Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Theatre Companies ◽  
Performance Traditions ◽  
Experimental Theatre ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Creative Artists ◽  
The Middle Ages

Graeco-Roman epic poetry was the staple of the early operatic repertoire and it continues to provide a rich storehouse of themes for contemporary creative artists working in divergent traditions. Since Tim Supple and Simon Reade’s stage adaptation of Ted Hughes’s Tales from Ovid for the RSC (1999), versions of Greek and Roman epics have routinely provided raw material for the performance repertoire both within major cultural institutions and from emergent, experimental theatre companies. The chapters in this volume range widely across time (the Middle Ages to the present), place (Europe, Asia, and the Americas), and genres (lyric, film, dance, opera) in their searches for ‘epic’ content and form in diverse performance arenas. The anxieties about the ability to write epic in the early modern world in some way explain, together with the precedent of Greek tragedy’s reworking of epic material, this migration to the theatre. Yet equally, with this migration, epic encountered the barriers imposed by neoclassicists, who sought to restrict serious theatre to a narrowly defined reality that precluded epic’s broad sweeps across time and place. In many instances in recent years, the fact that the Homeric epics were composed orally makes reinvention not only legitimate but also deeply appropriate. With specialists from Classics, Music, English, Modern Languages, Dance, Theatre and Performance Studies, and from the creative industries, this volume is the first systematic attempt to chart the afterlife of epic in modern performance traditions.

Allegra Iafrate, The Long Life of Magical Objects: A Study in the Solomonic Tradition. The Magic in History Series. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, xi, 235 pp., 19 b/w images, 2 tables.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-254
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern World ◽  
State University ◽  
Eastern Culture ◽  
Historical Objects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Objects ◽  
The Middle Ages

Throughout times, magic and magicians have exerted a tremendous influence, and this even in our (post)modern world (see now the contributions to Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2017; here not mentioned). Allegra Iafrate here presents a fourth monograph dedicated to magical objects, primarily those associated with the biblical King Solomon, especially the ring, the bottle which holds a demon, knots, and the flying carpet. She is especially interested in the reception history of those symbolic objects, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, both in western and in eastern culture, that is, above all, in the Arabic world, and also pursues the afterlife of those objects in the early modern age. Iafrate pursues not only the actual history of King Solomon and those religious objects associated with him, but the metaphorical objects as they made their presence felt throughout time, and this especially in literary texts and in art-historical objects.

Apocalypticism and Globalization in the Early Modern World: A Medievalist’s Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Rubenstein
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
World History ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract The apocalyptic belief systems from early modernity discussed in this series of articles to varying degrees have precursors in the Middle Ages. The drive to map the globe for purposes both geographic and symbolic, finds expression in explicitly apocalyptic manuscripts produced throughout the Middle Ages. An apocalyptic political discourse, especially centered on themes of empire and Islam, developed in the seventh century and reached extraordinary popularity during the Crusades. Speculation about the end of world history among medieval intellectuals led them not to reject the natural world but to study it more closely, in ways that set the stage for the later Age of Discovery. These broad continuities between the medieval and early modern, and indeed into modernity, demonstrate the imperative of viewing apocalypticism not as an esoteric fringe movement but as a constructive force in cultural creation.

scholarly journals Reading, writing, making errors: Middle Ages and (ultra)modern world

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milka Radulović ◽  
◽  
Jelena Slavković ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
The Middle Ages

For the Middle Ages reading and writing can refer to making copies of books too, and consequently, to variant errors in them. Nowadays, when typing on PC excerpt or transcription of manuscript, we make the same kinds of mistakes, being still at scribe’s type of copying and citing. We can avoid mistakes by using HTR programs for starting SDE-s and using them to copy-paste the part of text we need.With new approaches, close to „old“ Likhachov’s textology, and with digital born editions this field is getting reshaped.

RUSSIAN ARTHOUSE FILMS OF THE EARLY XXI CENTURY: FEATURES OF ARTISTIC STYLE

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-123
Author(s):  
Vitaly F. Poznin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Artistic Style ◽  
Artistic Interpretation ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Everyday Realities ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Russian ◽  
Art Critics

Contemporary Russian theater and cinema are approving a new aesthetic paradigm that implements such principles of postmodernism as deconstruction, relativism, a mixture of various types, genres, and stylistic devices. The purpose of this article is to identify the most characteristic stylistic features of Russian arthouse films of the 21st century. The author’s task was to show that this style is not something radically new, as some art critics and cultural experts try to present. Using the methods of hermeneutic, art history and comparative analysis, the author identifies the methods and techniques of creating a special art space that are characteristic of modern Russian arthouse. These are combining real and conditional, concrete and symbolic, psychology and parable, recognition of everyday realities and explicit functionality of the characters. Based on the idea expressed by a number of scientists that there is much in common between the state of the modern world (that is, what is now called postmodernism) and the public consciousness of the Middle Ages, the author of the article puts forward a hypothesis about the similarity of the stylistic techniques of the Russian arthouse with the aesthetics of the Middle Ages. First of all, arthouse films bring closer to the literature and art of the Middle Ages such a characteristic as hybridism, i.e. combining different styles in one work, in particular, combining a realistic image with a parable form and symbols and an artistic interpretation of space as a background that weakly interacts with characters. First of all, Russian arthouse films brings closer to the literature and art of the Middle Ages such a characteristic as hybridism, i.e. combining different styles in one work, using, along with a realistic depiction of the parable form and symbols and artistic interpretation of space as a background that weakly interacts with characters. One of the reasons for the emergence of a new aesthetic interpretation of art space in modern Russian literature and cinema was the radical changes that took place in Russia in the 1990s. The disappearance from the world map of a huge country called the USSR and the loss of familiar landmarks and stereotypes could not but affect the worldview of artists, writers and filmmakers trying to artistically comprehend what is happening. The conclusion that follows from the analysis is that many principles of the aesthetics of postmodernism were reflected in the style of the arthouse films of 21st century, with the exception of such traits inherent in the best postmodern examples as humor, irony, game element and non-linearity of narration. The coexistence of real and clearly conditional art space in such films contributes to the fact that the cinematic texture contradicts conditional situations and characters, causing the viewer to feel art inorganic. Analyzing the perception of art films by experts and the audience, the author concludes that the assessments of art critics and viewers are largely diverging for the same reason: viewers mostly perceive author films as works of a realistic style but can not find in them psychological characteristics of the heroes and the motivation of their actions, i.e. the traits inherent in realism; experts evaluate these films based on the presence of the elements of symbolism and metaphorism and metaphysical and universal image of reality.

Choirboys and Choirgirls in the Victorian Church of England

1994 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 447-460
Author(s):  
Walter Hillsman
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church Music ◽  
Performance Standards ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Conspicuous Feature ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Middle Ages

Although the roles played by children in recent centuries in English church music have varied enormously, it is probably fair to say that choirs with at least some boys’ or girls’ voices have proven more important in musical, ecclesiastical, and social developments than those with none. The most obvious example of this is the choir of men and boys, which has constituted a conspicuous feature of cathedral and some collegiate music since the Middle Ages, except, of course, during the Commonwealth. As women and girls have until very recently been regarded as inappropriate in such music, it is difficult to imagine that the breadth of achievement in musical composition and performance standards associated with these choirs would have been possible if they had contained only men and no boys.

The Canonists and the Mediaeval State

1953 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Tierney
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Essential Ingredient ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
The Middle Ages

Maitland once observed that, in the Middle Ages, “Law was the point where life and logic met.” This aphorism of the master must serve as my apology for including in one essay two topics so diverse, according to some opinions, as abstract political theory and concrete constitutional problems. It may be that the mediaeval jurists can provide a link between the two spheres, for their reflections on mediaeval government were not mere philosophical abstractions. They were rooted in real life. An essential ingredient of the jurists' raw material was a practical experience of the workings of mediaeval society. It is not surprising, therefore, that eminent historians on both sides of the Atlantic have called attention to the need for legal studies as a basis for further advance in mediaeval constitutional research, and that, in recent years, we have heard a great deal about the importance of feudal law and folk law, of Roman law and English common law in the formation of mediaeval ideas and institutions. My task will be to state briefly the case for the canonists.

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