Article
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The senses are hidden in documents
Gerardo RODRÍGUEZ; Gisela CORONADO SCHWINDT
Original title: Los sentidos se nos esconden en los documentos
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
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The royal voice into the Vita Wilfrithi of Eddius Stephanus
Alberto ASLA
Original title: La voz real en la Vita Wilfrithi de Eddius Stephanus
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
Keywords: Eddius Stephanus, King, Vita Whilfrithi, Voice.
The history of Anglo-Saxon England is a fruitful field of research for Spanish-speaking historiography, even so, and despite having some works linked to philology and theology, for history is almost nil. In this sense, our work, although small, aims to account for the wealth of this period through an absolutely different and specific approach: history of the senses. And from there, in order to find a medieval soundscape is that our goal will be to trace and analyze the royal “voice” from the dispute between the two traditions of Christianity existing during the seventh century and later its subsequent establishment as a religio licitas.
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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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The royal entries in the kingdom of Castile towards the end of the Middle Ages: the sound universe of power
Gisela CORONADO SCHWINDT
Original title: Las entradas reales en el reino de Castilla hacia el final de la Edad Media: el universo sonoro del poder
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
Keywords: Castile, History of the senses, Royal entries, Sounds.
In this study, we will make a first approximation to one of the most complex festive events of the Castilian low - medieval world, as were the royal entries in the urban spaces of the Kingdom. From the point of view of perception, we consider that these acts of celebration operated on the sensory universe of the community to strengthen the presence of the Crown by establishing social relations that cemented the bonds between the subjects and the representations of royal power. To verify this, we will analyse, through the theoretical and methodological postulates of the History of the senses, the role that the auditory sense and the sounds played in the actual entries and other events that occurred in the urban scenarios during the reigns of The House of Trastámara sovereigns to that of Charles of Habsburg, recounted in various chronicles and official documents.
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The sound of evil in two reflections of Francisco de Vitoria
Javier CHIMONDEGUY
Original title: La sonoridad del mal en dos relecciones de Francisco de Vitoria
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
Keywords: Dominicans, Evil, Mundialization, Sonority.
The present article seeks to interpret the concept of evil in the School of Salamanca in the first half of the XVIth century. Making an overview of the concept of evil related to the soundscape and the sensorial perception relying on the relections taught by the theologian from Burgos in the University of Salamanca.
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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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Membership marks. The worshipers of Dionysus and her sensory traces
María Cecilia COLOMBANI
Original title: Las marcas de la pertenencia. Las adoradoras de Dioniso en las huellas sensoriales
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
Keywords: Bacchae, Bodies, Movement, Sensory marks.
The work traces the marks of the Dionysian thiasos as it appears in The Bacchae 1-134, fundamentally attending the relevant news of the choir. We do it from a theoretical installation model that seeks to relieve the sensory marks present in the Dionysian phenomenon. The polysemy of the god's thiasos as a moment of approach and fusion with the divinity provides us with a series of sensory elements of extreme wealth. Our project is to show how this body sensorial impacts two fundamental brands: strength and movement. The living body of the bacchante is movement captured from a visual dimension that, not only the texts but also the attic ceramic vessels, have helped to recreate from what we could call a visual metaphor. The visual impact of the ménade reflects a flexible, frantic body of ecstatic possession. The images we will analyse impact the view from its polysemy significance. The head, the torso, the hair, the feet, constitute the network of images that enter into a game of multiple meanings, which constitute the essence of Dionism. The ritual that unfolds in the festive dimension summons a second sensory mark: the auditory one. Indeed, festive excitement and divine possession generate a loudness that floods the tragic stage. From the Dioniso Bromio brand itself, which refers to the bellow of the god, to the musical instruments of dance, the sound accompanies the closeness of the god and his faithful within the framework of an auditory metaphor of marked symbolic repercussion.
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Wet words. Representation of passions and aquatic metaphors in De Noe by Ambrose of Milan
Lidia Raquel MIRANDA
Original title: Palabras mojadas. Representación de las pasiones y metáforas acuáticas en Noé de Ambrosio de Milán
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
Keywords: Ambrose of Milan, Metaphor, Noah, Passions, Water.
De Noe by Ambrose of Milan (ca. 378) reflects on the human condition and the consequences of man's actions in the natural order. The Christian commentator exposes the patriarch’s life, customs and acts since an allegorical interpretation of Scripture and considering him as the prototype of the just and wise man, crossed by passions but who manages to choose the right path. The ark is a symbol of the world, from which it is possible understand the system of analogies on which the text is based, since it is also a representative figure of the body and the person. Thus, the ark is presented as the condition of sinners –unstable, corruptible, and at the mercy of the swings of the soul–, a figure that gives rise to a set of metaphors around water and aquatic issues. We focus on the philological and discursive analysis of these metaphors with the aim of explaining their symbolic projections and their moral reach.
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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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Tamerlane’s female court. Sensory and power from the perspective of Ruy González de Clavijo (1403-1406)
Laura CARBÓ
Original title: La corte femenina de Tamorlán. Sensorialidad y poder desde la perspectiva de Ruy González de Clavijo (1403-1406)
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
Keywords: 15th century, Embassy to Tamerlan, Materiality, Power, Senses.
Ruy González de Clavijo starred, together with a team of ambassadors, the second mission sent by Henry III of Castile to Tamerlan in 1403, whose round trip itinerary spans three years. Clavijo's meticulous account includes the timurid protocol deployment, which often has the women of the court as protagonists. The ambassadors' approach to the women's world was eminently sensory: the five senses came to the aid of the travel story, with visual, tactile, auditory, tasteful, olfactory experiences that allowed the narrator to communicate the experiences occurred in the presence of women. In addressing to "sensory" we mean both the material world and the sensory experience itself. The historical study will focus on the’ representations of medieval objects (clothing, meals, setting, organization of spaces, buildings) and the consideration of its users, simultaneously addressing both the intellectual and material substrates of medieval culture. This study of the particular feminine spaces allows showing a relationship between culture, materiality and power in a temporal and spatial arc reduced to the itinerary of the embassy.
