The Baroque Page: Image and Text

A new tension between texts, forms, and images characterizes the culture of the Baroque Age. During this period, the iconoclastic debates of the Protestant Reformation and the reaction to them in the Catholic Reformation sparked a rethinking of the role of images - not only within a religious context, but also within the political, philosophical, and literary spheres. Our symposium will examine this renewed cultural interest in the relationship between text and image, logos and eikon, which, at the roots of modernity, penetrated deeply into European consciousness, and left its mark well beyond its time, and into our own.

The symposium will also investigate the problematical relationship between images and texts. We hope to broaden the terms of the discussion on Baroque texts and their relationship with both pictorial and mental images, within a pan-European context. Our approach will be interdisciplinary, open to every European tradition, and welcoming contributions from scholars of literature, history, art history, philosophy, theology, political science, etc.

This symposium has been made possible by the generous support of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Provost, European Studies Council, Title IV Grant, Department of Italian Language and Literature, Department of Classics, Department of Music, Department of Philosophy, Film Studies Program, and Institute of Sacred Music.

Friday, April 29 / Saturday, April 30

Friday, April 29, 2011 10:00a.m. Tour of the Baroque Art at the Yale Art Gallery 111 Chapel Street Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 121 Wall Street 12:00-4:00p.m. Registration and Book Exhibition 1:30p.m. Depicting Literature: The Aesthetics of the Baroque Moderator: Professor Roberto Gonzalez-Echevarria, Department of Spanish and Portuguese     Style and the State: Aesthetics of an English Literary Baroque Michael Komorowski, Yale University   Recognition and Reversal: The Mirror Metaphor in Mirtilla and Amor nello specchio Alexia Ferracuti, Yale University   Reforming the Christian Body: A Reading of Bernardo Castello’s Designs for Canto 19 of the Gerusalemme Liberata Melissa Swain, New York University   Relic Translation and Fernão Mendes Pinto’s Peregrinaçam: A Dialogue Between Saintly Object and Secular Text Rachel Stein, Columbia University 3:30p.m. Welcoming Remarks Professor Elisabetta Selmi, University of Padua 3:50p.m. Introduction to Keynote Professor Millicent Marcus, Department of Italian 4:00p.m. Keynote Address Tasso and the Post-Tridentine Controversies on Images Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta, Department of Italian 5:30p.m. Concert by Robert Mealy (Yale - School of Music) Musical Rhetoric: The Baroque Text as Sound 6:30p.m. Whitney Humanities Center - 53 Wall Street Reception, Room 108 8:00p.m. Auditorium Film screening of Roberto Rossellini’s The Taking of Power by Louis XIV

Saturday, April 30, 2011 Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 121 Wall Street 8:30a.m. Baroque Art: Between the Sacred and the Secular Moderator: Professor Joost Keizer, Department of Art History   ‘Facitor de l’imagini.’ The Spectacle of Creation in Michelangelo and Tasso” Giulia Cardillo, Yale University     Epic Interruption: Tasso, Piazzetta and the Tailplate Adam Eaker, Columbia University   The Eye of the Soul: Visual Sources of Admiratio in the Images of Ignacio de Loyola and El Greco Jeffrey Weiner, University of California, Berkeley 10:15a.m. The Art of Ecstasy in Baroque Catholicism Carlos Eire, Department of History, and Religious Studies 11:00a.m. Questioning Bodies and Minds in the Baroque Moderator: Karsten Harries, Department of Philosophy   Flesh and Ornament in Some Early Modern Anatomical Works Allison Stielau, Yale University   Pathology and Image in Jean Fernel’s Pathologiae Libri VII and Ambroise Paré’s Monstres and Prodiges Yuri Kondratiev, Brown University     From the Face of Medusa to the Ghost of Lull: The Ethical Value of Bruno’s Figures in the Lampas Combinatoria Lulliana Eleonora Buonocore, Yale University 12:30-1:30p.m. Lunch (on your own) 1:30p.m. The Heritage of the Baroque Moderator: Francesco Casetti, Film Studies Program   ‘E mutole parlavano:’ Philosophy of Imprese in Vico’s and Tesauro’s Frontispieces Alessio Lerro, Rutgers University   Nietzsche and the Early Opera: A Study in Performance and Theatrical Philosophy Joseph Cermatori, Columbia University   Quevedo, Alberti, and the Canvas: The Presence of the Silva “El Pincel” in Two Sonnets from A la Pintura by Rafael Alberti (1945) Leticia Mercado, Boston College   3:00p.m. Pictures of Action in Shakespearean Tragedy Sarah Beckwith, Duke University 4:00p.m. Round Table Moderator: Professor Erminia Ardissino, University of Turin Noah Dion, Department of Renaissance Studies and Classics; Stanley Levers, Department of Italian; Christopher Nixon, Department of Italian; Elena Pellus, Department of Spanish and Portuguese