UPDATE: Permeability and Rivalry in the Early Modern Arts (grad) (1/27/06; McGill, 3/11/06-3/12/06)

full name / name of organization: 
Meredith J. Donaldson

****** Paper Proposal Deadline Changed to Friday 27th January 2006 =
******
  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 27 January 2006.

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Received on Sat Jan 14 2006 - 09:47:27 EST