Historical Reviews
Body and Soul in Renaissance Arts and Literature
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Leslie Malland, Rafael Narvaez
The transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance carried important and enduring changes in the way Westerners conceived of the body and the soul, shifts in perspective that initially transformed key aspects of (Renaissance) art, including music, as well as literature and philosophy. Renewed interest in anatomy, in particular, forced Renaissance artist and thinkers to reconfigure their ideas of the body and its relationship to the soul. Anatomists searched for the soul by dissecting cadavers; artist dissected the body to better convey the human spirit; and writers dissected the soul through their work. And they thus set in motion paradigmatic upheavals that eventually resulted in changes in the ways Westerners understood the very idea of the human, both theoretically as well as at the level of collective beliefs. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the body/soul rhetoric was recast during the Renaissance; how these changes affected the arts and literature of the period, and show that changes in beliefs and preoccupations pertaining to the body and the soul powerfully contribute to shaping cultural products (e.g., artistic and literary) as well as important aspects of everyday life. This presentation is partly sponsored by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (# AQ-234985).
Freedom of Desire in "The Jew of Malta"
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shu-hua Chung
In "The Jew of Malta" (1589-90), Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) creates the Jew Barabas who resorts to every conceivable means in pursuit of freedom of desire. He aspires for freedom of desire including power and wealth by a series of murders. He tricks Lodowick and Mathias into fighting for winning his daughter, Abigail. When Abigail becomes a nun, Barabas poisons her along with the whole of the nunnery, and strangles two friars Barnadine and Jacomo. His slave Ithamore betrays him due to his love Bellamira and his friend’s instigation, so Barabas poisons all three of them. Barabas is the Other in the eyes of the Turks and of the Christians, but, paradoxically, he benefits from their conflict in light of traps. Just at the right moment, the former governor Ferneze emerges and causes Barabas to fall into his own trap. Applying the theory of the Other by Emmanuel Levinas (1905-96) to "The Jew of Malta," I will examine the conflict between the Jews and the Turks alongside the struggle between Spain and the Ottoman Empire. I attempt to probe into the relationship between the Self and the Other, between the master and the slave.
Chronos to Kairos: Transformation in Tristan Love
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Claudia Marie Kovach
Always a “profane” manifestation of medieval society and condemned by the Church, courtly love does not usually lead one to look too deeply into saints’ lives and canonically spiritual matters. Yet, paradoxically, it is possible to see within perhaps one of the most “profane” illustrations of courtly love found in the Tristan corpus a closer connection to radical Franciscan spirituality, a consecrated piety that has had one of the greatest impacts on the Church and the world. An examination of various versions of the Tristan legend, used interdisciplinarily and cross-culturally, can show linkages to key aspects of Franciscan penitential spirituality. The Tristans of Béroul, Marie de France, Gottfried von Strassburg, and others highlight the mystical and especially penitential essence of Tristan love. To explore these avenues, this study advances this idea of "penance" in Franciscan spirituality, seen as equivalent to the biblical meaning of "metanoia," as an intimate conversion of heart to God, as a vital attitude, as a continuous state of being. The Tristan stories always include a moment of love’s recognition, a type of conversion. Love in Tristan goes beyond required or programmed behaviors similar to "doing penances," but instead lives a life of actively loving, of being penitent, of being engaged in a life-changing embrace of a new existence. It also moves the lover from specific, practical requirements of everyday life as determined from station and status to a world expressed in terms of cosmology and mythic if not divine principles.
