-Index-
Preface
The Medieval Aesthetics: Image and Philosophy
Susana BEATRIZ VIOLANTE; Ricardo da COSTA
Original title: La Estética Medieval: Imagen y Filosofía
Special Issue
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)
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).
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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)
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.
The Latin Middle Ages and Nature: the image of the garden in the Roman de la Rose
Adriana MARTÍNEZ
Original title: El Medievo latino y la Naturaleza: la imagen del jardín en el Roman de la Rose
Keywords: Garden, Middle Ages, Roman de la Rose.
The image of the garden, synecdoche of nature, which traverses the Latin middle ages is base don judeo-christian culture that makes the concept of Paradise. However, in the 12 th century a renewal is produced in thinking nature not only as a reality outside, inteligible, and in the following century, a text like the Roman de la Rose installed a concept of nature where the garden becomes privilegeg stage of love, a new Paradise.
Andreas Capellanus (XII century) and The game of Love
Nicolás MARTÍNEZ SÁEZ
Original title: Andrés el Capellán (siglo XII) y el juego del Amor
Keywords: Andreas Capellanus, Court Love, Game, Segle XII.
Andreas Capellanus writes De amore at the end of the 12th century in a context of interweaving of traditions such as the Christian clerical, the feudal courtesan and the troubadour poetry. In this work, a new aesthetic sensibility is represented in love that acquires a playful dimension. The dialogues that arise between people of different social classes and the so-called Love´s Court reveal this game where men and women argue in favor of a love that does not obey social classes. De amore is composed of three books. The first two are those where seriousness and play seem to mix in a work that is both a scientific treatise and a practical manual of the rules governing worldly relations between men and women. The last book can be understood in a playful dimension where it is possible to win in only one way: by giving up.
Dialectic of Love: about the Far-near
Ernesto MANUEL ROMÁN
Original title: Dialéctica del amor: sobre lo Lejos-cerca
Keywords: Far-near, Hadewijch of Antwerp, Love, Margarita Porete, Mystical literature, Troubadour poetry.
In this text we seek to explore The Mirror of simple souls that are annihilated and that only dwell in wanting and wanting love focusing on the problem of the Far-near. This concept, and its particular way of rationing with the image and the word, will allow us to draw relationships between Marguerite Porete and other writers of the period. We will also seek to explore the philosophical questions that arise from Marguerite's book and her conception of love. We will begin by seeing how, for Plato, love occupied the place of the demonic, that is, of the threshold between mortals and immortals. Then we will stop to analyse the love of far from the troubadour poetry, where the relation of distance-closeness of love that will characterize the Far-near is forged. Finally we will dwell on the use of this logic made by Hadewijch of Antwerp and Marguerite to think about their annihilation. The latter is also an abandonment of the virtues and an overcoming of the Reason in Love.
The configuration of the beloved body in medieval romance: idealization and eroticism in Le Chevalier de la charrette by Chrétien de Troyes (c. 1135-1185)
María ESTRELLA
Original title: La configuración del cuerpo amado en el roman medieval: idealización y erotismo en El caballero de la Carreta de Chrétien de Troyes (c. 1135-1185)
Keywords: Body, Chrétien de Troyes, Medieval romance, Wound.
The main purpose of this article is to analyse the configuration of the body in Le Chevalier de la charrette (1176/1181), written by Chrétien de Troyes, which narrates the adulterous love of Lancelot and Queen Geneva. We are interested in observing the survival of the doctrine of courteous love in the construction of the chivalrous hero and the character of the beloved woman, who is worshiped as a superior being. A "religion of love" is outlined, which, according to Denis de Rougemont, is one of the axes that articulates this doctrine. At the same time, this idealization is combined with the physical presence of the body, especially in the description of the sexual encounter of the couple. We will explore a conception of love that is delineated as pleasurable suffering and characterized by an eroticism that combines joy and pain, which is represented in the topic of the wound.
Body metaphors in goliardic poetry: Altercatio cordis et oculi (The dispute between the eye and the heart) and Alte Clamat Epicurus (The cult of the stomach)
Mariana BLANCO
Original title: Metáforas corporales en la poesía de los goliardos: Altercatio cordis et oculi (La disputa entre el ojo y el corazón) y Alte Clamat Epicurus (El culto del estómago)
Keywords: Body images, Carmina Burana, Goliards, Medieval Latin poetry, Middle Ages.
Born in the twelfth century, in the literary world of medieval schools, goliardic poetry is considered one of the most original manifestations of the Medieval Latin lyric for its rebellious vitalism, its celebration of the body and its irreverent criticism of the social order. In this article we propose to analyze some body images and corporal metaphors recurrent in the poetics of goliardism, focusing on the dialectical relations between soul-body and virtue-vice, characteristics of the medieval worldview. We will take into consideration the anonymous poems Altercatio cordis et oculi (The dispute between the eye and the heart) and Alte Clamat Epicurus (The cult of the stomach) and we will study the tensions between the noble and ignoble parts of the body, between the ascetic ideal and excess, between the exaltation of sensual pleasures and the condemnation of the flesh as the origin of sin. Likewise, we will examine the way in which body representation is mediated by the intellectual formation of poets in its double aspect: the classical Latin and the biblical-ecclesiastical traditions.
The parody of the trip to the underworld in Novella di Ferondo (ottava della terza giornata), in Giovanni Boccaccio’s (1313-1375) Decameron
Liliana NOEMÍ SWIDERSKI
Original title: La parodia del viaje al inframundo en la Novella di Ferondo (ottava della terza giornata), del Decameron, de Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)
Keywords: Boccaccio, Carnivalization, Ferondo, Parody, Trip to the underworld.
The Novella di Ferondo develops two plot-lines typical of the medieval tradition, but whose joint approach shows the passage to the Renaissance worldview. On the one hand, the topic of adultery characteristic of the fabliaux, with their main characters: the stupid and vigilant husband, the seductive and submissive wife, the astute and lustful lover. On the other hand, the trip to the underworld to be purified by corporal punishment, which is related to the serious and moralizing line of the exempla and the Divina Commedia. However, the parody of the sacred discourses, the irony and the rupture of the stylistic isotopy constitute a burlesque eschatology. The humorous references to death, purgatory, the resurrection of the flesh and even the Annunciation show, in Bakhtin's terms, how laughter relaxes the fears imposed by official culture. The corrective violence that Ferondo suffers, as well as the exaltation of free erotic enjoyment and the identity mutations caused by disguise, reveals the resistance against disciplinary mechanisms. The ending of the story, a utopia of freedom conquered by deception to power, represents a victory of Renaissance hedonism over medieval asceticism.
The control of the bodies in The Physician’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)
Candela ARRAIGADA
Original title: El control de los cuerpos en The Physician’s Tale y The Wife of Bath’s Tale, de Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)
Keywords: Arthurian subject, Canterbury Tales, Control over the Body, Literature of the Middle Ages.
In Una historia del cuerpo en La Edad Media (2005), Jacques Le Goff and Nicolas Truong point out that the oscillations between rejection and exaltation, humiliation and veneration, cross the medieval Christian body. In line with this approach, our paper aims to examine two stories belonging to The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, in which the conflicts between old age and youth are glimpsed, articulated mainly around the ideals of virginity and chastity, which reveal the links between eroticism and control over bodies. Both stories will establish a counterpoint between two models of women. The Physician’s Tale offers a paradigmatic perspective of the physical and psychic virtues of a young woman and reveals the absolute value given to virginity. On the other hand, in The Wife of Bath’s Tale the Arthurian subject and the structure of the quest will serve the analysis of the power relationships between oldness / ugliness and youth / beauty, in intimate relation with the Prologue that precedes it, focused on the modern notion of experience.
Approach to the theatrical use of the body in La Farce de Pathelin (c. 1470)
Alejandra DA CRUZ; Juan Cruz ZARIELLO VILLAR
Original title: Aproximación al uso teatral del cuerpo en La Farce de Pathelin (c. 1470)
Keywords: Body, La Farce de Pathelin, Medieval Theater, Scenic resources.
In this paper, we will try to examine the functions of the body in La Farce de Pathelin (c. 1470), a significative text in French profane theatre in the Low Middle Ages. Despite the moral and formative intentions of the religious representations, the farce seeks the spectator’s laugh, with a simple plot and scenic resources related to the disguise or violence. Our analysis focus on body’s representations in three dimensions: body and knowledge and the figure of the doctor; the interactions between both sick body and mind; the relationship between body and religion. We will highlight the theatrical simulation of Maese Pathelin in order to fool the draper.
Semblance of Arabic Poetry
Juan BRANDO
Original title: Semblanza de la poesía árabe
Keywords: Al-Andalus, Arabism, Islamic Law, Middle Ages, Poetry.
We propose a brief approach to the Arabic Poetry of the later Middle Ages with a Reading key centered on the metaphors alluding to wine, wáter, tears, dew and flowers. Prohibition and desire, postponenment and melancholy by the absence of the beloved or exile, the pains drowned in wine, are the ways by which poetry becomes a consideration of trascendence and primordial unity.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) and the Aesthetics of his Age
Antonia Javiera CABRERA MUÑOZ
Original title: Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) y la Estética de su Tiempo
Keywords: Aesthetics, Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes, Renaissance.
Contrary to other writers in the Spanish Golden Age, such as Luis de Góngora, Francisco de Quevedo and Calderón de la Barca, Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) is considered as being an autodidact by experts. From the publication of La Galatea (1585) on, Cervantes begins to devote himself fully to Literature. His journey through several genres and subgenres makes him both pertaining and alien to his own time, since he starts to deal in his works with a variety of aesthetic topics (authorship, reading, literary creation, etc.) that put in question particularly the previous age, the Renaissacence. The aim of this study is to survey some of those aesthetic topics in Don Quixote (1605 and 1615), in order to establish Cervantes’s worldview as the author of the most ingenious work in Spanish Literature.
Stupid, drunks and giants: satire, carnivalism and hedonism in Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) and François Rabelais (c. 1483-1553)
Mariano OLIVERA
Original title: De estultos, beodos y gigantes: sátira, carnavalismo y hedonismo en Erasmo de Rotterdam (1466-1536) y François Rabelais (c. 1483-1553)
Keywords: Carnivalism, Epicureanism, Grotesque, Hedonism, Satire.
Satire was genuinely expressed as the disruptive and irritating power against the status quo of medieval and Renaissance society. A unique rhetorical and poetic element, loaded with critical expressions of a political, moral and pedagogical nature, associated with a hedonistic and impulsive vision of vitality. Consequently, related to the common and happy sense of the vulgar, the plebe “estulta” or “foolish” in front of the ascetic, the reflection and the mortified and rationalistic experience of the wise or solitary scholar. A biblical sentence illustrates it: Stultorum infinitus est numerus (“The number of fools is infinite”). Satire presents the world upside down, society upside down, the world revolutionized, happiness as foolishness. Finally, it shows us another perspective in which the pleasure and the hedonistic expression of the body have their privileged place in front of the rule and the monastic and ecclesiastical moral regulations. The writings Praise of the Madness of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Gargantúa and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (sixteenth century), mark important antecedents of satire (and its grotesque derivation) in philosophy and literature, where it is expressed in the first work a recovery of the epicurean philosophy and in the second the extreme hedonism in its grotesque character. The aim of our work is to indicate the carnivalesque-hedonistic vision and moral criticism expressed in such works.
The five senses, the body and the spirit
Eric PALAZZO
Original title: Les cinq sens, le corps et l’esprit
Keywords: Body, Five senses, Spirit.
According to the Christian authors of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the general tendency in the appreciation of the symbolic meaning of the five senses rests on the consideration of the fundamental unity in man, between the body and the spirit, allowing to establish the doctrine of the corporal senses and the spiritual senses. From the first centuries of Christianity, theologians and philosophers endeavored to convey the Greek concept of “man” or the balance between body and spirit, or soul, as a superior source, following in this, on the one hand, the philosophical ideas of Plato and, on the other hand, those of Aristotle. The biblical passage that we have considered as the founding text of this conception of the unity of the body and spirit in man, in Christian perspective, is an excerpt from the first epistle to the Corinthians. The third century Christian sees, in the same way, the Christian concept of the five spiritual senses and their correspondences with the five corporal senses. Origins (185?-253?) Has been the initiator of the concept of the spiritual senses leading, mainly, to the reconciliation of the soul and the body by the establishment of correspondences between the bodily senses and the spiritual senses whose place is established by the Incarnation of the Word. Some expressions of human anatomy in the manuscripts of the second half of the Middle Ages, show strong similarities with the ideas of Lactantius regarding the relationship between the outer man and the inner man and as to the place given to the head in both site of the soul and where the main organs of the senses reside. As in most areas of theology, the thought of Augustine of Hippo has had a considerable influence on the Christian understanding of the five senses, which implies a deep reflection on the relationship between body and mind in Christianity. We can also mention Pedro Damiano in whom we find a pronounced interest in the metaphor of the Man-city where the senses are compared with doors and windows that give access to the outside world and their knowledge. A famous drawing contained in a manuscript realized in the German abbey of Heilbronn, in century XII, summarizes, in himself, a long part of the explored elements on the relation between the body and the spirit in the Christian theology of the Middle Ages from the exploration of the five senses. As we will see, the drawing also suggests a deep reflection on the sensory dimension in the journey of man on earth and in the perspective of what he will have to do in the future, guided by the model of Christ and the Christian virtues. On folio 130v, we see a final full page drawing where the role of the five senses in the journey of man on earth and in the hereafter is essential. In some aspects, the iconography of the drawings in folio 130v continues the reflection on the theme of the persecution of the Church or, in a broader way, the struggle between good and evil, which is at the center of the image of the mentioned folio. It expresses the theme of the path of life of the good and the bad or the two paths of human life. In the lower right part of the composition, the bust of the personification of nature brings out a naked man who begins to climb a staircase whose first five steps are assimilated to the five senses by their inscriptions. In the middle part of the image, the staircase separates into two paths offered to man to continue his course on earth and beyond. At the crossing of roads, man can choose between good and evil. The character who chose the path of evil is mounted by an imp that pushes down with the help of a fork in which is inscribed, in Latin, the maxim: “depraved behavior.” It will not escape the attentive observer that the character who chose the “depraved behavior” dresses as a prince and continues the “ascent” of his ladder resting on the bars identified by imprudence, intemperance, inconstancy and injustice. In the lower part of the image, the “evil man” is expected in hell by the demons and the devil himself who has in his left hand some types of phylacteries that allude to the “seven demons” that are the negative counterpart of Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit represented, too, in the form of phylacteries in the hands of Christ enthroned in majesty in the upper register of composition. The iconography of the folio 130v of the Heilbronn manuscript is, in many aspects, a unique case in Christian images of the Middle Ages. Certainly, the commentator of the thirteenth-century liturgy does not associate the five senses with the degrees on which he lectures. In spite of this, one has the right to suppose that, in the image of the German manuscript, the five senses are considered, also, virtues, in the same way as the other steps, the four cardinal virtues of the “positive” staircase presented by Man on the condition that he manifests the desire to reach the vision of God with a good intention and thanks to his will.
Body and Image in teaching of Medieval Philosophy
Libertad MARTINEZ LARRAÑAGA
Original title: El cuerpo y la imagen en la enseñanza de la Filosofía Medieval
Keywords: Body, Image, Medieval Philosophy, Monotheistic creationism, Platonic dualism, Teaching, Theory of incarnation.
This paper describes a teaching experience developed as a teaching assistant of Medieval Philosophy at the College of Humanities – UNMDP, where the concepts of body and conforming and disconforming image were presented according to the theories of contemporary philosopher J. M. Schaeffer. This author seeks to explain the importance of the image in Western cultural tradition for its association with the body, an association that occurs in the medieval period from the synergy between three sources of thought: Platonic dualism, monotheistic creationism and the theory of incarnation. The lesson topic was specially chosen to present a contemporary elaboration on a medieval theme, and at the same time to perform a significant teaching experience with the use of images –both from the analyzed period and contemporary. Students were asked to analize aestheticaly and philosophicaly those images, with argumentative clarity, adequate use of the concepts developed in class and elements of visual language.
The Aesthetic dimension of Existence. Life as a work of art. From Socrates (c.470-399) to Saint Augustine (354-430)
María CECILIA COLOMBANI
Original title: La dimensión estética de la existencia. La vida como obra de arte. De Sócrates (c.470-399) a San Agustín (354-430)
Keywords: Confession, Foucault, Parrhesia, Truth.
The present communication consists of highlighting certain features of the parrhesiastic dimension present in Socrates so that, from this theoretical presupposition, we can develop an arc of reading with the confession in Saint Augustine. The purpose is to build a line of continuity with what we can consider an act of veridiction in the Foucauldian sense. We are motivated by the interest in marking a line between a parrhesiastic function and a confessional device and see what ethical-anthropological consequences are given from such acts. Above all, how both discursive practices, which obey specific rules of formation, are related to the so-called arts of existence linked to the etho-poietic dimension of making life a work of art; this is the path we want to travel to think the aesthetic question, associated with ethics and politics, as acts that occur within the framework of power relations that produce transformations on the real.
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)
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.
Alcibiades’s silens: notes of aesthetics and philosophy in Pico (1463-1494), Erasmus (1467-1436) and Bruno (1542-1600)
Julián BARENSTEIN
Original title: Los silenos de Alcibíades: notas de estética y filosofía en Pico (1463-1494), Erasmo (1467-1436) y Bruno (1542-1600)
Keywords: Aesthetics and Philosophy, Erasmus, Giordano Bruno, Pico della Mirandola, Silens.
Of the multiple influences that Plato’s philosophy has had on Renaissance thought, in this paper we are interested in focusing on a specific and even minimal question, namely, that reference to the silens that appears in Sympsium (215b-c). In our work we propose, then, to trace the presence of the concept of Silenus in three authors: Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467-1436) and Giordano Bruno (1542-1600). We will stop, in this way, in the famous Epistle that Pico sent to Ermolao Barbaro in 1485 and that is part of the De Genere dicendi philosophorum, in the monumental Adagia of Erasmus, especially in the adage 2201, Sileni Albibiadis, and in the dialogues Spaccio de la bestia trionfante and Cabala del cavallo Pegaseo by Giordano Bruno. The Silens, as is well known, are hollow figurines, horrible looking, disgusting and despicable, inside which are full of gems, exotic jewels and precious. Our research aims to show that, according to the selected authors, this is the philosopher’s own way of seeing himself, his aesthetics –whose most finished and original example is Socrates– and, by extension, the way of being proper to philosophy.
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
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.
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)
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.
The transit of the medieval truth to the modern knowledge – Chronicle of a phase that out of orbit
Carlos ENRIQUE BERBEGLIA
Original title: El tránsito de la verdad medieval al conocimiento moderno – crónica de una fase que se desorbita
Keywords: Authority, Belief, Effectiveness, Limit, Need, Order, Precision, True.
The Middle Ages, in their lengthy centuries of existence, sum up a polysemous era. It is an epoch that bridges the gap between a preceding time, which it knows and from which it extracts enhanced knowledge and experience, and a succeeding time, which it ignores as a human period but knows at a suprahuman level, a knowledge coded as the end of times, which they consider imminent, although that imminence may take centuries to come true. Polysemous because, in spite of appearances, and much interpretation with an ideological bias that considers it a monolithic era ruled by just one way of thinking and acting in consequence, it treasures and displays literatures expressed in languages that, later on, will come to light in their full richness with the dawn of nationalities, philosophies that, though influenced by their theological and Greco-Latin root, become prodromes of future thought, technological and architectonic changes that will last indelibly. It was an age that possessed extended self-awareness, in contrast with the following ones, which reprocess it at a more and more accelerated pace and occasionally downplay its importance. It believed it was the owner of absolute truth; in this respect it does differ from subsequent times, except for the means it implemented to defend it, given that those “subsequent times”, in spite of disowning it, do not usually resign themselves to the fragility of the knowledge it obtains and resort to inquisitorial methods to defend it. The subtitle of this essay refers to the exorbitance that characterized the end of this era, depreciated or appreciated depending on the spirit of those times succeeding it, which means that each period reinterprets it, the destiny of everything human, which, from “our perspective”, medieval people sought to overcome.
Articles
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) and the use of musical metaphors and musical myths in his texts
Eirini ARTEMI
Keywords: Clement of Alexandria, Hymns, Music, Musical metaphors, Musical myths, New Song, Protrepticus.
Clement of Alexandria or Titus Flavius Clemens was familiar with classical Greek philosophy and literature. When he converted to Christianity, he tried to draw some clear distinctions against the paganism. Many things from paganism were interpreted by a way that serve Christian theology. In Clement of Alexandria’s Protrepticus, the church father tries to explain how the well-known classical music-myths can be used to create the knowledge of a Superior “New Song”. Instead of that, Christians serve the New Song – Jesus in Church and outside the Church, they continue to “amuse themselves with impious playing, and amatory quavering, occupied with flute-playing, and dancing, and intoxication, and all kinds of trash. They who sing thus, and sing in response, are those who before hymned immortality, –found at last wicked and wickedly singing this most pernicious palinode, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”. Clement explains that by this way christians remain christians in name so they are dead in God not tomorrow. But not tomorrow in truth, but already, are these dead to God. In this paper, we are going to show that the polemic of Clement Alexandria was not against ancient music and musical instruments, but against the way that they were used by Christians. Also, we will analyse the method that Clement employs the musical metaphors and musical myths in his texts in order to educate Christians and to manage to earn the salvation.
A contribution to the study of a scarcely known atín translation: The Life of John the Almsgiver [BHL 4392]
Olga SOLEDAD BOHDZIEWICZ
Original title: Una contribución al estudio de una traducción latina poco conocida: la Vida de Juan el Lismonero [BHL 4392]
Keywords: John the Almsgiver, Latin hagiography, Leontius of Neapolis, Re-writing, Translation.
Paris, BNF, Lat. 3820, copied during 14th century, is a liturgical manuscript, an homiliary-legendary, written for its use at the cathedral of St. Trophime in Arles. There the life of John the Almsgiver stands, as it is usual for byzantine martyrologies, in No-vember. The text appears to be a “re-adaptation” of the hagiography written by Leon-tius of Neapolis rather than a proper translation of it, for a selection of its chapters gets a new organization in order to fit the pattern of a more conventional vita. The purpose of this paper is to make a first approach to analyse this scarcely studied text by considering its translation and rewriting techniques.
On beauty and love in the transition from paganism to Christianity
Humberto Schubert COELHO
Original title: Sobre a beleza e o amor na transição do paganismo ao Cristianismo
Keywords: Augustine, Beauty, Love, Plato, Plotinus.
While Plato is considered an absolute grounding for aesthetics, invaluable contributions to the concept of beauty were offered by the Christian thought. Although the underestimation of such contribution as a mere reflex of Platonism is not sustainable, it is undeniable that substantial part of platonic ideas on beauty and the role of love in the connection between consciousness and the supreme transcendent metaphysics of the source of being, which is identified with the beauty, exerts the most powerful influence on the Christian conception. The aesthetics in Antiquity, thus, consists in a dialogue between the beautiful Greek form and the Christian sentiment on the light of platonic idealism. Therefore, in order to understand the introspection and sublimation of Christian aesthetics the study of the delicate transition between cultural, religious and philosophical realms, and how this transition intensifies the emphasis on the role of love in the aesthetical economy, is mandatory.
Religious Dialogue and Dialogicity in Middle Ages: an analysis of three cases
Natalia JAKUBECKI
Original title: Diálogo religioso y dialogicidad en la Edad Media: análisis de tres casos
Keywords: Dialogicity, Dialogues, Gilbert Crispin, Odo of Cambrai, Peter Alfonsi.
This paper aims to analyse the dialogical reaches of three literary dialogues written in the heart of Latin Christianity between the end of the 11th century and the beginning of the 12th century, whose exceptionality lies in the fact that they were originated by real circumstances. They are the Disputatio against Iudaeum Leonem Nomine, by Odo of Cambrai, the Disputatio inter Iudaei et Christianum, by Gilbert Crispin, and the Dialogus against Iudaeos, by Peter Alfonsi. The analysis hopes not only to throw some light on these dialogues but also to offer a model to analyse the remaining dialogues of this type, thus contributing to the reflection on this textual form so dear to the Middle Ages.
A controversial written by Arnaldus de Villa Nova (1242-1311)
Noeli Dutra ROSSATTO
Original title: Um escrito polêmico de Arnaldo de Vilanova (1242-1311)
Keywords: Arnold of Vilanova, Crown of Aragon, Franciscans, Joachim of Fiore, Middle Ages.
I present to the reader the translation of the text De gladius iugulans thomatistas (The sword that slaughters the thomatists) of the Catalan philosopher, doctor and alchemist Arnold of Vilanova (1242-1311). The text teaches the tension between the ideas of the Spiritual Franciscans of the Late Middle Ages, usually linked to the thought of the Calabrian Abbot Joachim of Fiore (12th century) and the scholasticism of the Dominicans. From the contact of Arnold of Vilanova with the Aragonese Court, we have the link between three important themes for the current studies of the presence of medieval political ideas in Latin-American colonial: the Feasts of the Empire of the Divine of Luso-Brazilian tradition, the Franciscans and the Joachimites. In terms of content, the translated text summarizes the main topics covered in the works of the Catalan philosopher, including: the figurative interpretation of writing and its application to the reading of history, evangelical poverty in Franciscan discussion of using poverty (usus pauper) and the biblical prophecies about the end of time and the coming of the Antichrist.
Dante (c. 1265-1321) and the Musical Aesthetics of the Divine Comedy
Gustavo Cambraia FRANCO
Original title: Dante (c. 1265-1321) e a Estética Musical da Divina Comédia
Keywords: Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Medieval Aesthetics, Music, Poliphony.
The present article aims to analyze the figurative-musical aesthetics elaborated by the poet Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy, through the use of musical concepts, contemporary to the author, of monodia gregoriana and choral polyphony. The aim is to demonstrate how Dantian musical theory is applied in the Commedia using an imagetic and instrumental musical repertoire and a specific set of lexical and poetic expressions, whose function is to express, in a comprehensible way to the reader and interpreter, the sonorous dissonance, disharmony and the antimusical cacophony of Hell, the nature of the sacred, monodic Gregorian chant of Purgatory, and the symphonic and polyphonic musical nature of Paradise.
Representations and symbols from East to West: rebirth of Phoenix
Maria Leonor García da CRUZ
Original title: Representações e símbolos de Oriente a Ocidente: o renascimento da Fênix
Keywords: Eternity, Myth, Phoenix, Rebirth, Symbology.
Passing over vast times and spaces, the symbology of the Phoenix is found in legends from China, India and Persia, varying in details, constructing a myth that the West inherited from Egypt and which it helps to consolidate in classical, mediaeval and modern times with projections even in our modern times. Is the only thing the European Phoenix has in common with the Chinese Phoenix, i.e. Feng-Huang the mythical creation related to inheritances of mankind and a collective unconscious, deposit of images and symbols (Jung)? A comparison of details jointly emphasises its spiritual energy, from rare beauty to divine virtue, from sanctification and purity to eternal love, to prosperity and good governance, from singularity and excellence to rebirth and eternity.
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
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.
Medieval History in Brazil and in Maranhão in Perspective: Teaching and Research
Adriana ZIERER; Solange Pereira OLIVEIRA
Original title: A História Medieval no Brasil e no Maranhão em perspectiva: ensino e pesquisa
Keywords: 21st century, Annales, Medieval History, School and University, Society, Teaching and Research.
The studies of Medieval History have been consolidating in Maranhão with the expansion of the productions directed to the teaching and academic research in this historiographic field. In this article we present a general approach on the substantial advances of works related to this historical period in the State, seeking to underline the relevance of possible ways for the teaching and research of the Middle Ages in the context of the belief and imaginary of local culture in Maranhão.
