Gender perspectives: implementation of sociological methodology to Old Testament’s images of the 17th century
Irene BARRENO GARCÍA
Original title: Las perspectivas del género: aplicación de la metodología sociológica a imágenes veterotestamentarias del siglo XVII
Published in
Keywords: Baroque art, Collective imagery, Gender, Misogyny, Religion.
The collective religious and artistic imagery of the seventeenth century is a fundamental point of study at the sociological level, since it shows thoughts and models that governed life in community of the time. For this reason, a study of these images is proposed in this paper with the aim of defending the following thesis: it is possible, with the tools provided by the main historians of art of the sociological school (such as Antal, Francastel, Hadjinicolaou or Hauser), argue that the use of one type or another of images of biblical women (positive or negative) may vary according to gender, understood as a social construct, of the subject performing the representation. In this way, works made by female and male painters will be contrasted on the basis of thematic blocks: Judith beheading Holofernes, Susana and the Elders, Jael and Sisera and Samson and Delilah. Each of the themes, as you can see, presents a conflicting episode that has as protagonists a duo formed by a man and a woman. In this way the opposing positions between the two genders will be much more evident, depending on the hand of the painter.
Medieval animals and gender configurations in the Colonial chronicles: discursive strategies and political order
Pedro Carlos Louzada FONSECA
Original title: Animais medievais e configurações de gênero na cronística colonial: estratégias discursivas e ordem política
Published in Mirabilia Journal 34
Keywords: Colonial chronicles, Discursive strategies, Gender, Medieval animals, Political order, Wonderful and usefulness.
The representation of the natural reality of America epitomized in the chronicles of Colonial Brazil is permeated by a dichotomous posture situated between wonder and utility, whose teleological values can be perfectly verified in medieval references. Using the comparative method and favoring the study of cultural ideas, this article examines the plausibility of the presence of the medieval bestiary and the process or trope of the feminization of the colonial natural reality, configuring oscillations between the simple enjoyment of the wonderful and its practical usefulness. The terms of this dialectical formation are examined in this article seeking to identify its limits in the configuration of reality in the chronicles of Colonial Brazil. In this way, two pillars in the article are approached, namely, the symbolic tradition of the so-called bestiary books and the tropological tradition of the feminizing discourse of reality, both of an ideological and political nature. Therefore, a curious but explainable formation of values were strategically conceived to legitimize the European intentions in the possession of the American lands in colonial times.
