Panel Proposal for:

=93Permeability and Selfhood=94=20
McGill University, Montreal=20
12th Annual Graduate Conference on Language and Literature=20

=20

Painting about Poetry, Singing about Sculpture:=20

Permeability and Rivalry in the Early Modern Arts

=93If you assert that painting is dumb poetry, then the painter may call =
poetry blind painting=85

Music is not to be regarded as other than the sister of painting=85

The poet remains far behind the painter with respect to the =
representation of corporeal things, and with respect to invisible =
things, he remains behind the musician.=94

(Leonardo, On Painting)

=20

During the early modern period in England and on the continent, the =
relationship between the arts was both volatile and collaborative, at =
once a rivalry and a shared enterprise. Similarities were at the level =
of both content and method: painters visualized scenes from narratives =
and drama, while poets theorized about the ramifications of ut pictura =
poesis. Yet as the quotation from Leonardo shows, the arts were often =
thought to have a paragonal relationship, and so such interart =
discussions often used one art form to point out the limitations for =
representation in the other arts. As Clark Hulse has argued, it was =
between 1400-1600 that the arts of painting and poetry emerged =93for =
the first time as fields of knowledge,=94 and =93acquire[d] a common =
lore that constitute[d] the vocabulary for talking about the =
relationship between the two of them=94 (The Rule of Art 16). However, =
this relationship and rivalry went beyond painting and poetry; =
sculpture, music, architecture, landscape gardens, and maps need to be =
considered, as do developments in science and psychology, such as the =
perspective theory experimented by thinkers like Alberti.

=20

This panel=92s aim is to explore what it means for the arts to be =
=93permeable=94 during the early modern period. It also encourages =
papers to explore the larger social, political, cultural, historical, =
and national implications of such a discussion.=20

=20

Papers may address, but are certainly not limited to:

=20

-readings of ekphrasis in poetry or of the depiction of narratives =
(classical or otherwise) in paintings

-consideration of the ut pictura poesis tradition and pictorialism in =
early modern literature

-the history of interart criticism: Panofsky to Gombrich to Mitchell

-social circles of poets, painters, and other artists

-the relationship between text and image in the staging of Renaissance =
drama

-texts as iconophilic, iconophobic, or iconoclastic

-the influence of the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation =
on the relationship between the arts

-the relationship of poetry and painting to other arts: music, =
architecture, sculpture

-reading other kinds of images: maps, building plans, religious icons

-the influence of recent politically and culturally specific critical =
approaches for understanding early modern interart relationships on =
reconstructing early modern artistic theory and practice.

=20

Please send 300-word abstracts to meredith.donaldson_at_mail.mcgill.ca by 5 =
January 2006.

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Received on Tue Nov 29 2005 - 16:27:04 EST