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Our imagination reveals our experience of ourselves and our world.
The late philosopher of science and poetry Gaston Bachelard
introduced the notion that each image that comes to mind
spontaneously is a visual representation of the cognitive and
affective pattern that is moving us at the time - often
unconsciously. When such a mental image inspires a picture or text,
it evokes in the mind of the reader or beholder a replication of
the internal pattern that originally inspired the artist or writer.
Thus mental images are rarely empty phantasies. Whereas
intellectual concepts are conscious constructions of abstracted
relations, mental images evoked by texts and pictures often point -
like dreams - to pre-verbal experience that patterns itself through
multiplying associations and analogies. These mental images can
also manifest their own limits, pointing indirectly to experiences
beyond what can be expressed and communicated. The six essays in
this volume seek to uncover the dynamic patterns in verbal and
pictorial images and to evaluate their potentialities and
limitations. Thematically ordered according to their specific
focus, the essays begin with material images and move on to
increasing degrees of immateriality. The subjects treated are:
verbal descriptions of an icon and of a statue; imaginative visions
and auditions evoked by material depictions; verbal imagery
describing imagined sculptures and scenes as compared with drawings
of a moving historical pageant; drawings of symbolic figures
representing subtle relationships between verbal expositions that
cannot be syntactically represented; dream images that precipitate
actual healing; and aural patterns in a sounded text that are
experienced as 'images' of affective dynamisms.
Focusing on the works of bishop Gregory of Tours (539-594) and the
poet-hagiographer Venantius Fortunatus (540-c.604), in later life
bishop of Poitiers, Dr de Nie gives in these innovative studies a
new understanding of the miracle stories around which much of their
writing revolves, but whose bizarre dynamics appear to defy sense,
which has often resulted in their dismissal as useless to the
historian. These authors' perceptions of miracles - and their
renderings of the human self-awareness through which miracles are
perceived and happen - are analysed as attempts, mostly rooted in
models from the Bible, to adjust the early Christian tradition so
as to make sense of, and protect themselves in, the highly insecure
environment of 6th-century Frankish Gaul. Drawing on modern
anthropological and psychological studies, notably in the area of
spiritual healing practices, as well as on philosophical and
theological reflections about verbal and mental imagery, she
demonstrates how these can be used to throw fresh light on late
antique society and its spirituality, exploring views of mind,
affectivity, body, sensory phenomena, symbols, and the perception
of women as well as of the qualities of images, verbal language and
texts. The volume includes five essays not previously published in
English.
Our imagination reveals our experience of ourselves and our world.
The late philosopher of science and poetry Gaston Bachelard
introduced the notion that each image that comes to mind
spontaneously is a visual representation of the cognitive and
affective pattern that is moving us at the time - often
unconsciously. When such a mental image inspires a picture or text,
it evokes in the mind of the reader or beholder a replication of
the internal pattern that originally inspired the artist or writer.
Thus mental images are rarely empty phantasies. Whereas
intellectual concepts are conscious constructions of abstracted
relations, mental images evoked by texts and pictures often point -
like dreams - to pre-verbal experience that patterns itself through
multiplying associations and analogies. These mental images can
also manifest their own limits, pointing indirectly to experiences
beyond what can be expressed and communicated. The six essays in
this volume seek to uncover the dynamic patterns in verbal and
pictorial images and to evaluate their potentialities and
limitations. Thematically ordered according to their specific
focus, the essays begin with material images and move on to
increasing degrees of immateriality. The subjects treated are:
verbal descriptions of an icon and of a statue; imaginative visions
and auditions evoked by material depictions; verbal imagery
describing imagined sculptures and scenes as compared with drawings
of a moving historical pageant; drawings of symbolic figures
representing subtle relationships between verbal expositions that
cannot be syntactically represented; dream images that precipitate
actual healing; and aural patterns in a sounded text that are
experienced as 'images' of affective dynamisms.
Limiting itself to the vital centuries when the late Roman West
reshaped itself into a first "Europe," the conference explored the
dominant conception of human nature in that era: that human
existence was both body (in the visible world of material things)
and soul (in the invisible world of spirit). This was a legacy of
pre-Christian elements handed down from Greek philosophy and Hebrew
Scriptures. Assimilating it to indigenous cultures in the Roman
West, many alien to the ancient Mediterranean world, precipitated
sea-changes in the understanding of human psychology. Ensuing
frictions sparked extraordinary expressions of creativity in words
and visual images. It also created dangerously subversive
disequilibriums in the collective mentality within elites and
between them and majority cultures. The papers in this volume
investigate numerous configurations of a new culture taking shape
in that volatile environment. They contribute to continuing debates
about the cognitive co-ordination of words and pictorial images,
and to cross-disciplinary dialogues in such disparate fields as art
history, religious literature, mysticism, and cultural
anthropology.
Gregory of Tours served as bishop of Tours, then a city in the
Frankish kingdom, from 573 to 594. Acclaimed by the French as "the
father of our history" on account of his History of the Franks, he
also wrote stories about holy men and women and about wondrous
events he experienced, witnessed, or knew as miracles. In our times
many people deny the existence of miracles, while others use the
term so loosely that it becomes almost meaningless. Must a true
miracle transcend "natural laws"? Gregory's lively stories relate
what he regarded as the visible results of holy power, direct or
mediated, and its role in the lives of his contemporaries. His
conversational narratives, which are largely without self-conscious
stylistic effects, present unique, often moving, glimpses into his
world. For Gregory, the frontiers between interior and exterior,
God and matter, word or gesture and its referent, remained fluid.
Lives and Miracles includes the texts of The Life of the Fathers,
The Miracles of the Martyr Julian, and The Miracles of Bishop
Martin.
Focusing on the works of bishop Gregory of Tours (539-594) and the
poet-hagiographer Venantius Fortunatus (540-c.604), in later life
bishop of Poitiers, Dr de Nie gives in these innovative studies a
new understanding of the miracle stories around which much of their
writing revolves, but whose bizarre dynamics appear to defy sense,
which has often resulted in their dismissal as useless to the
historian. These authors' perceptions of miracles - and their
renderings of the human self-awareness through which miracles are
perceived and happen - are analysed as attempts, mostly rooted in
models from the Bible, to adjust the early Christian tradition so
as to make sense of, and protect themselves in, the highly insecure
environment of 6th-century Frankish Gaul. Drawing on modern
anthropological and psychological studies, notably in the area of
spiritual healing practices, as well as on philosophical and
theological reflections about verbal and mental imagery, she
demonstrates how these can be used to throw fresh light on late
antique society and its spirituality, exploring views of mind,
affectivity, body, sensory phenomena, symbols, and the perception
of women as well as of the qualities of images, verbal language and
texts. The volume includes five essays not previously published in
English.
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