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| HOME > Calendar & Programs > May 2010 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Calendar
A CMRS Ahmanson Conference Poets, from Orpheus to Baudelaire, have long called us away from sight. But there are signs that literary scholars have grown deaf to their cries. Consider the dominant rubrics of contemporary literary analysis: theory (from theôrein, “to see”), ideology (from idein, “to see”), representation (almost always understood as a question of images). The problem is not one of etymology, but of use. One might ask, for example, why we have never seem to have gotten around to theorizing smell, or why scholars of poetry (which the ancients referred to as “song”) so seldom discuss the ideology of sound. Touch as well is often invoked by ancient poets (“To whom shall I give my new little book, its edges neatly trimmed?” begins Catullus), but outside specialized discussions of the “history of the book,” we seem barely to have begun to grapple with the implications of poetic materiality. Taste matters too: for a remarkable variety of reasons, the ancients compared poetry to “honey;” Lucretius would suggest this made it suitable to mask the bitter taste of the wormwood of truth. What would happen if we tried to begin literary analysis not with sight, but with any (or all) of the remaining senses? At the simplest level, we would need to pay attention to metaphors like the one just cited. We would also need to treat poetry not as bodiless text but as a physical object, realized in wax, papyrus, parchment, stone, and susceptible therefore to engagement by senses other than sight. We would need to strive to listen once again to poetry, privileging—like ancient euphonist critics—sound over meaning. We would need to open our senses to meanings and pleasures not solely or simply visual. This conference will bring together scholars of classical literature and the traditions it inspired in the Middle Ages and Renaissance who are working “across the senses” or who are exploring these often forgotten critical perspectives. A common thread in the papers and discussions presented at the conference is an implicit or declared desire to move beyond the visual paradigm. Organized by Shane Butler (Classics, UCLA), Alex Purves (Classics, UCLA), and Mario Telò (Classics, UCLA).
CMRS Roundtable Professor Stephen H.A. Shepherd (English, Loyola Marymount University).
Voces Nostrates Lecture Professor Joanna Woods-Marsden (Art History, UCLA) examines the visual construction of male and female identity in portraits of rulers by Titian, looking in particular at his depictions of Alfonso I d’Este, duke of Ferrara, and his low-born mistress, Laura Dianti. The duke’s portrait reflects the imperatives of virility and martial potency demanded of masculine identity in Renaissance Italy. In his mistress’s likeness, on the other hand, Titian attempted to construct not only the male ideal of female beauty and eroticism but also the Virtue required of a ducal concubine. Laura, moreover, is accompanied by an African slave, the first to appear in Western portraiture. In the discourse on race of the era, the black child’s aesthetic function resided in the contrast between his nerissimo face and his mistress’ bianchissimo beauty. Joanna Woods-Marsden (PhD Harvard, 1979) is Professor of Italian Renaissance Art at UCLA and a member of CMRS since 1984. She specializes in Renaissance courts and artists, portraiture, and gender studies. She is the author of numerous works including Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (1998), and edited Titian: Materiality, Istoria, Portraits (2007). She is currently completing The Visual Rhetoric of Male Power and Female Beauty: Gendered Identity in Titian’s Court Portraits. Information about the entire series at http://www.cmrs.ucla.edu/programs/voces_nostrates.html. Download and print the complete program brochure at www.cmrs.ucla.edu/programs/voces_nostrates.pdf.
Annual Shakespeare Symposium Topic to be announced.
CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture Dr. Margaret Laing (Fellow of the Institute of Historical Dialectology, Linguistics, and English Language, University of Edinburgh).
California Medieval History Seminar, Spring 2010 The California Medieval History Seminar meets at the Huntington Library to discuss four pre-distributed research papers. Papers are sent to registrants before the meeting and participants are expected to have read the papers in advance and come prepared to discuss them. Speakers and paper topics are announced by e-mail. To be added to the announcement list, contact cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu.Place: Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
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University of California, Los Angeles
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Box 951485, 302 Royce Hall Los Angeles CA 90095-1485 310-825-1880 | cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu | www.cmrs.ucla.edu
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