Book Series IKON Studies, vol. 1

The Mediality of Culture and the Emblematic Way of Seeing and Thinking

György Endre Szönyi

  • Pages: approx. 280 p.
  • Size:170 x 240 mm
  • Illustrations:142 b/w
  • Language(s):English
  • Publication Year:2024


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Are words and images friends or enemies? How has culture been generating symbols and what is the fate of symbols as time passes?

Subject(s)
BIO

György E. Szönyi is a visiting professor of cultural history at the Central European University (Budapest / Vienna) and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Szeged. He is a cultural- and literary historian with a special interest in the Renaissance, the role of esotericism in early modern and postmodern culture, cultural symbolization and the relationship of words and images. He is author of John Dee's Occultism. Magical Exaltation Through Powerful Signs (SUNY Press) and Pictura and Scriptura (in Hungarian).

Summary

Ut pictura poesis – as painting, so poetry. This ancient dictum has been intriguing and exciting Western artists and theoreticians since the time of Antiquity. Are words and images friends or enemies? How has culture been generating symbols and what is the fate of symbols as time passes? The present monograph revisits the historiography of these debates, offers various case studies from medieval and early modern art to films and hypertext, from Renaissance stagecraft to occult symbols, while outlining the 20th-century evolution of the scholarly understanding of the mediality of culture. The ideas of great art historians, semioticians, emblem scholars (such as Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky, Ernst Gombrich, Umberto Eco, Peter Daly) are confronted with their followers and critics, e.g. WJT Mitchell, Hans Belting, James Elkins. The individual opinions are placed in the context of historicism, structuralism, and poststructuralism (including gender studies and postcolonial awareness), while among the faultlines the connecting links are also revealed.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE MEDIALITY OF CULTURE. THEORIES OF CULTURAL  REPRESENTATIONS
HUMAN BEINGS ARE SYMBOL MAKING ANIMALS: SYMBOLS ARE CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS
THE MEDIALITY OF CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS
ON SYMBOLS
THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
Imagology
The Politics of Images/Representations
TEXTS AND IMAGES: THEORIES OF MEDIALITY
Seeing is Believing
CONCLUSION

THE EMBLEMATIC WAY OF SEEING AND THINKING
INTRODUCTION
THE EMBLEM
The Contemporary Boom in Emblem Research
Research of Emblems and Emblematics in Hungary
EMBLEMATIC
Emblematic Cultural Representations
Classical Roots: Hieroglyphs, Greek Epigrams, Medals
Medieval Symbolism and Typological Thinking
Pan-emblematism and Social-Cultural Vistas
Political Iconography from Heraldry to Portraiture
Civic Iconography and the Mediality of Emblematics
Emblematic Expressions, Emblematic Structures
The Philosophy and Semiotics of the Emblematic
Poststructuralist Concerns

CASE STUDY 1: RENAISSANCE EMBLEMATIC THEATER AND THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE'S IMAGERY
SHAKESPEARE'S POETICAL POWER
SHAKESPEARE AND THE EMBLEM
Emblematic and Photographic Theater
Levels of the Emblematic Representation
THEATRICALITY AND STAGE VISION
Traditional Imagery and Its Difficulties

CASE STUDY 2: HISTORY – DRAMA – FILM
INTRODUCTION
CONCEPTUAL FRAME: REPRESENTING HISTORY
CASE STUDIES
Shakespeare and History
The Henry V Films
Ridley Scott and Mel Gibson
CONCLUSIONS

CASE STUDY 3: RADICAL CONTINUITIES. HYPERTEXTUAL LINKS TO A TEXTUAL PAST
FROM TEXT TO HYPERTEXT
The Status of the Author
The Reconfiguration of Narratives: Story into Plot
The Politics of Hypertext
Hypertext and Critical Theory
THE ARCHETYPAL HYPERTEXT
CONCLUSION

ICONOLOGY, OLD AND NEW
SYMBOLIC IMAGES
Semiotics, Iconology and Iconography
Iconography and Tradition-based Images
RIPA'S CLASSICAL ICONOLOGY
THE NEW ICONOLOGY
ABY WARBURG AND ICONOGRAPHY
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms
Warburg's Concepts of Mnémé and Pathosformeln
From Evolutionist Historicism to the Postmodern
Excursus / Epilogue: Warburg's Tradition "Retrieved"
ICONOGRAPHY AND ICONOLOGY: PANOFSKY
Iconography and Iconology
Art History as a Humanistic Discipline
Conclusion
ERNST GOMBRICH: ICONOLOGY, COMMUNICATION, PSYCHOLOGY
Aims and Limits of Iconology
The Ontology and Pragmatics of Symbolic Images
Experience, Conventions, Communication

CASE STUDY 4: ESOTERIC SYMBOLISM AND ITS PRAGMATICS
JOHN DEE AND THE HIEROGLYPHIC MONAD
Occult Semiotics in the Hieroglyphic Monad
OCCULT SEMIOTICS AND ICONOLOGY: MICHAEL MAIER'S ALCHEMICAL EMBLEMS
Atalanta Fugiens: Occult Semiotics and Iconology

FROM POSTMODERN ICONOLOGY TO VISUAL STUDIES
THE PICTORIAL TURN AND THE NEWEST ICONOLOGY
Gombrich vs. Mitchell
Gombrich Revisited
Eco’s Semiotic Compromise
THE POLITICS OF IMAGES
Goodman and the Image/Word Taxonomy
The Nature of Mitchell's Image/Word Theory
Belting and Mitchell on the Ideology of Art History
THE EMERGENCE OF VISUAL STUDIES
Contours of a New Discipline
The Male Gaze and the Gaze of the Colonizer
VISUAL STUDIES: THEORIES AND FAREWELL

EPILOGUE: TOWARDS THE "ICONOLOGY  OF CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS"
REFERENCES
INDEX
ILLUSTRATIONS