Image and imagination of the religious self in late medieval and early modern Europe : Emory University, Lovis Corinth Colloquia 1.

This Volume Investigates The Role Played By Images Construed As Formal And Semantic Variables - Mental Images, Visual Tropes And Figures, Pictorial And Textual Representations - In Generating And Sustaining Processes Of Meditation That Led The Viewer Or Reader From Outward Perception To Various Forms Of Inward Perception And Spiritual Discernment. The Fourteen Articles Address The History Of The Soul As A Cultural Construct, An Internal Locus Of Self-formation Where The Divine Is Seen To Dwell, And Where The Person May Experience Herself Or Himself As A Place Inhabited By The Spirit Of God.--book Jacket. Introduction : Meditative Images And The Psychology Of Soul / Walter S. Melion -- Aunthenticity And Fiction : On The Pictorial Construction Of Inner Presence In Early Modern Italy / Klaus Krüger -- Shaping The Self In The Image Of Virtue : Francesco Da Barberino's I Documenti D'amore / Shelley Maclaren -- Black Holes In Bosch : Visual Typology In The Garden Of Earthly Delights / Reindert L. Falkenburg -- Discernment And Animation, Leonardo To Lamazzo / Michael Cole -- Sleep Of The Flesh : The Agony Of The Visible At The Limits Of The Frame In The Iconography Of The Prayer Of Christ In The Garden Of Gethsemane / Pierre-antoine Fabre -- The Body Of Christ At Marburg, 1529 / Lee Palmer Wandel -- Taverns And The Self At The Dawn Of The Reformation / Christopher Ocker -- The Rule Of Metaphor And The Play Of The Viewer In The Hours Of Mary Of Burgundy / Bret Rothstein -- To See Yourself Within It : Pieter Bruegel The Elder's Festival Of Fools / Todd M. Richardson -- Planting Seeds Of Righteousness, Taming The Wilderness Of The Soul : Geertgen Tot Sint Jans's St. John The Baptist In The Wilderness / John Decker -- Monastic Hospitality : The Cloister As Heart In Early Netherlandish Painting / Henry Luttikhuizen -- Crafting Repose : Aesthetic And Cultural Aspects Of The Hermitage Landscape By Jan Brueghel The Elder / Leopoldine Prosperetti -- The Meditative Function Of Hendrick Goltzius's Life Of The Virgin Of 1593-94 / Walter S. Melion -- Rubens's Ecce Homo And Derision Of Silenus' : Classical Antiquity, Images Of Devotion, And The Ostentation Of Art / Christine Göttler. Edited By Reindert Falkenburg, Walter S. Melion And Todd M. Richardson. Conference Proceedings. D/2007/0095/48.--t.p. Verso. Includes Bibliographical References. One of the central and defining beliefs in late-medieval and early-modern spirituality was the notion of the formability of the religious self. Identified with the soul, the self was conceived, indeed experienced, not as an abstraction, but rather as an essential spiritual persona, as well as the intellectual and sensory center of a human being. This volume investigates the role played by images construed as formal and semantic variables - mental images, visual tropes and figures, pictorial and textual representations - in generating and sustaining processes of meditation that led the viewer or reader from outward perception to various forms of inward perception and spiritual discernment. The fifteen articles address the history of the soul as a cultural construct, an internal locus of self-formation where the divine is seen to dwell and the person may experience her/himself as a place inhabited by the spirit of God. Three central questions are approached from various disciplines: first, how was the self-contained soul created in God's likeness, yet stained by sin and as such susceptible both to destructive and redemptive forces, refashioned as a porous and malleable entity susceptible to metaphysical effects and human practices, such as self-investigation, meditative prayer, and other techniques of inwardness? Second, how did such practices constitutive of an inner liturgy prepare the soul - the anima, bride - for an encounter with God that trains, purifies, moulds, shapes, and transforms the religious self? Finally, in this process of self-reformation, how were images of place and space mobilized, how were loci found, and how did the soul come to see itself situated within these places mapped upon itself?