives us to say: how nice!!! How ugly!!! But this “tension” is crossed by a whole discourse that makes us distinguish the beautiful and the ugly as such. What do we think of art in the medieval period? Because classical Greek art is still “seen” in many works, especially from Renaissance, modern and even contemporary, but we do not find the different perspective with which the medieval has expressed itself, with that recognition - and it does not seem to interest too much “See” - although, its superposition of close and distant planes - I - dare to find them stylized? in some of Picasso’s, Kandinsky’s, Magritte’s works ... I know it might seem “crazy” what I say, but here go certain images.
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Boethius (c. 477-524) on Beauty: a source for the mediaeval doctrine of the transcendentals concepts
Gerald CRESTA
Original title: La belleza en Boecio (c. 477-524): una fuente para la doctrina medieval de los trascendentales
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Beauty, Boethius, Mediaeval thought, Transcendentals concepts.
The Middle Ages, in its reception and systematization of concepts of the classical tradition, has linked the good with the final cause and what is beautiful with the formal cause. Plotinus and Augustine had already declared that speciosus comes from species, form. In the 13th century, when the doctrine of transcendentals concepts begins its journey in search of foundation, finds in the Summa fratris Alexandri a key in the reference of the form at the substantial principle of life, that is, the concept of Aristotelian form. Franciscan thought, which in this context asume an unusual strength in the work initiated by Alexander of Hales and continued by Buenaventura, provides the medieval thought a new reflection on the basis of the transcendentals concepts: they are convertible and differ logically, and therefore, the truth is thought of as the layout of the form relative to the interior of the entities, while the beauty points out the disposition of an entity in relation to the outside. This paper aims to trace the source of the medieval doctrine about the transcendental beauty in the analysis of the concept of form in Boethius, specifically the formulations presented in both texts De Trinitate and The Consolatione Philosophiae.
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The Knowledge that Beautifies the Soul. Philosophy according to Diotima of Mantinea, Herrad of Hohenbourg and Christine de Pizan
Georgina RABASSÓ
Original title: El saber que embellece el alma. La filosofía según Diotima de Mantinea, Herrada de Hohenbourg y Christine de Pizan
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Beauty, Liberal Arts, Medieval Aesthetics, Medieval Philosophy, Wisdom, Women Philosophers.
Diotima of Mantinea’s arguments in Plato’s Symposium (5th century BC) and the writings of Herrad of Hohenbourg (c. 1125-c. 1195) and Christine de Pizan (1364-1430) show the deep influence the study of philosophy had on them, in varying ways. Analysis of texts (and certain images) in which these writers speak of their relationships with the discipline of philosophy evidences the importance they give to their intellectual work, knowledge and critical analysis, not only for themselves but also as a distinctive component of female beauty as narrated by women themselves. This ideological contribution was key to the genesis of concepts such as “merit”, “nobility” and “excellence”, terms through which the women thinkers of the querelle des femmes (14th-18th centuries) took on the auctoritates of the male gender, who had stipulated that the overriding, exclusive beauty of women was corporeal and, occasionally, spiritual.
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Symbol and visionary experience in Hildegard of Bingen’s Epistolary (1098-1179)
María ESTHER ORTIZ
Original title: Símbolo y experiencia visionaria en el Epistolario de Hildegarda de Bingen (1098-1179)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Epistolary, Hildegard of Bingen, Symbol, Visionary experience.
Hildegard of Bingen’s epistolary gathers, in its almost four hundred letters, a very rich biographic material with XII century historic and cultural data. It also presents a particular style, closed related to her visionary gift. Inside the exploration of this mundus imaginalis, a real aesthetic experience takes place: the symbols constellations that appear in these texts (mainly from nature) correspond with similar images from other languages used by Hildegard such as pictorial and musical ones. By means of some examples, this article inquires to what extent and in which way this perspective broadens the hermeneutic horizon in the epistolary texts.
