IMC 2006: Sessions
Session 113: Meaningful Gesture in Emotionally Exceptional Situations: Its Literary Representation
Monday 10 July 2006, 11.15-12.45
| Sponsor: | Lehrgebiet 'Geschichte und Gegenwart Alteuropas', Fernuniversität Hagen |
|---|---|
| Organiser: | Felicitas Schmieder, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität Hagen |
| Moderator/Chair: | Christoph Dartmann, Sonderforschungsbereich 'Symbolische Kommunikation und gesellschaftliche Wertesysteme', Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster |
| Paper 113-a | Unintentional Gestures: Violation and Desecration of Churches in the Early Middle Ages, as Seen by Clerical Authors (Language: English) Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Hagiography, Mentalities, Religious Life |
| Paper 113-b | Historical and Symbolic Meanings of Body and Gesture in Medieval Miracles, c. 1000-1200 (Language: English) Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Hagiography, Mentalities, Religious Life |
| Paper 113-c | Eschatological Acts and Language in Exciting Times (Language: English) Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Mentalities, Political Thought, Religious Life |
| Abstract | The three papers of the planned session deal each with a special kind of situation - church violation, miraculous healing, and apocalyptic fear - which provokes emotions in the people involved. These participants use gestures and words to express their feelings - the more a situation is habitualized the more gestures and words are ritualized, that is taken from a certain repertoire, and are understood in a more or less normative way by any observer, who describes the story, the gestures, and interprets it and them by their meaning - and the description is normalized in a very special way, if the observer and describer is a cleric. Each paper of the session will study its examples on these three levels of gesture - meaning and representation in order to distinguish between action, experience, and (morally) meaningful representation. |