IMC 2016: Sessions
Session 830: Gradations of Life, II: Representing Inanimate Matter in Medieval Manuscripts
Tuesday 5 July 2016, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | Universität Hamburg |
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| Organisers: | Isabella Augart, Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar, Universität Hamburg Ilka Mestemacher, Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar, Universität Hamburg |
| Moderator/Chair: | Sara Ritchey, Department of History & Geography, University of Louisiana Lafayette |
| Paper 830-a | Being Licked into Shape: The Bestiary and the Medieval Margins of Creation (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - Painting, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Mentalities |
| Paper 830-b | Living Stones: Vegetated Architecture in Medieval Canon Tables (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - Painting, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Religious Life |
| Paper 830-c | Recreating Transgressive Matter: Pearls in Girolamo da Cremona's Illuminations (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - Painting, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Mentalities |
| Abstract | On the Scala Naturae, the steps between the realms of inanimate nature and the animals are so small that we struggle to see the boundaries, as Aristotle holds it in his Historia animalium. The session aims to explore these boundaries and gradations between inanimate and animate matter in medieval manuscripts. Reconsidering medieval definitions of minerals and stones, plants and animals according to the paradigms of existence, life and moving, we seek to provide perspectives on the transgression of these definitions. What is the status of transgressive matter like amber, corals, fossils, ivory, silk or fur? Looking at manuscripts as the site of textual and visual knowledge, as material object and as aesthetic realm generating the marginalia's own reality, this session brings together interdisciplinary perspectives on the ways materiality was constructed, categorized, and valued in the Middle Ages. |