Universidade de Évora (all sessions will be held at the University)
1A. Imagens e Representações do Portugal
Mediterrânico: Dos Relatos Setecentistas aos Guias e Roteiros de Viagens Contemporâneos
Chairs: Antónia Fialho Conde
and Maria Ana Bernardo, Universidade de Évora
“Itinerários e lugares: o Alentejo
como espaço de lazer e de cultura nos guias e roteiros de viagens (1880-1930)”
Ana Cardoso de Matos, Universidade de Évora
Maria Ana Bernardo
O carácter cada vez
mais utilitário que os guias turísticos foram apresentado ao longo do século XIX
determinou que o seu texto se tornasse gradualmente mais sistemático e completo,
aliando-se à descrição dos lugares um conjunto de informações de ordem prática tais
como indicações sobre as unidades hoteleiras existentes e a sua qualidade, o valor
da moeda, a distância em relação a postos de correio, principais vias de ligação
a outras localidades e meios de transporte disponíveis. Normalmente entre os locais
indicados como ponto de visita contam-se, por um lado, aqueles que se podem considerar
tradicionais, e, por outro lado, os que estão ligados em grande parte ao sagrado,
quer os edifícios que testemunham aos valores culturais, sociais e políticos de
cada momento histórico. As igrejas, as catedrais e os paços episcopais são normalmente
referidos. Entre os edifícios civis destacam-se com frequência os edifícios camarários,
símbolo das cidades, os palácios e as casas senhoriais, entre outros. Propondo circuitos
nas principais cidades ou excursões entre locais de interesse turístico, os guias
incluíram cada vez mais plantas de cidades e mapas, com indicação das principais
vias de comunicação, alojamentos ou informação geográfica e cartográfica considerada
relevante. Por vezes, forneciam-se apontamentos, mais ou menos profundos, de ordem
histórica e económica, e faziam-se referências às características naturais da geologia,
da flora e da fauna locais. Para além disso, o desenvolvimento
de ciências como a medicina ou a química deram ao termalismo e à prática balnear
oitocentista uma nova dimensão, decorrente quer do maior conhecimento da composição
química das diferentes águas (termais e marítimas) e das suas propriedades curativas,
quer do carácter mundano que se associou a estes
espaços e que determinou a construção de grandes hotéis, casinos e outros espaços
de lazer. E com o avançar do século XX, as grandes obras de engenharia, como as
pontes ou as centrais hidroeléctricas, são mais frequentemente referidos e considerados
como obras ou locais com interesse para serem visitados pelos turistas. É a partir
desta diversidade e riqueza informativa dos guias e roteiros turísticos, editados
em Portugal desde a segunda metade do século XIX até aos anos trinta do século XX,
que se pretendem identificar lugares e itinerários que contribuíram para a valorização
do Alentejo como espaço de turismo, lazer e cultura.
“From the Red Alentejo to the new wave Alentejo”
Ana Lavrador, Universidade de Lisboa
Maria Alexandre Lousada, Universidade de Lisboa
This paper pretends to fix the most relevant identity images
of the Alentejo, one of the most charismatic regions of Portugal. Through the
last 30th years, it has aroused important changes in this region, both in the
land property and in the economical activities, reflected in the land use and
in the soil occupation. In this period of time, the landscape changing and the
marketing have been able to create brand new representational images from the
region. Three political and social conditions explain the main territorial
transformations of the region that contributes to the modification of the
Alentejo’ image: a) The Wheat Campaign, in the 1930th decade, through which the
region is transformed in the “country cellar”; b) The Agrarian Reform emerged
from the Revolution of the 25 April, 1974, witch implies property occupations,
expropriations, new rural enterprises (UCP) and the dominant communist vote,
all forming the Red Alentejo image;
c) The actuality, emerging in the latest 80th and in particularly after the
Portuguese admission in the European Community, in 1986, centred in the
fallowing changes: (re)new agricultural proposals (the vineyards, the olive
trees, the cattle production, the large irrigation plan from the Alqueva’ dam
enterprise); new industrial activities, specially the Sines harbour platform
and new transportation systems (the roads and the main roads and the high
velocity network project) and, above all, a large offer of recreational
activities, both secondary residences and tourism (visits to historical
villages, hunting, enotourism, open air activities, others), constituting a
promising new wave. The methodology lays on the following procedures: acquire
of relevant statistical data and a set of representational supports: publicity
artifacts, literary texts and video images.
“Évora e o Sul nos Relatos de Viagens do Período Moderno”
Antónia Fialho Conde
A partir de relatos
de viagens e descrições de Setecentos, que implicarão a análise comparativa, sempre
que possível, com referências similares anteriores, procuraremos, privilegiando
as fontes locais e o material bastante heterogéneo que elas nos oferecem, cruzar
as informações neles fornecidas com os dados cartográficos coevos, bem como com
informações acerca de Évora e do Sul transmitidas por Autores portugueses da época.
A riqueza desses discursos, cruzando a ciência e a história, a literatura e a lenda,
motiva a sua análise sob diferentes prismas, nomeadamente o histórico, o geográfico,
o antropológico e o literário, de que enfatizaremos o primeiro. A análise dos relatos
de viagens em perspectiva histórica permite ainda colocar importantes questões sobre
os seus autores, tal como a sua origem, a finalidade e perspectiva da viagem, a
sua formação académica e cultural, os seus conhecimentos a nível da região (geografia,
história, mitologia), entre outros. Privilegiando o discurso de estrangeiros e a
sua perspectiva de análise da realidade geográfica citada, com especial ênfase no
século XVIII, implicando a descrição de sítios e paisagens, de localidades, de património
construído e cultura material de tipologia diversa, somos conduzidos à comparação
com a realidade actual e à percepção do permanente e do contingente, sublinhando
desta forma a importância da viagem e dos viajantes no discurso histórico.
1B. Medieval History I
Chair: Jo Ann McNamara, Hunter
College, New York
“Adriatic Identity: An Unknown
Feeling in Early Medieval Adriatic?”
Francesco Borri, Notre Dame University, Indiana
At the beginning of the ninth century, probably in 804, the people of the ancient Byzantine province of Istria, in northern Adriatic, complained against the new Frankish administration. The sad destiny of the Istrians is known thank to the placitum Rizani, a very well know and important document that put in comparison the Byzantine and the Frankish administrations of Italy. The former elites, called capitanei, compared the old life system (imperial) with the new one, remembering their fall from grace and mentioning how their prestige was at the moment low and their life hard. At the end of their bitter lament they said how for their new condition their relatives (parentes) from Venice and Dalmatia used to laugh about them. The use of the word parentes is surprising also because the same word was used, a couple of lines before, by the same people to describe their ancestor. Was this expression really reflecting a common feeling of Identity that was built in some Adriatic areas before the birth of Venice? Is it possible to trace back the roots of this phenomenon looking at the political and social developments of this area? In this paper I propose to analyses the many similarity between the Northern Adriatic areas emerging from the scarce Early Medieval sources and that are spread in Italian, Frankish and Dalmatian Chronicles, private documentation, Theological and Hagiographical data. The evidence can, in my view, corroborate the odd sentence of the placitum Rizani and shows many aspect of a dark and unknown age, very important for a better understanding of the following, rich developments of the Adriatic area.
“The Emirate of Bari: Christian-Muslim
Relations in the Ninth-Century Mediterranean”
Travis Bruce, Western Michigan
University, Kalamazoo
The southern-Italian ninth century represents a unique moment in Mediterranean intercultural relations. Despite the opportunity it presents for studying intercultural exchange, it has been largely ignored by historians. I propose to use the Muslim emirate of Bari to illustrate the practicality of Mediterranean Christian-Muslim relations. Shared and disputed by the Byzantine and Carolingian empires, the Mezzogiorno saw with Islam the addition of a new element into its maneuverings for power. Nominally subject to the influence of both empires, Christian local rulers sought to maintain sovereignty vis-à-vis their co-religionist neighbors and the imperial courts, and the new Islamic presence was quickly integrated into their political machinations. Without regard for religion, the Christian polities made quick use of Muslim mercenaries in their conflicts, until the mercenaries themselves became a major player in regional politics, especially with the establishment of the emirate of Bari. The lure of Mediterranean Muslim markets also led ports to privilege relations with their Muslim counterparts, often to the detriment of their co-religionists. Through Latin and Arabic chronicles and documents, it is clear that the Muslims of Bari integrated the Mezzogiorno, their role determined more by commercial and political factors than by religion, superposing thus regional dynamics on religious interactions.
“The Topography of Genoese-Jewish
Interaction on Chios, 1450-1500”
Brian Becker, Western Michigan
University, Kalamazoo
This paper will explore the topography of Genoese-Jewish interaction in and around Scio, the largest city on the Genoese island colony of Chios, between 1450-1500. Genoese notarial registers provide the vast majority of the evidence for these encounters, and will thus serve as the documentary basis of my inquiry. The acts found within these registers preserve transactions effected between the colonizing Genoese and indigenous Jewish populations, the majority of which were concluded within the Judaica, located in the northeast corner of the city. They also contain clauses that record, using descriptive language, property locations in this neighborhood. These clauses oftentimes mention one piece of property in relation to those around it, which provides insight into the physical layout of the Judaica. The analysis of these property clauses in conjunction with acts recording Genoese-Jewish interaction not only tell us a great deal about the processes of this inter action, but also where the instances of interaction occurred in relation to each other. In more general terms, the surviving documentation from Genoese Chios also gives us a rare opportunity to examine the interaction between Jewish and Genoese communities, considering the lack of a significant Jewish population in medieval and Renaissance Genoa.
“Cracking the Salamantine Lantern
Code from Jerusalem to Boston”
James
F. Powers, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts
This paper
discusses the emergence and spread of the “Salamantine Lanterns” from their widely
varied origins in the Near East and Europe in the twelfth century. The movement
of this architectural curiosity is connected both to the Crusades and the Iberian
Reconquest, as well as the movement of concepts and ideas across the Mediterranean
during a century of creativity. The initiation of the movement focuses on the Cathedral
of Zamora and the problems the architects faced on constructing a crossing tower.
The connection of their solutions to the construction of other similar towers first
in Salamanca, then more widely in Iberia, and even across the Atlantic, is the central
theme of the presentation. The essay elaborates on the initial theory advanced by
Carl Kenneth Hersey in his “The Salmantine Lanterns,” while adding additional sources
to his argument, and associating it with the construction of the Cathedral of Évora.
The paper would best fit in a session devoted to art and architecture, or at least
to Iberian subjects.
1C. Art History I
Chair: Gilbert Fernandez, Tennessee
Technological University, Cookeville
“Giorgio Vasari’s Oratory at Cortona”
Liana Cheney, University of Massachusetts
Lowell
In 1554, the Compagnia del Gesù of Cortona commissions Giorgio Vasari to decorate with biblical sacrifices their offertory of their church (Vasari’s Ricordo 224). Vasari assisted by Cristofaro Gherardi depicts twelve sacrifices from the Old Testament (Isaac, Cain, Abel, Enos, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Jacob, Aaron, Nehemiah and Melchisedek) in the walls and three scenes from the New Testament (The Conversion of Saul, The Christ in Limbo and The Transfiguration) in the ceiling. While part of the fresco decoration has suffered severe damage and recent restoration has protected the surviving images, preparatory drawings for this commission at the Gabinetto dei Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi and the British Museum assist in the study of this religious program. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the symbolism of Vasari’s religious program for the lay confraternity of Il Gesù.
“Stewards of Nature: An Analysis
of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Seasons”
Donna Bilak, Bard Graduate Center
for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York
Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Seasons (ca.1565) is a series of oil-on-wood
paintings. Generally believed to include six works, there are five extant panels:
Harvesters (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Haymakers (Roudnice Lobkowicz
collection, CZ), and Gloomy Day, Return of the Herd, and Hunters in the Snow (Kunsthistorisches
Museum, Vienna). Each panel is associated with a specific season, signaled by the
kinds of human labours/leisures depicted within the painting s scene. When viewed
as a panoramic cycle (missing painting notwithstanding), Bruegel’s Seasons unfolds
as a beautiful story about Time s passage, expressed through landscape composition
and the human labours/leisures which serve to mark seasonal transitions from panel
to panel. Despite their prominent placement in the panels foreground, the people
represented in Bruegel’s cycle are not necessarily the primary subject matter. Rather,
Bruegel appoints them a supporting position; they are illustrated in their role
as the stewards of Nature, depicted by the ways in which they care for the terrestrial
world and reap Nature’s bounty. Thus Bruegel portrays Nature as macrocosm and the
human element as microcosmus, expressed through the cycle s artistic details. Accordingly,
this paper explores how Bruegel s Seasons encapsulates sixteenth-century cosmological
notions through analysis of the cycle s artistic structure and composition.
“Interrogations of Women, Women’s
Sexuality, Eroticism, and the Spiritual in Contemporary Mediterranean Art”
Martine Antle, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill
Though notions
of the sacred and the erotic are deeply rooted in both the history and practice
of Western art, women have rarely participated directly in its production before
the beginning of the nineteenth century. Women, who had up to that point been all
but excluded from the art world, were obligated to gain entrance via the study of
the nude—a domain generally reserved for men—in order to rethink and re-contextualize
the representation of the body; among many women artists, this process most often
found identity and affirmation through the desire to differentiate itself from the
long history of masculine production of art. Numerous women artists set out on this
perilous quest for a new language, not only in the West, but also in diasporas relatively
unknown to Western institutions, including the North African and Oriental diasporas.
In the following presentation, I question to what degree and through what means
women artists from the North African and Oriental diasporas deliberately engage
—as Easterners— in the questioning of Western masculine hegemonies? More importantly,
I will show to what degree these artists create and re-inscribe new configurations
of the religious and of the sacred in contemporary visual art.While reversing the
stereotypes associated with women, and working towards the visibility of women’s
artistic production, the women artists of the African and Oriental diasporas take
control of the production of their own visual representation, as Salah M. Hassan
recently demonstrated in Gendered Visions: They are no longer the displaced and subdued objects of a hegemonic (foreign
or male) gaze; the have instead become centrally located, active creators who call
such a gaze in question. Nonetheless,
what distinguishes Western women artists from those of the African and Oriental
Diasporas is the reappearance of spirituality and religion, two fields of exploration
that have, up to this point, progressively distanced themselves from Western artistic
production. These diasporic women artists, and more specifically, those of the Arab-Muslim
tradition, as we will see, learn to renew the ties between art, women, sexuality,
and religion, and they thereby thrust the originality of their project onto the
international art scene. It is thanks to Baya Mehieddine, who first made women visible
in the Oriental art scene, as well as Houria Niati, with her deconstruction of Orientalist
ideology, that a new generation of women artists set off on the path towards a new
artistic production that would acutely interrogate the relations between art, sexuality
and the sacred.
1D. 16th-Century Exploration and Travel
Chair: Daryl Palmer, Regis University,
Denver, Colorado
“An Assessment of William Toweson’s Three Voyages to Guinea (1555, 1556,
1558)”
Frances Luttikhuizen, Barcelona, Spain
Though Wm. Towerson was not the first English merchant to travel to Guinea, his three voyages are of interest to both social historians and social linguists in that they provide a longer and more detailed narrative from which to ascertain early reactions and interactions between Europeans and native Africans. Making inroads in Guinea meant competing with both the French and the Portuguese. This will be basically a descriptive analysis of the expectations and results of these early voyages.
“Imagining Europe”
Daniel Reff, Ohio State University, Columbus
During the sixteenth century Portuguese and other European explorers,
soldiers and missionaries encountered a vast world of otherness that was at once
marvellous and frightening. In this paper I explore how Europe’s encounter with
the orient (China and Japan) forced Europeans to re-think their own identity and
the requirements for “civilization.”The analysis focuses specifically on Luis Frois’
“Some Striking Contrasts in the Customs of Europe and Japan (1585).” In this Portuguese
mansucript (written by a long-time Jesuit missionary in Japan) the assumptions and
categories of European life and experience (covering everything from gender to gardening
to shipbuilding) are marshalled to delimit the boundaries of [Mediterranean] European
culture.
“Spanish and Portuguese Explorers of the South Pacific”
Carol Beresiwsky, Kapiolani Community College, University of Hawaii
Solomon Islands, Marquesas, Marianas, Torres Strait, Santa Cruz, and Australia are familiar place names in the South Pacific; however it is not widely know that these names trace their origins back to the 16th and 17th century era of Spanish and Portuguese exploration and discovery This multimedia presentation will give an overview of Spanish and Portuguese explorers of the South Pacific with attention to Prince Henry the Navigator s Sagres school and how pilots and navigators were prepared. Often Portuguese navigators served as pilots on Spanish ships such as Quirós, born Pedro Fernandes de Queirós in Evora, who first sailed with Álvaro de Mendaña, and others, such as Magellan (Fernáo de Magalhães) switched allegiance. to Spain for reasons of political or financial gain.. A detailed description of the voyages based on narrations in the ships logs will focus on the voyages of Magellan (Magalhães), Mendaña, Quirós (Queiros), and Torres in the South Pacific.
“The Case of Castaño de Sosa: A
Portuguese Conquistador Negotiates Authority in the American Southwest”
Daryl Palmer
In 1590-91, Gaspar Castaño de Sosa packed up the colony of Villa de Almadén (now Monclova) and marched into present-day New Mexico. It was an ambitious, unauthorized, and contentious undertaking. Of course conquistadors accepted the fact that crucial decisions regarding a given entrada would be debated among the governing peers; but Castaño de Sosa’s expedition stands out as a volatile version of this custom. Because of this fact, a study of the entrada can reveal hitherto unexamined protocols that enabled colonization on the Spanish frontier.
1E. The Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey
Chair: Adel Sidarus, Universidade de Évora
“The Creation of the Turkish Image
in the 16th-Century Mediterranean: Self-Reflection versus Anti-propaganda”
Özlem Kumrular, Bahçeşehir
University, Istanbul, Turkey
This papers aims an imagological analysis of the “Turk” in the 16th century Mediterranean through a huge corpus of published material and archival data. (Chronicles, “avisos”, “relazioni”, official letters, fermans –imperial letters of the sultan-, poems, plays, booklets published by the church, “relaciones de sucesos”, folk tales, legends, folk songs, etc.) The roots of the creation of a negative Turkish image will be comparatively analysed by the help of Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Algerian, Greek, Turkish, etc. sources. The fact that the Ottoman empire supported the expansion of this negative image and made use of it as an unsurpasseble conquest tactic in the Meditterranean where as the “victims” of the Turkish menace, majorly the Spanish empire and the Italian states, used this image of the “enemigo común”, (common enemy) as an antipropaganda to unite the Christian states to create a wall of defense against the Turkish “flood”, -as a sixteenth century diplomat defines-, will be discussed. The psychology of the Christian population living on the coasts that were open to the Turkish attact, picturesquely reflected in the 16th century literature and folklore will be our point of departure.
“Women’s Everyday Lives in Ottoman
Society: The Rule of Seclusion and Strategies of Participation”
Neşe Öztimur, Bursa, Turkey
Ottoman women’s lives have been always interesting and mysterious
for the Western writers. But in the most cases, these lives were evaluated within
the borders of “harem life”, in other words with the association of sexuality, lust
and desire capacity of women. This kind of evaluation is a mirror of patriarchal
presuppositions that gives women only sexual and reproductive function within the
societal structuring. However with the development of feminist consciousness and
history writing this kind of prejudices were eliminated and questionized by emphasis
on their neglecting of women’s everyday lives and their active role within the organization
of societal relationships. This paper is an attempt to rereading of Ottoman women’s
everyday lives by assuming their active social agent positions, this means resistance
and subversion capacities. Departing from these estimations, the
questions to be tracked down within the borderlines of these paper are as follows:
In what way have the gender relations been organized in the Ottoman society within
organization of production that excludes private property? How has the position
of woman been determined and how and in which direction has this position changed
in time? The traces shall be attempted to be trailed as to how the political, economic
and cultural transformations that occurred in the last four centuries covering the
process in which the Ottoman Empire integrated to the world capitalist system and
the resulting network of international relations, in other words the transformation
of the relations of production and mode of production, reflected on the lives of
women, the ways of establishing gender relations and the division of labor between
genders. What were the dominant discourses of power in the Ottoman society? What kind
of an impact did these discourses have on the subjective experiences of women in
their everyday lives? How, through which strategies and developing what kinds of
technologies of the self would women resist against these discourses of power in
the course of agency in their everyday lives? Which discourse bases would mark out
the boundaries of the relationships of women? And how and what strategies would
women adopt in order to extend and stretch these boundaries? While seeking answers to the questions of how
the gender perceptions, idealized definitions of femininity and masculinity and
gender relations altered and were transformed in time, the paper will also touch
upon the transformations of the patriarchal patterns actively involved in the Ottoman
society through centuries. In order to analyze the positioning of women in the Ottoman
social structure, the paper will firstly touch upon the organization model of the
Ottoman society and upon the mental cognitive maps supporting this model. The writen
texts and researches that are relevant to Ottoman social sructure and the judicial
records belonging to city of Bursa 16th to 19th Centuries will be used as a data
sources of the paper. The basic conclusion to draw out of the analyses in
this paper is that contrary to the general opinion, women in the Ottoman Empire
pursued a dynamic and productive life both in urban and rural areas.
“Ottoman Provisionism and Guilds:
Tanners in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul”
Onur Yildirim, Middle East Technical
University, Ankara, Turkey
Provisionism constituted one of the principal tenets of Ottoman economic system during the early modern period. The populations of the imperial capital Istanbul and major urban centers received top priority in terms of getting their supplies on time and in sufficient quantities. In this process many craft guilds came to depend on the supply of their raw materials through the provisioning policies of the state. However, from the early part of the eighteenth century onwards, Ottoman government authorities began to abandon the traditional comprehensive provisioning policy and concentrate their provisionist concerns mainly on the realm of foodstuffs and the basic needs of the army. The present study examines the impact of this policy shift upon the tanners and other leather-related craft guilds of Istanbul. This task is fulfilled against the backdrop of the wholesale institutional transformation that characterized the fiscal and administrative mechanisms of the Ottoman state during the eighteenth century. A due attention is also paid to the changing role of the merchants in the economic life of the Ottoman Empire, more particularly in the European sections of the Empire where mercantile activities were associated intimately with the rise and spread of nationalist movements. The study is based upon the archival documents obtained from the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul.
“Women and Islamic Politics in
the Mediterranean Region: The Case of Turkey”
Nilufer Narli, Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul, Turkey
Women in Mediterranean region have become politically active. In Eastern Mediterranean countries, which are Muslim populated, many women have been mobilized by Islamic groups. The paper aims to analyze the trends of political participation of Muslim women in Islamic civil society and political parties by studying Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia as case studies. An increasing number of women from the middle and lower-middle class have been mobilized by Islamic NGOs and political parties since the late 1980s in Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia. However, women’s participation in institutionalized party politics and civil society and their numbers in the decision-making organs are lower than those of men, and they form a lower proportion of total membership than men. Nonetheless, there are indications of powerful new demands coming from the Islamic women that could undermine the male dominated party politics if they are well articulated and allied with the feminist demands from various circle s. They suggest new moral imperatives and values that the political parties may no longer be able to satisfy unless they change their attitudes towards women.
2A. Notícias Setecentistas do Ultramar Português
Chair: Fernanda Olival, Universidade
de Évora
“Discussão, negociação e gestão da política ultramarina:
a América portuguesa no alvorecer do século XVIII”
Maria Fernanda Bicalho, Universidade Federal Fluminense,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Essa comunicação pretende
discutir a inflexão da política ultramarina portuguesa na passagem do século XVII
para o XVIII. Há um consenso na historiografia de que o reinado de D. João V (1706-1750)
foi marcado por um processo de centralização monárquica, que teria esvaziado uma
série de prerrogativas de órgãos de representação dos interesses das elites coloniais,
entre eles, as câmaras. No entanto, uma análise mais acurada da documentação pode
demonstrar que também nas conquistas houve uma modificação no perfil das elites
locais, que passaram a atuar em instituições facilmente identificadas com o poder
central. Cabe, portanto, rediscutir os significados e os mecanismos nos quais se
pautaram as mudanças ocorridas na política referente ao ultramar, assim como a renovada
capacidade das elites ultramarinas de gestão e negociação de seus interesses. Propõe-se,
nesse sentido, a analisar as inflexões, tanto no âmbito dos órgãos decisórios da
monarquia, como o Conselho Ul tramarino, quanto nas mutáveis dinâmicas econômicas
e sociais da América portuguesa.
“Do Atlântico ao Índico: notícias ultramarinas do Diário
do 4.º Conde da Ericeira (1729-1740)”
Tiago C. P. dos Reis Miranda, Centro de História da
Cultura da Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Na esteira da edição
dos quatro primeiros códices das gazetas manuscritas da Biblioteca Pública de Évora,
planeia-se agora uma antologia de notícias especificamente relativas ao Ultramar
português. Trata-se de tarefa que pressupõe, por um lado, o entendimento da natureza
desse conjunto de assentos de história do tempo presente (relembrando a maior relação
que, ainda em meados do século XVIII, se reconhecia às idéias de informação e saber
), enquanto, por outro, possibilita compreender um pouco melhor os recursos informativos
sobre o Império que uma das casas nobiliárquicas mais importantes de Portugal regularmente
conseguia obter. A meio caminho entre a história política e a história da cultura.
“Os oráculos da geografia iluminista: D. Luís da Cunha
e D’Anville na construção da cartografia sobre o Brasil”
Júnia Ferreira Furtado, Universidade Federal de Minas
Gerais, Brazil
O objetivo dessa comunicação
é investigar a colaboração estabelecida entre dom Luís da Cunha e Jean-Baptiste
Bourguignon d´Anville na produção da Carte de l Amérique méridionale, da qual existem
3 variações: uma manuscrita datada de 1742 e duas impressas em 1748. Uma primeira
dimensão a ser analisada é a visão de dom Luís da Cunha acerca da geopolítica portuguesa
que deveria ser formulada para a América na primeira metade do século XVIII, e como
essa visão se refletiu na construção do mapa. Uma outra dimensão é desvendar o processo
de produção e transformação do mapa em suas diferentes versões, esmiuçando as fontes
utilizadas pelo cartógrafo e inserindo-o dentro de um contexto mais amplo de construção
do saber cartográfico sob feições iluministas. Uma terceira perspectiva é a análise
das formas de recepção do mapa. Por fim, pretende-se perceber as semelhanças e as
diferenças das visões geopolíticas de Alexandre de Gusmão, grande articulador do
Tratado de Madrid, e de dom Luís da Cunha, expressa no mapa de D Anville, a partir
da comparação entre o Mapa das Cortes e a Carte de l Amérique méridionale.
“Poder e conhecimento: a imagem do Brasil colonial
em Inglaterra”
Ângela Domingues, Instituto de Investigação Científica
e Tropical, Lisbon
Considera-se tradicionalmente
que o Brasil colonial só foi revelado à Europa culta com as viagens científicas
realizadas em inícios do século XIX. Até esta data, a informação disponível sobre
este território colonial consistia fundamentalmente em registos textuais e iconográficos
de autores do século XVI e XVII e em relatos de piratas, corsários e marinheiros
que, ao irem tocando o litoral e ao descreverem-no, renovavam o conhecimento da
costa e modernizavam os dados sobre a presença luso-brasileira naquelas regiões.
Contudo o interesse da Europa por território hispano-americano, e particularmente
pelo Brasil, era inegável e notório. Com base na análise das Philosophical Transactions,
jornal da Royal Society, analisaremos o que a elite britânica conhecia sobre esta
colónia portuguesa durante o século XVIII, bem como os mecanismos que utilizava
para renovar e actualizar esse conhecimento. Diplomatas, cientistas, académicos
e comerciantes, entre outros, tiveram, in egavelmente, uma actuação relevante na
construção e na actualização da imagem europeia do Brasil antes do século XIX.
2B. Ancient History
Chair: Martine Sauret, University of Minnesota-Twin
Cities
“Athenian Naval Operations: Expeditions
in the Ionian Sea (375-373/2 BC)”
Kalomira Mataranga, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece
During 375 to 373/2 BC, the Ionian Islands constituted one of the more important theatres of hostilities between Athens and Sparta. The relations and strategic realignments of the Ionian states with the two Great Powers and rivals, fighting for supremacy and sovereignty of Greece, the involvement of these two more powerful, hegemonic, states in the domestic political tensions of the smaller states, as Corcyra and Zakynthos, and the controversial role played by the general Timotheus, commander of the Athenian fleet in the Ionian Sea, are some of the basic issues discussed in this paper.
“L’Afrique du Nord antique à la croisée des peuples
de la Méditerranée”
Fatima Ouachour, Université de Nantes, France
L’Histoire antique de l’Afrique du Nord a été marquée à la fois par le passage
et l’établissement de nombreux peuples méditerranéens différents. Parmi eux, les
égyptiens, les grecs, les phéniciens, les romains,
qui sont venus s’ajouter à un substrat libyque.
Ces peuples se sont non seulement croisés, affrontés, côtoyés mais ont également
donné naissance à un peuplement original. Ainsi, par exemple, pour désigner la rencontre
entre les Phéniciens, populations venues d’Orient, et les Libyques, populations
d’Afrique du Nord, certains auteurs anciens comme Tite Live et Diodore de Sicile
ont utilisé le terme de libyphénicien, défini comme étant un peuple de sang-mêlé,
mi-phénicien mi-libyen, mais également de références mêlées. Plus tard, la conquête
et la colonisation romaine donneront naissance, pendant plusieurs siècles, à une
civilisation romano-africaine mixte et singulière. Ainsi, qu’elle ait été libyque,
punique ou romaine, l’Afrique du Nord antique tend à montrer un peuplement ayant
à la fois composé et allié la diversité sans nier les rapports de forces et sans
exclure les particularismes ou les traditions, et qui s’inscrit pleinement dans
l’élaboration d’une civilisation méditerranéenne. Aussi, dans quelle mesure ce peuplement,
marqué à la fois par la cohabitation de la différence, les échanges culturels et
les métissages, place-t-il l’Afrique du Nord antique à la croisée des peuples de
la Méditerranée?
“Des langues, un pays (Plurilinguisme dans la Basse
Antiquité égyptienne)”
Adel Sidarus, Universidade de Évora
Depuis la fondation d’Alexandrie et l’établissement
de la dynastie macédonienne des Lagides, aux dernières décennies du IVe siècle avant
notre ère, l’Égypte fut bilingue, même trilingue à certains moments, jusqu’à ce
que la parfaite hégémonie de l’arabe se soit établie entre le XV
e et
le XVIe siècle. Nous entendons, bien sûr, par multilinguisme une véritable
interaction durable entre langues et cultures, que ces cultures soient matérielles
ou spirituelles, et non le simple contact momentané dû à une présence démographique
ou à une occupation territoriale passagères, tel que l’illustre la propre histoire
de l’Égypte ancienne depuis le milieu du IIe millénaire avant notre ère. Depuis
les Ptolémées, en effet, nous assistons à l’emploi simultané de deux ou trois langues,
selon les sphères de l’activité humaine : politique, administrative, économique,
juridique, sociale, culturelle, religieuse. Parfois, à l’intérieur d’une même sphère,
deux langues, sinon trois, se côtoient durant plusieurs siècles, comme c’est le
cas de la liturgie copte depuis le Moyen Âge. Nous parcourrons donc les différentes phases, formes
et implications de cette situation linguistique – assez originale, pensons-nous
– dont beaucoup de témoins, pour la période qui est prise en considération, ont
été mis au jour et révélés ces dernières décennies, grâce surtout à la recherche
papyrologique.
2C. Music History I
Chair: Alexandra Mascolo-David,
Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant
“The Piano Music of the Portuguese
Composer António de Lima Fragoso”
Alexandra Mascolo-David
1918, Portugal lost one of its most promising young musicians, the pianist and composer António de Lima Fragoso, at the age of 21. Fragoso was born in 1897 in the small village of Pocariça, in the North of Portugal. The premature death of António Fragoso erased the hope within the Portuguese musical community of seeing one of their own elevated alongside the major composers of the time. Nevertheless, Fragoso still left behind enough works to attest to his musical talent. Over the period of only four years, he composed one orchestral piece, one trio for violin, cello, and piano, several works for piano and violin, a few choral texts, ten songs for voice and piano, and about thirty pieces for solo piano. Fragoso was a very sensitive young man, who had a tremendous passion for music. In the last years of his life, this passion manifested itself primarily in a quest to learn all that was news throughout Europe in the field of musical composition. He developed a keen interest in the work of Claude Debussy (1862-1918), Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) and Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924). The music of these composers therefore influenced Fragoso’s writing, whose style combines a romantic vein with pronounced French Impressionistic traits. His writing, characterized by great poetic sensibility, presented a harmonic language quite daring for the time, laced with sharply chromatic and dense sequences of modulations. The most significant works for piano include: 7 Preludes, the Sonata in E minor, the Petite suite (Little Suite), Três peças do século XVIII (Three Pieces from the 18th Century), the Nocturnes in B-flat minor and D-flat major, the Penseés extatiques (Ecstatic Thoughts), the Dança popular (Popular Dance), and the Canção e dança portuguesas (Portuguese Song and Dance). In most of the piano works Fragoso demonstrates his talent and ability in manipulating a versatile and rich musical vocabulary. For the most part, however, Fragoso’s musical language and handling of structure are not as accomplished as they would be in a more experienced composer. Overall, his work shows a continuous search for a unique and personal musical style. In my paper, I will overview António de Lima Fragoso’s life and present a brief analysis of his piano works.
“Villani-Côrtes’s Pianistic Idiom
in His Art Songs: The Influence of Brazilian Popular, Jazz, Folk, and Urban Musical
Elements”
Rubia Santos, Central Michigan
University, Mount Pleasant
In the last twenty years, the Brazilian composer Edmundo Villani-Côrtes (b. 1930) has been recognized as one of the most influential composers in Brazilian art music. Although, this recognition came later in his lifetime, he once stated that it came during a period when he was finally able to dedicate himself to composing full time. Villani has worked most of his life as a jazz pianist, arranger, and professor of composition. Villani s output contains approximately two hundred compositions, most of which written for brass and large ensembles, such as his choral and orchestral pieces. In addition, he is renowned for his arrangements of popular Brazilian music for television and recording labels, as well as a composer of film music. However, it is in Villani s piano works and art songs that the composer s creative talent encounters its most significant expression. This expression is evident in the various musical features utilized by him, resulting in a unique combination of classical tradition and improvisatory manner. Villani wrote fifty-two art songs. The pianistic idiom in his art songs greatly conveys the various Brazilian musical styles that influenced the composer throughout his life. They include jazz, popular, folk, and urban music. In these pieces, the piano part includes the use of tone painting supported by melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, and formal elements. The combination of these elements strongly portrays the musical ambience and textual meaning in supporting the singing of the vocal line. Some of these elements are the samba rhythm, bossa nova and choro styles, modinha form, and jazz harmonic vocabulary. In my presentation today, I will discuss and demonstrate Villani s unique pianistic idiom found in his art songs.
“O(A) Professor(a) de Canto e o ensino: percursos e
contextos”
Natália de Lima Ferreira, Conservatório Regional
de Ponta Delgada, Azores
O estudo que aqui se apresenta centra-se numa reflexão sobre o/a professor/a
de Canto e as suas práticas pedagógicas. O texto procura explicar a realidade educativa
do ensino-aprendizagem do Canto à luz dos percursos e contextos vivenciais do professor.
A explicação fundamenta-se no tipo de investigação centrada no método qualitativo
das Histórias de Vida, onde se analisam as relações e generalizações num contexto
de características particulares e singulares. Partindo do princípio que a concepção
da acção educativa não se reduz a um único modelo de professor cujo perfil responda
a um ideal universalmente aceite, entende-se que cada professor é diferente e evolui
de forma singular na vida profissional, adoptando as suas próprias estratégias no
ensino. Existem sim facetas de uns e de outros cujas características globais poderão
espelhar o reflexo da nossa própria identidade, perfil, forma de agir e posicionamento
na vida prática, no quotidiano. Este artigo sublinha, assim, a necessidade de uma
investigação sobre os processos de formação e práticas docentes, numa tentativa
de descobrir e reflectir sobre a realidade educativa do ensino-aprendizagem do Canto.
Este artigo atribui atenção particular ao/à professor/a de Canto, tendo por objecto
potencial de estudo a realidade educativa do ensino-aprendizagem do Canto. Verificando-se
que o ensino do Canto requer o desenvolvimento de um estudo que envolve o trabalho
que precede a educação vocal, e partindo do pressuposto que um dos objectivos da
sua aprendizagem visa a preparação para futuro cantor/a, o que por sua vez revela
certa complexidade, considera-se importante conhecer e compreender os fundamentos
e processos que conduzem o/a professor/a de Canto à sua construção e concretização
como docente.
2D. Early Modern English Drama I: North African
Encounters
Chair: David M. Bergeron, University
of Kansas, Lawrence
“Contaminating Cleopatra: Animal
Hybridity and the Wilds of Egypt in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra”
Gaywyn Moore, University of Kansas,
Lawrence
Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra attaches the myth and mystery of the asp that Edward Topsell’s Historie of Serpents and Lucan’s epic Civil War describe to the myth and mystery of Cleopatra herself, providing a textual lens through which to view Cleopatra’s relation to, obsession with, and death by, snake lore. Borrowing imagery from the lore of the asp, Shakespeare’s Cleopatra seeks a painless, pleasurable death and immortality from an immortal creature, and in the process unwittingly she aligns herself with the contrary myths of the asp’s creation; noble creation of god, evil minion of the devil, or the seductive, animal hybrid Medusa, cursed for her beauty and her other-woman status. Beginning with her connection to the asp, Cleopatra merges woman, animal and barbarian through her associated image to Medusa, thus creating a potentially threatening, yet persistently ambiguous, hybrid character. Through her connection to, and association with, the asp, Cleopatra evades both physical containment and conscription by Roman culture. Her Medusa-like hybridity, intimately related to the asp origins, and the hazardous venture of commodifying the native animal assure that Cleopatra need not be drawn out of the wilderness which she consistently inhabits in this play and into which she consistently draws others.
“Marlowe’s Demythologized
Aeneas”
Brian Harries, University of Kansas,
Lawrence
Critical treatment of Christopher Marlowe’s Dido Queen of Carthage often portrays the play as an amateurish attempt that slavishly copies Virgil’s Aeneid. Significant deviations from the Virgilian text, however, show a conscientious reinvention of the characters. Marlowe breaks with tradition by showing Aeneas’ roles as mythic founder and individual human being in conflict with each other. The play creates a situation where Aeneas must choose between acting in his own behalf and acting for the good of posterity. The sacrifices involved throw into question Virgil’s ideal of imperial piety for Marlowe’s audience. Due to the cultural connections they would make between Early Modern England and Troy/Rome, this consequently questions the cost involved in England’s own imperial aspirations under Elizabeth.
“John Dryden’s Don Sebastian, North Africa, and Paradise Lost”
Geraldo U.
de Sousa, University of Kansas, Lawrence
King Dom Sebastião (1554-1578), of Portugal, was killed at
the Battle of the Three Kings (August 4, 1578) in North Africa. This young
Portuguese king’s name has become synonymous with wrong-headed militarism,
obsessive religious fervor, apocalyptic fanaticism, and an ill-conceived
crusade in Morocco. In the 16th and 17th centuries, various English playwrights
composed dramatic adaptations based on Sebastian’s life and legend, including
George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar (c. 1588), the anonymous Famous
History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley (c. 1596), Philip
Massinger, Believe It if You List (c. 1630), and John Dryden, Don
Sebastian (c. 1689). My paper focuses on Dryden’s Don Sebastian, a
strange reworking of Sebastian’s story. Dryden presents Sebastian as a hybrid
figure, somewhere between the ideal monarch and medieval knight and a
scandalous sexual pariah, caught in a demonic world, similar to the Hell of
Milton’s Paradise Lost. In fact, echoes of Milton’s Paradise Lost
abound in the play. In Dryden’s drama, however, Sebastian, having mysteriously
survived the Battle of Alcazar-Quivir, becomes the prisoner of the tyrannical
Emperor of Morocco. Although Dryden represents Sebastian as a Christian
hero/crusader, he also shows the darker side of Sebastian’s dream and misguided
military pursuits. Dryden erases—in part—Sebastian’s alleged homosexuality;
instead, Sebastian experiences a more threatening form of heterosexuality that
shakes him to his core. The envisioned paradise of Sebastian’s fantasy
transmutes, in Dryden’s play, into its demonic counterpart. In the hot North
African desert, Dryden’s Sebastian confronts the destruction of a dream, as
well as his own disillusionment, defeat, subjection to a tyrant, and subjection
to forbidden sexual desire.
2E. Portuguese History I
Chair: David Higgs, University of Toronto, Canada
“The Dark Side of the Mediterranean:
Expressions of Fear from the Inquisition to the Present”
Maria Antónia Lima, Universidade de Évora
Inside the stones
of its most famous buildings, Évora keeps mysteries and secrets which constitute
the most hidden side of its cultural identity. A World Heritage site, this town
seems to preserve, in its medieval walls, a precious knowledge of the most universal
and ancient human emotion: fear. Trying to transcend many of its past and future
fears, some of its historical monuments in Gothic style were erected against the
fear of death, the most terrible of all fears, which the famous inscription, in
the Bones Chapel of the Church of São Francisco, insistently reminds us, through
the most disturbing words: “Nós ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos”.
If the first inquisitors worked in central Europe (Germany, northern Italy,
eastern France), later the centres of the Inquisition were established in the Mediterranean
regions, especially southern France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Consequently, the roots of fear in Évora
are common to other towns, where the Inquisition developed a culture of fear, through
which we could penetrate into the dark side of the Mediterranean, where people were
subjected to the same terrifying methods of persecution and torture. This common
geographical and historical context was not ignored by one of the most famous masters
of American gothic fiction, Edgar Allan Poe. Through the pages of The Pit and the Pendulum, readers get precise
images of the fearful instruments of terror that were able to produce the legend
that has made the first grand inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada, a symbol of ultimate
cruelty, bigotry, intolerance, and religious fanaticism, which unfortunately are
still the source of our present fears in a time when religious beliefs can be used
again as a motif of war and destruction. As Krishnamurti once suggested, only a
fundamental realization of the root of all fear can free our minds.
“¿Protegieron Salazar y Franco sus industrias corcheras?
Aranceles y tipos de cambio en España y Portugal, 1930-1975”
Amélia Branco Dias, Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, Lisboa, and Francisco M. Parejo Moruno, Universidad de Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain
En la comunicación
se analiza la política comercial seguida por las dictaduras de Salazar y Franco
en lo que respecta a los intercambios de productos corcheros de las dos naciones
ibéricas con el exterior. Este análisis está justificado al menos por dos razones.
En primer lugar, por el elevado grado de apertura del negocio corchero hacia el
exterior en ambos países, fruto de la estrechez del consumo ibérico de manufacturas
corcheras y de la elevada demanda exterior de éstas y de materias primas. Y en segundo
lugar, por las peculiaridades que rodean al negocio del corcho en lo que respecta
a la política aduanera, en la medida que ésta ha recaído, tradicionalmente, en ambos
países, a la exportación y no, como es más común en el conjunto de sectores productivos,
a la importación de productos manufacturados. Las dos justificaciones anteriores
definen, implícitamente, el propósito, también doble, de este trabajo. Por un lado,
constatar la responsabilidad de la política aduanera y cambiaria a lo largo de los
períodos dictatoriales (español y portugués) en el tipo de especialización adquirida
por las industrias corcheras de uno y otro país. Y por el otro, muy relacionado
con lo anterior, determinar la contribución de dichas políticas en el desarrollo
de las actividades corcheras en España y Portugal, sobre todo en las décadas centrales
del período analizado. Finalmente, ya en un contexto de mayor apertura del comercio
internacional, se analiza someramente la política aduanera corchera española y portuguesa
en el marco de la EFTA y de la CEE, como mercados importadores de productos corcheros
ibéricos. En el segundo caso, los acuerdos preferenciales firmados por España y
Portugal con el espacio comunitario, en 1970 y 1972 respectivamente, aportan luz
sobre la mayor o menor apuesta de los regímenes franquista y salazarista en el apoyo
y protección del negocio del corcho en las dos naciones ibéricas.
“The Portuguese Revolution of 1974-75
and Its Impact on the Spanish Transition to Democracy through the Eyes of the Spanish
Clandestine Press”
Raquel Varela,
ISCTE, Lisbon
The Portuguese revolution of the years
1974-1975 had an impact in neighbouring Spain at the political and institutional
levels, on the Trades Unions, the Catholic Church and the Armed Forces. In this
paper we intend to study these influences through the analysis of four clandestine
newspapers Mundo Obrero, of the Spanish Communist Party, El Socialista (PSOE Socialist
Party), Combate (LCR Revolutionary Communist League) and La Batalla (POUM Unified
Marxist Workers Party). Two of these political parties, PSOE and PCE, will play
an essential role in the talks leading to the Moncloa Pacts, the making and passing
of a new Constitutional Act and the consolidation of Spain as a western style democracy.
We’ll analyse how the illegalized Spanish left understood and reacted to the events
taking place in Portugal between the coup that overthrew the Salazar and Caetano
regime on 25 April 1974 and the end of the revolutionary crisis on 25 November 1975.
This study will also help us understand the political relations between PSOE and
PCE and their Portuguese counterparts, PS and PCP.
1:15 – 3:00 Lunch (on your own)
Thursday 3:00 – 5:00
3A. Urban Taxation and Power Networks: Social Control
of Revenue in the Iberian South (13th-15th Century)
Chair: Hermínia Vasconcelos Vilar,
Universidade de Évora
“Representation without Taxation? Portuguese Fourteenth-century ‘Cortes’
and Royal Finances”
António Castro Henriques, York
University, UK, and Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Lisbon
Constitutional history has long emphasised the fiscal role of representative assemblies, following Lord Acton’s famous dictum that there was ‘no representation without taxation’. Critical views on parliamentary history have changed this perception, by emphasising that the existence of an assembly enhanced the political and fiscal authority of the monarch and that parliaments seldom aspired to intervene in the executive level or in the accountability of the taxes the agreed. However, recent work on fiscal history has stressed how parliaments affected financial decisions and how they saw their influence reinforced by negotiating taxation with the monarch. The role of this paper is to introduce fourteenth-century Portuguese *Cortes *to this debate. The origins of Portuguese representative assemblies had been marked by the debates surrounding taxation and coinage in the 1250s but by the middle of the fourteenth century there were no outstanding constitutional fiscal issues dividing the crown and the local representatives. Yet, *Cortes *kept still summoned and their legislative powers grew. This growth of representation, however, did not depend on taxation, as no single tax (or monetary manoeuvre) arouse out of the assemblies. How to explain this apparent paradox?
“A Few Problems around a Fiscal Transition”
Hermenegildo Fernandes,
Universidade de Lisboa
In this paper I aim to question the transition between a muslim and a christian society in the Iberian southwest from a fiscal point of view. Given the well known continuity in the titles of several of the main officials, both in peripherical central administration and on the local/municipal level, the degree of endurance of muslim fiscal practices will be discussed. This envolves considering a series of issues like the origins of almoxarifados and the role of these officials in the post- reconquista society, the ways by which taxes were collected in newly conquered towns, the link between reguengos and ancient public lands or the transformation of the hisn/alcaria complex into a model of settlement based on the aldeia.
“The King’s Control over Revenue: Modes of Tax
Reception in Southern Medieval Portugal”
Hermínia Vasconcelos Vilar
The aim of this paper is to reflect upon the levels and methods of imposing and receiving royal taxation in an urban environment between the second half of the 13th century and the 14th century, taking into account the importance of revenue collection to the process of reinforcing royal power during the late Middle Ages. For this purpose we shall consider a number of case studies regarding southern Portuguese cities, particularly Évora and Beja, from which we seek to identify the protagonists of such reception and collection methods, in order to establish the rhythms and phases for the imposition of a form of payment but also for the collection of revenue by the king, methods that were valid during the final centuries of the medieval period in a region already incorporated into the kingdom of Portugal by the second half of the 12th century.
“Personal Guaranties and
Economic Fees: Building a Systemic Institutional Apparatus of Domination in Fifteenth-Century
Urban Castile”
José Antonio Jara Fuente, Universidad de Castilla-La
Mancha, Cuenca, Spain
The aim of this paper is to analyse the building process of a coherent system of domination in the cities and towns of Castile in the fifteenth century. In this sense, I will use the city of Cuenca as a perfect case-study. This analysis will frame two of the most relevant processes in the construction of the urban system that is the participation, on the one hand, in the service of the urban public offices and, on the other hand, in the private management of the public tax and financial urban subsystem. Given the extent of this analytical approach, I will centre in one of the phases integrating both processes: the grant of sureties (personal ones in the case of the service of public offices and of economic nature in the case of the private management of the tax and financial subsystem). These grants constitute substantial elements of participation in the construction and organization of the urban system, and their inter-crossed analysis will open this area of the urban system to an in-depth analysis of the strategies of social positioning displayed by the diverse components and echelons of its dominant class.
3B. Romance Literary and Cultural Studies
Chair: Susan L. Rosenstreich, Dowling
College, Oakdale, New York
“Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel: Construction
of a Heroine, Martyr, and Revolutionary”
Alicia Vitti, Wake Forest University,
North Carolina
A noteworthy example of the upsurge in popularity of historical novels is “Il resto di niente” (The Rest of Nothing) Loffredo Editore 1986, by Enzo Striano which provides a portrait of late 18th century Naples under the Bourbons, seen through the eyes of the protagonist Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel (1752-1799). This court poetess, intellectual and aristocrat of Portuguese origin became one of the moving forces in the reform movement of her time and later an ardent Jacobin, editor and author of the Republican newspaper, “Il Monitore” that charted the vicissitudes of the short-lived Neopolitan Republic. Fonseca, who was put to death during the repression following the reinstatment of the monarch Ferdinando IV, has aroused much curiosity in the last ten years, having appeared not only as protagonist of Striano’s book, which has become something of a cult novel in Naples, but in Antonietta de Lillo’s recent homonymous film, various theatrical pieces and the semibiographical work by journalist Antonietta Macciocchi “Cara Eleonora”. In Striano’s novel Fonseca’s figure is given a modern rereading that contrasts distinctly with the canonic treatment of her as revolutionary icon, more typical of the past.
“Who Are We? A Troubled Pronoun
in Two Traditional Communities in Southwestern France”
Susan L. Rosenstreich
For the past five years, I have been interviewing residents of small traditional communities in France and Italy. For this conference, I propose to examine interviews with residents of two small villages in Southwestern France for individual versions of local history. In regions such as this, with histories of sectarian strife, individual historiography, given in the context of interviews, yields valuable information about processes of personal identity. This information contributes concrete evidence for the function of the past in contemporary identities.
“Escritura geminada en la novela sentimental”
Carmen Benito
Vessels, University of Maryland, College Park
During the past three years I have been exploring linguistic and literary features of Spanish Medieval texts that supersede the traditional categories of language and genre. My research is mainly concerned with what some critics called cryptic writing and Colbert Nepaulsing named escritura geminada (geminated writing) -- that is, the double entendres consciously hidden or unconsciously latent in the Castilian 15th century. At that time Castile was heavily populated by conversos and poetry was charged with sociopolitical and religious referentiality. It is my contention that 15th century novels were equally charged with double readings which may have been inadvertent because scholars tended to isolate Castilian literature from its counterparts in the Iberian Peninsula, mainly from Portugal. One of the features about which I have published is the so called jewishness of the Castilian texts; that is, features rooted in Jewish ideology and mentality. Building on my past research I will try to connect, through the commonality of their motifs, the three main cultural centers among which sentimental romance flourished in Iberia. In my paper I will show how both a Portuguese and a Castilian novel share intellectual grounds with the Girona Jewish school in Catalonia. With this attempt I am following the steps of the worldwide acclaimed medievalist Alan Deyermond who stated that we should no longer think of sentimental romance as an exclusively Castilian phenomenon; the genre has a continuous Iberian tradition in three literary languages: Castilian, Portuguese and Catalan.
3C. Happy Birthday to You: Marking the Anniversaries
of Masterpieces
Chairs: Beth Gersh-Nesic, New York Arts Exchange and Purchase College, and
Mindy Nancarrow, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
“Once More and Yet Again”
Marilyn Stokstad, University
of Kansas, Lawrence
Fifty years ago—1957—I defended my dissertation on the Portico de la Gloria of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. In those dark days one looked for hands and masters. “Form follows Function” was a rallying cry and “Mimesis” was a word mouthed by every student. Then Function overwhelmed Form, and we had Marxist Art History, Art in Context, and New Art History. Form crept out again in Semiotics, and—joy to behold—Deconstruction. But strangely enough, the wheel of fortune, beloved by Medieval moralists, keeps turning. The Society of Architectural Historians, in their 2008 conference, proposed to focus in the Medieval session on form and function” and “Mimesis.” So if I were to write that dissertation on the Portico today, could I comfortably return to my roots? How do I see the form and function of this remarkable work of art after a life-time spent looking at medieval art and architecture?
“Bon Anniversaire/Feliz Cumpleaños: Pablo Picasso’s
Demoiselles at 100”
Beth Gersh-Nesic
What is Pablo Picasso’s
great masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
(1907) really about? After scores
of analyses, including three major books on this work alone, numerous articles,
and one two-volume catalogue that accompanies a major exhibition on the work (both
produced in 1988), it would seem that enough had been said about Mon Bordel (as Picasso always called this
painting—never Les Demoiselle d’Avignon)
And yet, so much more needs to be added. This paper will offer a brief review of
the major works that seemed to inspire Picasso’s “bordel” and a brief review of
the literature on Les Demoiselles in order
to justify a new interpretation that complements these other analyses. This reading
will explore two avenues:
1. The influence of Max Jacob and his interests
in mysticism. Max Jacob, André Salmon and Guillaume Apollinaire were the major poets
in Pablo Picasso’s infamous circle known as “la bande à Picasso.”
2.The mixture of styles in the work that raises the level of the work from
the personal to the political—not in terms of anti-colonialist commentary (passim Patricia Leighten), but in terms of
art politics.
In other words, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is an art manifesto—and
with Max Jacob’s Kabbalah in the mix, it prescribes a world view.
“Gernika Gernikara: Picasso’s
Guernica 25 Years Later”
Mindy Nancarrow
In Spain the meaning of Picasso’s political painting Guernica is circumscribed by the particular historical event that inspired it and the bloody Spanish Civil War. The return of the last exile Guernica to Spain in 1981 marked the consolidation of democracy after forty years of military dictatorship and the end of political transition. In the newly democratic Spain Guernica meant reconciliation and a willingness to forget old injustices. Twenty-five years later, however, Guernica is appropriated by Basque separatists in their struggle for independence from the central government in Madrid. For Basques, Guernica on display in Madrid’s Reina Sofia modern art museum rather than the Basque homeland represents Basque suffering. Picasso’s painting, like the Basque homeland will be liberated only when it is finally returned to its rightful owners, the Basques.
Discussant: “Periodicity”
M. Rebecca Leuchak, Roger
Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island
Periodization in the Art Historical Context Starting with the acknowledgement that all history telling involves the mimetic projection of human needs, interests and desires onto the object world, these discussant remarks will situate the papers of the panel “Happy Birthday to You: Marking the Anniversaries of Masterpieces,” within a larger pattern of anthropomorphizing tropes of the work of art as living being. The anniversary or birthday as an act of objectification within the temporal sphere is such a common tool for organizing and reorganizing scholarly attention and public acclaim, the unquestioned justification for taking up the re-examination and re-understanding of a particular work of art within a larger context, that we sometimes overlook or downplay its artificial construct. The ways that this marking of anniversaries and birthdays are celebrated will be described with the goal of discussing both their intentional and unintentional consequence.
3D. Early Modern European Studies
Chair: Paul S. Vickery, Oral Roberts University, Tulsa,
Oklahoma
“Inca Garcilaso, Boccaccio, Acosta: A Reading of Royal
Commentaries, Book VIII”
José-Luis Gastañaga, Villanova University, Pennsylvania
En su muy influyente “Historia natural y moral de las Indias” (Sevilla, 1590),
el jesuita José de Acosta presenta la más autorizada historia natural del Perú,
al tiempo que considera a la población bárbara. Justifica así la conquista. El Inca
Garcilaso de la Vega, en sus Comentarios reales (Lisboa, 1609) presenta capítulos
de historia natural que por lo general no se alejan de lo propuesto por Acosta.
No obstante, es en esos mismos capítulos de historia natural donde encontramos,
en una aparentemente simple e ingenua alusión al Decamerón de Boccaccio, una burla
dirigida a ridiculizar al jesuita. Si Garcilaso no puede contradecir a Acosta, por
lo menos se asegura de ridiculizar su imagen frente a sus lectores.
“Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Garcia de Resende and Their
Impact upon Bartolome de las Casas’ View on African Slavery”
Paul S. Vickery
In 1531, 1542, and 1543, Bartolome de las Casas, the Defender of the Indians and Dominican priest recommended to the Crown that Negro slaves, Moors, or other types of slaves be sent to the New World to try to stop the decimation of the indigenous peoples who were dying at an alarming rate. After arriving back in Spain and doing some research into the writings of Eanes de Zurara and Resende, however, the Dominican changed his mind. Despite criticism that Las Casas came late to the problem of African slavery, he was actually one of the first in the sixteenth century to speak out against the entire system of slavery not just the abuse of some. He then became an active and ardent opponent of slavery and the slave trade. This paper will examine the writing of these two Portuguese chroniclers and their influence upon Las Casas and the Portuguese slave trade in the context of the moral, theological, and economic milieu of the time.
“The Fragile Vessel: Theological
Discourse and the Ascetic Female Body in Early Modern Spain”
Susan Laningham, Tennessee Technological
University, Cookeville
In the last decades of the sixteenth
century, in a Cistercian convent in Avila, Spain, a middle-aged aristocratic nun
named María Vela attempted to go without food and live only on the Eucharist. When
her superiors refused to grant permission for her extended fasting, María’s jaws
locked. Her convent of Santa Ana was “turned upside down,” according to contemporaries,
especially when María declared that Heavenly Voices were instructing her to forgo
meals and live a life of unrelieved asceticism. The “impediment of the jaws,” María
informed everyone, would persist until her superiors were in accord with Divine
Will. María’s asceticism reflected an ideal developed 1200 years earlier by Christian
saints in the deserts of Syria and Egypt and resurrected by the mystics of the Middle
Ages. Yet, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, in what is known as Counter-Reformation
Spain, when María attempted to chastise her body by physical mortifications and
prolonged fasting, her convent “rose up in wrath” and the nuns “bellowed.” The purpose
of my paper is to examine why the physical mortifications that made saints and power-brokers
of ascetics like Abba Anthony in the fourth century and Catherine of Siena in the
fourteenth did not have the same happy effect in the Spanish convent of Santa Ana
in 1598. Clearly, ascetics were bound by certain guidelines and strictures specific
to time and place. The controversy that resulted from María Vela’s attempt to discipline
her body and imitate Christ’s sufferings raises vital questions about sixteenth-century
religious observance. What, in Counter-Reformation Spain, was considered an appropriate
level of imitatio Christi, and who determined the appropriate level? The
asceticism of the desert dwellers and medieval saints presented early modern Christians
with a prototype, but it was an exacting standard no longer practical or desirable
in 1598. Using texts written by sixteenth-century theologians and founders of monastic
orders, among them Teresa of Jesús and Ignatius Loyola, I will examine the “new”
asceticism of the Counter-Reformation and proffer an explanation for the heated
debates that accompanied one Spanish nun’s attempt to imitate Christ.
“The Limits of the Possible
in the Mediterranean: Grain Provisioning in Spanish and Ottoman Empires at the End
of the Eighteenth Century”
Seven Agir,
Princeton University
Until the end
of the eighteenth century, both Spanish and Ottoman empires had been actively involved
in regulating and supervising production and consumption within their political
borders. Provisioning of the basic needs of the subjects and discouragement of certain
patterns of consumption by the central political authority had given rise to a kind
of moral economy, within which the legitimacy of state intervention was socio-politically
maintained. However, both empires underwent a socio-economic transformation as of
the eighteenth century: The political authority gradually delegated its capacity
to regulate the economic sphere to market forces. We analyze this transformation
towards deregulation in a comparative framework by focusing upon the grain sector.
In order to understand why and how the Spanish and Ottoman political elite sought
to deregulate the grain market, we examine common internal dynamics in their networks
of grain provisioning. In doing so, we try to cast a new light on the limits of
the possible in Fernand Braudel s parlance in these pre-industrial Mediterranean
empires. All in all, we put emphasis on the historical specificity of the link between
the ideas regarding the economic role of the state and the actual institutional
changes within this Mediterranean context.
3E. Medieval Literature
Chair: Kathryn Klingebiel,
University of Hawaii at Manoa
“Rereading Boccaccio’s Masetto da Lamporecchio”
Richard Bonanno, Assumption College,
Worcester, Massachusetts
Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron is a work or monumental proportion that offers a unique perspective on the culture of Italy during the late-medieval period. Its legendary and factual tales, presenting a variety of themes, are framed within the hisorical context of the plague and prove entertaining to present-day readers, much as they were to Boccaccio s contemporaries. Boccaccio presents his novelle as exempla, moralizing tales that entertain while offering a series of articulated and subtextual lessons. In doing so he applies the classical notion of utile et dulce, which lends an organic quality to the work and ultimately serves as an interpretive key for the reader. The Decameron, nonetheless, has been dismissed at times throught out the years by critics, such as the late Norman Cantor who deemed it nothing more than entertaining and downright pornographic. I intend to bring to light Boccaccio s calculated and artful application of the notion of utile et dulce and to defend the Decameron as a morally responsible literary work. In support of my thesis I shall offer a close reading of Masetto da Lamporecchio, the first novella of the third day, and present analysis of both the genesis of the novella and its importance within the context of the Decameron and of the historical period.
“Banned at the BN”
Kathryn Klingebiel
Over the last few years troubadour ghost sightings have been reported at various MSA conferences (Aix 2001, Budapest 2003, Messina 2005). It s now time to take a look at some troubadour ghosts hiding in the national library catalogues of several countries that have hosted MSA. As TrobarInfo, my database of troubadour names, datings, and localizations, has taken shape, I have come to realize that there s much free information available online in various international bibliographies and OPACs. But how reliable is this information for the troubadour scholar? Questions arise: why would any troubadour be identified with French nationality ? and why would troubadour language ever be labeled Old French, rather than straightforward provençal ancien, jusqu’à 1500? The name of the first known troubadour, Guilhem IX, duke of Aquitaine, provides a fitting case study across several national library catalogues. Guilhem is indeed acknowledged by the BNFrance to have been a poète occitan, yet for his name the BNF uses four authorized forms that are all modern French variants of Guillaume d’Aquitaine (1071-1127) . These four stand against a full dozen « formes rejetées », including a single version in Old Provençal: Guilhem IX (duc d’Aquitaine) -- the contemporary Occitan spelling of his name thus being disallowed. The Italian national library catalogue offers a curious hybrid, Guillaume, duca d’Aquitania, while the Library of Congress allows a single authorized heading: William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, 1071-1127, against 10 reference forms. In no case is the Occitan spelling Guilhem allowed to represent this great political figure and poet. While authorized catalogue names are intended for use by a modern audience, there is irony in the fact that so many troubadour names in various bibliographies and libraries are listed ONLY in a form the poets themselves would not have easily recognized in their lifetimes and that contemporary spellings in their own language are today no more than formes rejetées banned at the BN. It would appear that modern practice forces cataloguers into what are essentially anachronistic choices. Yet it is also possible to update and correct some of these choices, at least at the US Library of Congress. Yet another task that may fall to the troubadour database!
“Les Explorateurs Normands”
Martine Sauret, University of
Minnesota-Twin Cities
Si les Français n’ont pris qu’une modeste part
à la première grande vague des découvertes du XVe siècle, monopolisée en grande
partie par les Espagnols et les Portugais, certains marins français ont cependant
bien sillonné les mers. Les marins normands de cette époque restent souvent méconnus
mais les témoignages maritimes, les contrats d’assurance, les inventaires, les factures
et notes de commerçants méritent qu’on s’y attarde ici quelques instants. En effet,
si nos explorateurs portugais et espagnols ont été les grands héros de découvertes,
il n’est pas à exclure tout un courant de navigateurs moins connus et qui fort de
leurs bateaux et de leurs expériences vont partir et tenter de joindre des rivages
inconnus. Dans ce vaste mouvement collectif vers le nouveau monde, il semblerait
que les Français ne s’alignent pas sur les autres pays. Dans le court temps qui
m’est imparti, j’aimerais rappeler et souligner les découvertes des navigateurs
normands (de Verrazano, Jean Cousin, Gonneville, Cartier, Parmentier, Jean Ribault)
m’attacher en particulier à la redécouverte d’un journal de 1529, celui de Parmentier
et examiner de près comment cet explorateur partit sur 2 navires le Sacre et la Pensée et contourna l’Afrique jusqu’à Sumatra. L’importance de ce voyage
montre la diversité de leurs connaissances maritimes et techniques. Le récit des
explorations normandes permet de comprendre pourquoi et comment les navigateurs
et explorateurs français restent marginaux à l’époque mais influencent l’imagination
des poètes, écrivains français ainsi que le modelé des connaissances cartographiques
de l’époque.
Friday, June 1, 9:00 – 11:00
4A. Hispanic Studies and the Mediterranean I
Chair: Enrique Rodrigo, Creighton
University, Omaha, Nebraska
“La lírica amorosa de Jorge Manrique:
tópicos y lenguaje”
Filomena Compagno, Terracina,
Italy
La producción poética
de Jorge Manrique en el Cancionero general
de Hernando del Castillo en su edición de 1511 comprende 41 composiciones, 39
de las cuales son de carácter amoroso; lo que justifica un análisis de los tópicos
y del lenguaje del amor cortés en estos textos. Con el presente artículo se puede
ver como Manrique emplea algunos tópicos que proceden de la lírica provenzal o del
Dolce Stil Nuovo italiano y como algunas de las palabras que recurrén más en sus
textos se encuentran aun en la poesía gallego-portuguesa. En este sentido, Manrique
aprovecha parte de la tradición del amor cortés que lo había precedido; sin embargo,
en las mismas composiciones encontramos también algunos aspectos nuevos que nos
atestiguan una vez más su originalidad en el panorama de la poesía española.
“La historia del Sendebar como icono de la cultura
mediterránea”
Maria Dolores Bollo-Panadero, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
Citando los autores
de la Histoire Littéraire de la France
(vol.XIX, Paris: 1895), se puede afirmar que, después de la Biblia, la historia
del Sendebar fue seguramente aquella transcrita en más lenguas (viii). Con el esparcimiento
del Imperio musulmán por el mediterráneo, el llamado entonces Sendebar, que ya contaba
con una traducción árabe a finales del siglo VIII, es introducido en su versión
árabe, pero rápidamente se transmite oralmente en los hablares romances y en hebreo.
Siguiendo el afán cultural de su hermano, Alfonso X, el infante Don Fadrique ordena
la traducción, en 1253, al castellano de la historia de Cendubete, que recibe el
título de Libro de los engaños y los asayamientos
de las mugeres. Es a partir de esta traducción castellana que el Sendebar atraviesa
los Pirineos. La historia del Sendebar también entra en el continente europeo a
través de la traducción del griego Miquel Andreopolos y titulada Syntipas, y ya en el siglo XII, una versión
latina, llamada Dolopathos sive de Rege et
Septem Sapientibus, es establecida por Juan d’Alta Silva y traducida al francés
por el popularísimo troubadour Hébert
como Li Romans de Dolopathos. La historia
reaparece en España y lleva el título de Novela
que Diego de Cañizares de Latyn en romance
declaró y transladó de un libro llamado Scala Cœli. La historia fue difundidísima
en los siglos XIV y XV, generando entre otras la versión italiana en prosa, Li compassiovoli avvenimenti d’Erasto, opera
dotta e morale, de 1542, traducida a partir del griego, y que originará una
nueva redacción a partir de la cual Pedro Hurtado de la Vega produce en 1573 la
Historia lastimera d’el Principe Erasto, hijo
del Emperador Diocleciano. Finalmente, incluida en el siglo XV en la compilación
Gesta Romanorum, es traducida en muchas
otras lenguas europeas: la francesa Les Sept
Sages de Rome, la catalana Llibre dels
Set Savis de Roma, etc. Así, el objetivo de este trabajo es demostrar cómo la
historia del Sendebar en sus diferentes versiones puede ser vista como un icono
aglutinador de la cultura mediterránea.
“Cancioneros y Petrarca: Una Muestra de la Produccion Poetica en el Mediterraneo”
Roxana Recio, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska
Normalmente
se ha estudiado el petrarquismo que se ha dado en llamar “oficialista” y que comienza
y gira en torno a Garcilaso, y teniendo exclusivamente en cuenta como modelo al
cancionero (Cruz, Manero Sorolla). Sin embargo, la presencia de Petrarca en la literatura
peninsular es muy variada. Por ejemplo, existen muchas huellas petrarquistas diseminadas
por los cancioneros castellanos que no están necesariamente ligadas a una obra determinada
del poeta italiano. Hasta ahora la crítica siempre ha visto la influencia de Petrarca
a una obra en función del Cancionero. En
este estudio lo que se va a analizar es una parte de ese rastro que Petrarca dejó
en los autores de poesía cancioneril, siguiendo sobre todo los pasos de las imágenes
propias de su sistema poético, el cual no se reduce sólo al Cancionero. Como el panorama es muy amplio
y mi intención aquí es dar sólo una muestra, se hará referencia únicamente a las
imágenes relacionadas con animales. Francisco Rico ha dicho de forma general que
todas provienen de los bestiarios, pero eso no ayuda mucho. Se tomarán algunas composiciones
que aparecen en el Cancionero general,
en el Cancionero de poesías varias y en
el Cancionero de Gallardo.
4B. Ties That Bind: Religious Organizations and
the State in Early Modern Portugal
Chair: Francis Dutra, University of California at Santa Barbara
“The Lisbon Inquisition and the Elite after Pombal”
David Higgs, University
of Toronto, Canada
This paper considers discourses which may explain the lack of support for the Inquisition by the Portuguese elite in 1821: first the anti-popery sentiments of the British merchants and the effect of Hipolito da Costa’s account of his imprisonment, second the French anti-clerical elements in works on the Inquisition like the critical history of Llorente, and thirdly the impact of arrests of Freemasons.
“Philip II and the Portuguese Order of Christ,
1580-1598”
Francis Dutra
Report on the
project to identify the more than 1157 new knights in the Order of Christ
during the reign of Philip II (Philip I of Portugal). Given the great loss of
life among the Portuguese nobility in North Africa at the battle of Alcácer
Quibir in 1578 and the need to reward his Portuguese supporters during the “alterações
do reino” (especially in 1580 and early 1581), Philip II had a golden
opportunity to distribute the largest number of new knighthoods--especially
during the years 1581-1584--in the history of the Order to 1640. The names of
the 1157 knights are known, but frequently biographical information is missing.
The paper describes the methods being used to identify these new knights and
discusses the services being rewarded and the social background of those
becoming knights in the Order of Christ during his reign.
“Business Interest Groups
in Early Modern Portugal: The Mesa do Bem
Commun do Commercio”
Bill Donovan, Loyola College
of Maryland
The Mesa do Bem Comun do homens de negócio served as the authorized lobbying body for Portuguese and colonial merchants throughout the early modern period. The Mesa originally functioned as a religious sodality that managed the finances of the Espirito Sancto Church. Unlike lobby groups elsewhere, the Mesa retained its religious affiliation while developing into an association principally associated with business interests. This paper begins by discussing the Mesa’s Medieval origins. It then focuses upon the Mesa’s activities in the eighteenth-century. It analyzes its activities during the long reign of Dom João V (1707-1750) up to the Marquis de Pombal suppression of the body in 1755. The paper then considers a similar body with the same name but with a far shorter purview. After examining its actions, the paper then turns to its final extinction in the 1770s. This paper argues that unlike merchants in England or Spain, Portuguese and colonial merchants had little influence or corporate power. Without a functioning cortés early modern Portuguese politics operated through patronage. Thus to affect commercial policy, Portuguese and colonial merchants had to rely on personal relationships with members of the nobility or other influential officials. Although Lisbon’s mesa had formal links with colonial merchants through proxy agreements (procuração bastante), it nevertheless lacked any genuine ability to influence even short term commercial policy or key points of conflict. After 1755, the newly constituted Mesa, lobbied more vigorously for Lisbon Merchants. The re-suppression of Mesa points out that Pombal’s economic policy was less commercially oriented than traditionally thought. Instead, the major change occurred in Portugal’s patronage system.
4C. Archaeology and Architecture
Chair: Suna Guven, Middle
East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
“An Old Port-City in the
Eastern Mediterranean: Alaiye (Alanya) and Cultural Relations with the Occident
(An Archaeological Approach)”
Z. Kenan Bilici, Ankara University,
Turkey
Alâiyye (now Alanya) is an important medieval archaeological site in the southern shore of Turkey. The most remarkable monuments on the historical peninsula belong to Byzantine and particularly Seljuk periods from 13th century. For those who studying to the eastern Mediterranean, Alâ iyye is fascinating for the extent and state of preservation of its Seljuk defenses and monuments. These include the arsenal (tersane), the best preserved in the medieval Mediterranean. Also, the important city is a case study in medieval geopolitics. For all of the military potential its walls and elevation give it, Alanya lies far enough away from centers of power and shipping lanes for it to have played a major role in later centuries. This overall negative assesment of Alâ iyye s importance in the post 13th century world should not deny its status as a port second only to Sattalia (now Antalya) along Anatolia s Mediterranean coast. The caravan routes to and from Alâ iyye continued to function, linked by caravansarails built by the Seljuks. Ibn Batuta and others speak of the export of timber from Alâ iyye in the 14th century. Genoese commercial contracts from early 14th century Cyprus speak of trade in scarlet silk with Alâ iyye and Antalya. Dried fruit and other local products like pitch and wool made their way Cyprus and Egypt. On the other hand, the extent of the relations of Alâ iyye with Europe later periods will increasingly be better understood as the amount of tangible data such as some silver coins that belong to Phillip II from late 16th century to Saxony Electorate and from the beginning of the 17th century to Spanish-Netherlands period that are known to be in Alâ iyye and even the ibero-islamique sherds of Valencia from early 17th century aincrease with the help of coincidences. Besides, some European porcelains such as Copeland & Garrett, Lindner and Sarreguimines branded may well be remembered here as well as some Italian ceramics. In recent years, new wall-paintings were discovered during our archaeological excavations and surveys in the site. From smaller medieval to large Ottoman, Venetians, Spanish, Dutch etc. cocha, galleys, caravelles (or caravela latina), brig, fluyt and frigates that became common in and after the 16th century in Levant. With the increase of our understanding about ship types and flags seen on some ships, we will wholly understand the trade activities of the western world in the Eastern Mediterranean and the social and cultural changes such relationships created in a port-city. No doubt, that details, most of which seem us insignificant most of the time, will form a large photograph in the future where we will more comfortably evaluate the past historical approaches and connections in the history of the Mediterranean. The foremost being ceramics, porcelains and coins, a careful examination of traded merchandise, in my opinion, will ensure the writing of cultural history of the Mediterranean, not yet fully written in the real sense. In this paper, with some archaeological evidence where discovered in Alâ iyye will be deal with relations between an old port-city from Eastern Mediterranean and Europe in the historical context.
“Some Observations on Late
Antique and Byzantine Rural Settlements in Western Asia Minor”
Ufuk Serin, Middle East Technical
University, Ankara, Turkey
Byzantine rural settlements and countryside have not as yet been the subject of a thorough investigation. Although the existing general studies in the field are very important, especially taking into consideration the centralized nature of the Byzantine State, the contribution of archaeology is indispensable to fill the gap. Current research focuses on regional studies, offering important data not only in aspects of topography, but also from different points of view, such as rural economy, organization of territory and production, surplus, taxation, relations of power etc. As a result, comprehensive studies are growing in number concerning some regions in particular, such as Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, Greece, the Balkans, and the Medieval West. However, the research on Byzantine villages and countryside in Asia Minor is yet limited, except for studies concerning Lycia, Central Anatolia, and Cilicia. This paper aims to offer the preliminary results of an ongoing research on Late Antique and Byzantine rural settlements in the light of new archaeological evidence from Caria in Western Asia Minor. In this framework, it is the author’s intention to analyze the architectural and topographical aspects of Byzantine villages found in and around the region and to investigate the relationship between cities and their hinterland in the same chronological and geographical context.
“A Building of the Last Ottoman
Architecture: The Selimiye Mosque in Uskudar”
Betül Bakir, Yildiz Technical Institute,
Istanbul, Turkey
The policy of strengthening the military of the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century and reforms necessitated by opening to the west was developed. New plans brought by foreign experts and technical personnel concerning military organization and architecture produced barracks structures and mosques for these barracks. The Selimiye Mosque was constructed at the end of the 18th century to serve the barracks. The imperial mansions planned for the area near the mosque. This served to bring the sultan s residence closer to the people and was a result of functional necessity under the circumstances of the day when the social situation under western influence supported a lifestyle directed externally. The idea of the square form continued during this period too as it had ever since the Beylik period. Elements appeared on the agenda such as putting marble where stone materials had been, achieving a more slender form for the columns, column capitals, decorations on the front door, balustrades, etc. Baroque decorations replaced stalactite surfaces on the minaret and other structural elements, while on the facades the vertical and horizontal balance was spoiled and the vertical axes such as pilasters created the system of the dome and the dome drum rising above them. According to the results of the geometric data there is a golden proportion and geometric unity in the facades and in the main aggragate.The shared characteristics described in the mosques above reflect the Turkish Baroque style in the 18th century and are apparent in the Selimiye Mosque.
“Traditional Lefka Houses of Cyprus”
Gül Akdeniz, Yildiz Technical Institute,
Istanbul, Turkey
The island of Cyprus is on the important
crossroads of the old Eastern and the Western cultures intermingling here. Consequently
throughout its history the island was governed by the political powers around (such
as the Assyrians (750 BC– 612 BC), Egyptians (568 BC– 525 BC), Persians (525 BC–333
BC), Hellenistic rule (333 BC–58 BC), Romans (58 BC– 395 AD), Byzantines (395 AD–1191
AD), Frankish Lusignan Dynasty (1192-1489), Venetians (1489–1571), Ottomans (1571–1878)
and the English (1878–1925) people. Being affected by these environmental powers
mostly foreign, their political and cultural characteristics resulted in different
architectural styles on the island. The past house heritage was not preserved properly
up to our time because of the continuous political changes in the island history.
Some façades and parts of historical houses lasting from the reign of the Lusignans
and the Venetians can be seen on the island. But most of the old traditional houses
remaining belong to the Ottoman and the English period. As seen the traditional
houses of Cyprus today are mostly the remains of the later periods. The traditional
Cyprus House of each period is linked in some way with the previous culture. The
architectural style of the traditional Cyprus houses will be evaluated in the light
of the old Lefka houses of Cyprus, with original survey drawings.
4D. Arabic Poetry, Europe, and Orientalism
Chair: Abdulla Al-Dabbagh, United
Arab Emirates University
“Same-Sex Love between Women in
Medieval Arabic Literature”
Sahar Amer, University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill
If the absence of a specific terminology to denote lesbianism in medieval Europe seems to have compromised the production of scholarship about same-sex love and desire among women, the existence of the label sahq and sahiqa (Arabic words for lesbianism and lesbian respectively) in medieval Arabic writings did not result in a richer critical production. In fact, if relatively little research has been conducted on female same-sex desire in medieval Europe, even less has been produced on homosexuality in the medieval Arabic literary or Islamicate tradition, and almost no research at all has been done on medieval Arab/Islamicate lesbianism. This state of scholarship into alternative sexual practices in the Arab Islamicate world is especially astonishing considering the survival of a noteworthy body of primary texts dealing precisely with this topic. This presentation will uncover the literary representations of medieval Arab lesbians, and will demonstrate that the medie val Arabic tradition of eroticism is far more progressive than is commonly imagined given the current political re-appropriation of Islam by fundamentalist regimes. Moreover, we will see how the medieval Arabic literary and cultural production on lesbianism challenges our conventional views of Islam and the Arab world, and interrogates our contemporary Western and Eastern (Arabic) assumptions about gender and binary constructions of masculinity and femininity. Such a study has thus significant implications for the cross-cultural history of sexuality.
“Muhammad Zafzaf, Latin America,
and the Politics of Literacy”
Samuel England, University of California,
Berkeley
Modern Arabic literature, and its Moroccan iteration in particular, has become inseparable from questions of literacy. This paper takes as its point of departure the controversy over Mohamed Choukri s Al-Khubz al-Hafi (translated as For Bread Alone ), sparked by its sexually explicit content but spilling over into questions of Choukri s literacy. Muhammad Zafzaf, a fellow Moroccan and Choukri s contemporary, is quite unproblematically literate in his personal narrative, but I argue here that literacy is a central problem in his book Ba i at al-ward (The Flower Seller). The book mobilizes literacy in a specific way, not in the Arabic of the text s composition but in the foreignness of its non-Arab characters. In the stories, Arab protagonists encounter a great many foreigners, Europeans mostly, who do not pose critical linguistic problems. It is in its treatment of sub-Saharan Africa, and to a larger extent Latin America, that Ba i at al-ward inserts itself into questions of intelligibility and literacy. Progressively, the collection poses Latin American figures and reconstitutes them each time, so that their interventions make up their own sort of narrative. This narrative marks a decisive turn in the debate over Moroccan literature and literacy.
“East of the Mediterranean: The
Positive Achievement of Victorian Orientalism”
Abdulla Al-Dabbagh
Reflections of
the East and preoccupations with oriental matters in Victorian literature and Victorian
thought reveal that the literary orientalism embodied particularly in the fiction
and the poetry of the period remained very far from a uniform and unchanging receptacle
of distortion and hostility, and demonstrate that Victorian thought, in its best
manifestations, constantly attempted and generally succeeded in coming to terms
with the oriental “Other”. This paper will try to substantiate this argument through
the detailed discussion of the oriental element in the poetry of Arnold, Tennyson,
and Edward Fitzgerald, the fiction of Disraeli and George Eliot, and the ideas of
Carlyle and Marx. Victorian orientalism, although a product of the era of high capitalism
and early imperialism and hence, quite expectedly, handicapped by the limitations
of its social and historical context, was surprisingly successful in transcending
the limits of the age and producing a relatively ac curate account as well as a
fairly persuasive discourse. More specifically, the universalist dimension inherent
in Victorian orientalism, particularly in the works of Fitzgerald, Eliot, and Marx,
was the key to its positive accomplishment and to its powerful influence into the
twentieth century.
4E. Mediterranean Cultural Studies I
Chair: Susan L. Rosenstreich, Dowling
College, Oakdale, New York
“Transition of a Port City: From
Ottoman to French-Mandate Beirut”
Pelin Kihtir Öztürk, Middle East
Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
Beirut was relatively a minor city until the middle of the nineteenth century, when new patterns of production and trade transformed it into a major commercial center in the Eastern Mediterranean. The nineteenth century was the transition period for Beirut that the city witnessed major population changes and major physical transformations. Both reform period in the Otoman Empire and the expanding European effect in the city changed the urban organization. Tanzimat reforms were applied to Beirut partly through modernizing the city s building regulations and building of monumental architecture. Contractors were mainly involved in the construction of urban facilities; infrastructure and communications. In the French Mandate period, the French planners imposed a Beaux-Arts and a Haussmanian model consisting of wide boulevards intersecting at monumental squares over the city s old fabric. Beirut s old fabric disappeared to be replaced with the colonial early modern Beiru t. The building of monumental architecture in the Tanzimat period turned into building of monumental city squares. Beirut also acquired a web of transportation after the construction of tramway network, new residential quarters especially the formation of Hamra district and new urban facilities served by new buildings and by existing city structures during its transition period.
“From the Lost Tribe to the Smallest
Ally: An Outline of the History of the Little-Known Assyrian Christians during and
after WW I”
Bulent Ozdemir, Balikesir University,
Balikesir, Turkey
Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Assyrians belonging to either of the two branches of Eastern Christianity (Jacobite and Nestorian) remained little known community scattered throughout Ottoman and Persian territory. They were supposed to be the earliest Christians and spoke the same language as the Jesus had spoken. When they were discovered by the Western scholars, missionaries and archeologists in the mid-nineteenth century, they were called as the lost tribe with great excitement. But after that time the internal unity and the external relations of Assyrian community underwent a drastic change. Western Christianity, particularly protestant missionaries exerted their power and influences by using schools and hospitals as the instruments and split the Assyrians along sectarian lines. In terms of external relations this process simply alienated Assyrians from Ottoman and Persian authorities and increased animosity with the Turks and the Kurds who were their neighbors for so long in the same territories. When the World War I broke out, they found themselves within the struggle between Ottomans and Russians to keep the area in their sphere of influence. They could not keep away from the war and in 1915 became the smallest ally of Allied forces. The purpose of this paper is to make an outline of Assyrian history during and after WW I by following the milestones of the events which had been so costly for them.
“New Settlements during Fascist
Regime(s): From an Economical Need to a Strategic Instrument of Propaganda”
Romeo Carabelli,
University of Tours, France
This proposal talks about new settlements during Fascist regimes: in Italy, in its Mediterranean possessions and, later, in the Iberian Peninsula. With the aim of answering to real problems of unemployment, poorness and emigration, the Italian government conceived new settlements based on reclaimed land. Quickly the fascist party understood the immense symbolic power of foundation acts and propaganda issues integrated the programme. New towns and new settlements were founded and used as media to show and communicate the “new order.” During the ‘30s the regime betted also on colonial expansion, Fascist urban planning and architecture were mature and skilled to propose a language able to reflect the myth of the territorial conquests. The core of the fascist rule integrated territorial domination; new “fascist” territories were created mostly enlarging colonial useful surface, recovering reclaimed lands and beginning a new agrarian property structure. The production of new territories corresponds to the new-Italian-fascist way of life, organizes the social structure and makes the material environment for the new man, the Fascist one: intended to be a new and more developed specimen of human being. The structuring myths of conquest and fascism created singular architectural and urban artefacts and similar planning and building paradigms all over the fascist parties controlled areas, inside and outside the country. After the Italian defeat in the IIWW those settlements were spread into different countries (Italy, Greece, Libya, Albania, Yugoslavia/Croatia and the former AOI), making interesting and extremely riche and variegate to research about the plurality of nowadays cultural heritage status of what remains.
5A. Security in the Euro-Mediterranean Space: Discourse
and Realities
Chair: Nursin Atesoglu Guney, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey
“The Alliance of Civilizations: The Meaning of Cultural Dialogue in the
Mediterranean”
Cumhur Mumcu, Maltepe
University, Istanbul, Turkey
The ongoing debate over the alliances and its link with civilizations could be evaluated by a number of subtitles. The first one is in theory. How could international relations theory overcome this deep-seated debate in terms of neorealism and neoliberalism without tending to be much normative? Second debate is on the contradictions of norms and identity. Is this debate really matter in alliances particularly in NATO and its Mediterranean members? If so, there are some military and political cultures behind the alliance. In accommodation with this thought, Mediterranean is a distinguished geo-cultural area together with its peripheries from Gibraltar to Middle Eastern coast of Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. Those are very much highlighted civilizations that shift the Mediterranean idea of peace to the Mediterranean conflicts, crises and wars. Those are Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox and Catholic Christianity cultures together with their factions. On this matter, the question is how we could consider these civilizations in terms of their essential factors by which any cooperation could be triggered between them? Finally, there is another question over the enlargement of NATO and its cultural meaning. Naturally, the old and inherited threat perceptions from the Cold War grasped the enlargement within Europe. But if there is an out of area concept and its consequences such as we have seen in Afghanistan, there should be found some cooperative countries in the Middle East coast of Mediterranean. Theoretical expectations of neoliberalism in international relations theory determined the formation of alliances and its cultural roots. By this way, how could we attract some Eastern Mediterranean countries into the NATO by the name of East Mediterranean Council? In this presentation, these parameters above will be discussed in a larger context.
“The Fostering of a Euro-Mediterranean
Entity as a Prelude for Dialogue”
Thomas Demmelhuber, University
of Erlangen, Germany
True partnership needs a sustainable framework for
interaction and dialogue. Indeed, nowhere is the need for and the obstacle of achieving
the latter more obvious than in the Euro-Mediterranean region. How can the 35 member
countries of the Barcelona-Process create the needed sense of equality and co-ownership
so necessary for dialogue when the “power gap” between the Southern Mediterranean
and the European Union is so glaring? For centuries the Mediterranean has been the
bridge between the actors on both sides of it, acting as historic crossroads for
various ethnic, cultural and religious traditions. It has also been the reference
point from which to consider the world around and where to base transcending theories
of mankind. With the launching of the Barcelona Process back in 1995, the idea of
the Euro-Mediterranean entity as an imagined construction (generally defined as
an area of common interests, experiences and legacies) was converted into political
reality by the European Union following (geo-) political, economic and cultural
settings as constituting factors. In fact, the Barcelona Process is some kind of
a long-term laboratory where one of the most ambitious experiments in international
relations may have started to take place. The fostering of this entity remains crucial
for the furtherance of the Barcelona Process. Sure, the latter builds on three interdependent
pillars albeit the third pillar, building on a common past and heritage, provides
the most promising tool to foster the Euro-Mediterranean entity needed for achieving
sustainable dialogue in all aspects. In its early stages this may well include the
critical consideration of discourses on colonialism, counter-discourses and its
legacies. The paper argues that this outlined approach may be the only feasible
way to ease the operational focus for political interaction on democratisation,
rule of law and Human Rights at all levels.
“Recent Security Initiatives of the EU and NATO
in the Mediterranean: The Western Stand”
Nursin Atesoglu Guney
In the new Western Security Strategies, Mediterranean Basin is considered to be basic sources of the new threats. Both in NATO and EU a special importance was given to maintain security and stability in this region. Under the impact of the new geo-strategic environment Europeans believe that the future of western security depends on the conditions of security beyond the borders of the EU and NATO. Thus, in this paper a special attention is to be given analyzing the recent initiatives of the two organizations (EU-NATO) that aim to bring peace and security to the Euro-Med region. All in all, the main purpose of this paper is to find out whether two organizations newly launched initiatives towards the Euro-Med region have the chance of working in accord. Depending on the answer of this question the paper tries to make an assessment on the possibility of success of these Euro-Med initiatives.
“EU-NATO Security Strategies:
The Main Challenges Facing the West in Mediterranean Security”
Visne Korkmaz, Yildiz
Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey
After 9/11 it is widely recognized that western security in the coming decades based on threat perceptions that are rooted in the Middle East. Thus stability and security of its neighborhood- Mediterranean region- gained importance for the Western security in general and European security in particular. This situation coincides with two other developments in the IR scene: On the one hand, the meaning of security and the nature of threats have been questionized. On the other hand Euro-Med region has been remapped and re-conceptualized since Barcelona. During the Cold War the main determinant of the security was the very existence of threat. The possibility of nuclear clash and the reality of nuclear deterrence provided a safe zone for the security discourses: security blanket for the Euro-Med region. However 9/11 attacks and London-Istanbul-Madrid bombings etc. proved that now there is no such blanket for the region because the nature of threats has been changed. Thus this paper concentrates on top-down/outside-in threat analysis by focusing on EU s and NATO s security strategies towards Mediterranean region. In this context this paper aims to answer the question of whether two major institutions related with European security (EU and NATO) trace convergent paths for Euro-Med security or are there divergent points in their threat assessments.
5B. Mediterranean Subjects and Objects in Twentieth-Century
Spain
Chair: Nina Molinaro, University of Colorado at Boulder
“Reading Lesbian Desire in Julia
and El amor es un juego solitario”
Dolores Martín-Armas, SUNY, Potsdam
Las dos novelas de las que me ocupo en esta ponencia
contienen los elementos propicios para llevar a cabo un análisis psicoanalítico
de la subjetividad lesbiana que hasta este momento no han sido explorados en toda
su extensión por la crítica. Lo que destaco de estos dos textos es la conexión entre
el deseo lesbiano, (reprimido en el caso de Julia, y explícito en el de Clara) con
el deseo materno experimentado en la infancia de los dos personajes. La teoría que
empleo el psicoanálisis en su vertiente feminista y lesbiano, herederas en gran
medida de la psicoanalista Melanie Klein y su teoría de las relaciones objetales.
Entre ellas se encuentran Nancy Chodorow, Jessica Benjamin, Teresa de Lauretis y
Suzanne Juhasz. La importancia de los afectos, el reconocimiento y la identificación
del bebé con la madre, o la persona que ejerce ese rol, redundan en la subjetividad
de la niña. Lo interesante es que en estas novelas es precisamente la carencia de
esos tres elementos lo que impulsa a las jóvenes a buscar el amor en otra mujer.
La comparación entre las dos novelas me permite demostrar los diferentes modos en
los que el deseo lesbiano se convierte en una prolongación del deseo materno.
“Buñuel, Dalí, and the Object of Decay”
Juli Highfill, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
In the Spanish historic avant-garde, that period of radical and frenetic artistic activity between 1918 and 1931, writers and artists enthusiastically embraced all things “new,” be they technological, commercial, or artistic innovations. However, alongside this fascination with novelty we can trace a parallel preoccupation with all things “old”—with the objects of waste, ruin, and decay. Buñuel and Dalí, for example, employ images of rotting flesh, decay, and destruction in film and in painting, thus provoking powerful, ambivalent responses that hinge on fascination and repulsion. In this paper, I explore various questions that arise from such artistic deployments of the object of decay. First I situate the phenomenon within the debates around “pure” and “impure” aesthetics that continue throughout the avant-garde period. Then I go on to consider how disgust (“asco a lo humano”) underlies Ortega y Gasset’s refined artistic taste (“gusto artístico”), which he so strenuously defends in Deshumanización del arte. I next consider the “artistic appeal” of the object of decay, as employed in El asno podrido, Un chien andalou and La edad de oro. In these works, the image of putrefying flesh functions as an unstable and ambivalent site where the subject becomes an object, and dead substance teems with life. Buñuel’s film La edad de oro, with its savage critique of Western Civilization in decadence, carries this inquiry into the political domain. As a collective body, Civilization may decline and disintegrate, yet as an idealized body, not unlike the “body politik,” it is eternal, and cannot suffer bodily corruption.
“Watching, Wanting, and
the Gen X Soundtrack of Gabriela Bustelo’s Veo Veo”
Nina Molinaro
While the precise contours of Spain’s Generación X remain hotly
debated (and debatable), critics on both sides of the Atlantic have been quick to
seize upon a specific subset of the generational cohort in order to illustrate Peninsular
youth culture. This group has been described as hard realists, neorealists, or even
dirty realists. Thus far most critical discussions of these writers have focused
on novels by José Angel Mañas (and mostly his first novel) and Ray Loriga. The lone
woman to regularly be admitted to the elite group is Lucía Etxebarria, who insists
upon a feminine and feminizing vision of contemporary Spain, and whose considerable
success hinges at least in part on her image management. Less well-known, Gabriela
Bustelo articulates another feminine version of Generación X narrative. In particular,
Veo Veo (1996), her first novel, continues
and tests Etxebarria’s critique. Like other Spanish Gen X novelists, Bustelo populates
Veo Veo with twenty-something urban consumers
who look to sex, drugs, and contemporary popular music for stimulation, signposts,
and significance. As with Mañas’s groundbreaking Historias del Kronen (1994), the
action of Veo Veo is organized around
the present-day nightclub scene in Madrid, and in both texts a first-person narrator/protagonist
shifts from place to place in search of the next high. The two novels also insist
upon referentiality, but Veo Veo teeters
towards extravagance in its encyclopedic list of current films, actors, directors,
TV shows, celebrities, Madrid landmarks, marketing icons, designers, and most importantly
for my subsequent argument, recent popular music; in essence, the trauma of Bustelo’s
novel unfolds to a veritable panoply of musical references that largely point towards
American and British pop music from the 1980s. Moreover, while Veo Veo shares with many other Gen X novels
an exacting commitment to popular culture, Spanish and otherwise, unlike these other
novels, Bustelo’s text embeds the peripatetic journey of its female narrator/protagonist
Vania Barcia within an elaborately articulated external threat that, in equal measure,
propels the plot and the characters forward and resists narrative closure.
“The Other Side of the Mediterranean:
The Question of Landscape in Xurxo Lobato’s Photography”
Patricia Keller, University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor
This paper explores the ways
in which contemporary Spanish and Galician photographer, Xurxo Lobato, rethinks
national as well as peripheral peninsular modernity and identity through his unique
documentation of landscape. I will examine select images from Lobato’s different
photographic collections and exhibitions— Encontros da Imaxe and Dende o Atlántico (1988), Galicia, terra nai and Tradición (1993), Historia viva:
Fotografía española contemporánea (1994), A paisaxe intervida (1997), to name only a few—and offer close readings
of a common thread among them. I analyze his photographic texts, to look at how
his work both captures and reconfigures notions of contemporary peninsular identities,
and offers new perspectives on Spanish rural life as one charged with a clash of
temporalities, where past and present collide into and complicate each other. My
paper seeks to look at the ways in which Lobato’s photography, often characterized
as work that concentrates on cultural hybridity or crossroads, can tell us something
of temporal and geographical overlappings that consequently define Spain as both
modern and traditional. As a renowned photographer who has not only been compared
to contemporary artists such as Fellini, David Byrne, and Almodóvar, but has also
been situated within contemporary Atlantic expressionism, Xurxo Lobato’s work constructs
new perspectives on Spanish national identity from another side of the Mediterranean,
one that is marginal but no doubt one that has been situated within Mediterranean culture for centuries.
5C. Film, Photography, and Cultural Studies
Chair: Paula Soares, Universidade de Évora
“Performing the City, Performing Spain: Acciones culturales
en la vanguardia histórica española”
Maria Soledad Fernandez Utrera,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
This essay will analyze the cultural performances of a group of surrealist artists in the 1920s known as La Orden de Toledo: Alberti, Dalí, and Buñuel, among others. In relation to this actions, I shall explore: first the ideological implications of these theatrical actions with respect to issues of space, nation, memory and identity; and second, how performance in the avant-garde period was associated with other visual and non visual artistic expressions such as photography. Dalí, Buñuel and other Spanish surrealists attempted to make the city streets, historical places and monuments of Toledo the space of their cultural and highly ideological actions; the group also make performance a key constituent in the formation of national memory and Spanish identity. Notions of national identity and past history are challenged in the process of re-configuring the event in a new textual form (photography and textual discourse). Repetition makes performance s apparent critical etch much less radical in social and political terms than what it might appear at first glance. Performance conveys or could convey, then, a social and political commentary, as many critics have posited (Pepper, Read, Schechner or Diamond). I believe that it is necessary to situate oneself in the cultural and social context where the performance takes place to evaluate the limits or capacity of subversion. I will show that in the case of Spanish avant-garde, aesthetic revolution does not imply, as it is commonly understood in the case of avant-gard (Innes), a radical social and political position.
“Tropes of the Sea: The Mediterranean
as Cinematic Sign of Liminality and Difference”
Phillip Drummond, New York
University in London, UK
The Mediterranean Sea is that great medium, in many senses, which brings together, but also separates, in all its emollient and also stormy effectivity, the countries of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. It is thus a crucial median signifier of relations and distinctions between North and South, East and West. It is to be ambiguously understood as margin and extension, alien element and amenable waterway, source of the nourishment and pleasures of the mind and body, and, conversely, all the dangers, too. The cinema benefits from this miasma of signification, and in turn creates new meanings as it revisits the sea in terms of the sounds and images of its generic narratives. The paper explores a number of such cinematic tropes, including such key registers of difference as climate, leisure, personal identity, and sexuality. Films discussed, from America, the UK, and continental Europe, will range from ‘A Voyage to Italy’ to ‘Captain Corelli s Mandolin’, from ‘Le Mépris’ to ‘Et Dieu Créa la Femme’, from ‘Mediterranée’ to ‘Mediterraneo.’
5D. A Bridge to the 21st Century: Italian Writers
from the 1950s to Today
Chair: Giose Rimanelli, State University of New York at Albany
“Americani sullo schermo italiano:
‘Arrivano i nostri,’ il boogie woogie e ‘tu vuò fa l’americano”
Antonio Vitti, Wake Forest
University, North Carolina
Il soggetto non ha
la presunzione di trattare il mito dell’America nel cinema o tanto meno nella letteratura
italiana, ma di tratteggiare attraverso alcuni film prodotti nel dopoguerra e uno
ambientato in quel periodo, il modo in cui il cinema italiano ha rappresentato il
passaggio dall’arrivo degli Alleati in Italia alla difficile coesistenza e in che
modo il grande schermo hollywoodiana ha forgiato l’immaginario dell’italiano del
post-fascismo. È ben noto che il nuovo mondo entra nell’immaginario italiano dal
ritorno di Cristoforo Colombo e che il mito dell’America esistesse anche durante
il regime fascista e che in Italia ci siano stati due rappresentazioni del mondo
oltreoceano, uno appartenente alla sfera popolare e l’alto a quella intellettuale.
Per rientrare nei parametri di questo saggio ci atterremo all’epoca dell’invasione
dei film americani nell’Italia repubblicana dove, nei primi cinque anni del dopoguerra,
c’erano 1586 film americani in circolazione, e nel 1953 in piena Guerra Fredda e
restaurazione ne circolavano 5368.
“The Poetic and Narrative Works of Paolo Volponi:
An Account of Post-war Italian Society”
Joseph Perricone, Fordham University, New York
The first thing that must be understood in a discussion of Paolo Volponi s work is his first hand involvement with the political and industrial facets of Italian post-war social and cultural development. His literary commitment is an integral part of Volponi s practical engagement. In it the writer pours his hopes and aspirations and through it he aims to shape the ideological framework of post-war industrial and economic reconstruction. Thus a utopian outlook emanating from an age old humanistic tradition which formed Volponi s preparation in jurisprudence, informs his depiction of a world where justice and equality is envisioned as the possible windfalls of modern advances in technology and industry. Yet greater social and political forces seem to be at work to thwart the utopian aspirations of Volponi s characters. My paper will analyze the presence of these forces through a close reading of Volponi s poetic and narrative works and show how Volponi s writing prov ides both a faithful metaphorical account of post-war Italian society and an ideal world that perhaps is still worth working for today.
“Rhyme and Meter in Pier
Paolo Pasolini’s Dialect Poetry”
Luigi Bonaffini, Brooklyn
College, New York
The New Youth is Pasolini’s last book of poetry, published by Einaudi in 1975. It is a complex book, written mostly in Friulian dialcect and divided into two ‘forms’: a first, literal reproduction of The Best Youth (1941-53), and then A Second Form of ‘The Best Youth’, entirely written in 1974. In this book Pasolini uses a great variety of metrical forms, many of them directly derived from medieval French and Italian poetry. My paper will deal with the problems and difficulties encountered in the translation process.
“The Medieval World in
an Italian Writer’s Work Written in the US: Giose Rimanelli’s Accademia”
Sheryl Lyn Postman, University
of Massachusetts Lowell
Giose Rimanelli’s English novel, Accademia, is not an uncomplicated text for the novice. The author,
already well-known as part of the world of Italian letters of the post civil war
years in the peninsula, moves to the United States at the very start of the 1960s,
a decade that he describes as “il decennio piú tormentato della storia dopo l’Unificazione
e il New Deal.” The reader of Accademia
is immediately thrust into a hastily moving and continuously altering vortex of
this crucial and confrontational era in American history. Rimanelli’s writings usually
deal with the horrific experiences of the Civil War that engulfed the nation. The
author, in Accademia, creates parallels
between the horrifying history of the Italian nation and then juxtaposes it with
the idyllic world alleged to exist within the American university system. Rimanelli,
relying on his medieval literary traditions, incorporates these elements within
the framework of this contemporary narrative in order to show the universality and
timelessness of its themes.
5E. Medieval History II
Chair: Clara Estow, University
of Massachusetts Boston
“Sisterhood and Sainthood: The
Daughters of King Sancho I of Portugal”
Ronald Surtz, Princeton University,
New Jersey
Sisterhood and sainthood were conjoined for three daughters of King Sancho I of Portugal. Blessed Teresa of Portugal was born around 1175. In 1191 she married her cousin Alfonso IX of León and had three children, but papal opposition to a marriage within the prohibited degree led the couple to separate in 1194. Upon her return to Portugal in 1195, her father contrived to have the congregation of Benedictine monks removed from the monastery of Lorvão and handed the premises over to Teresa, who turned it into a Cistercian community of some 300 sisters. The Benedictines later regretted relinquishing the monastery, but Teresa fought them, obtaining bulls from Innocent III in 1206 and 1211 that confirmed her possession of the property. Teresa eventually professed at Lorvão, died in 1250, and was beatified in 1705. Blessed Sancha of Portugal was born around 1180. After her father s death in 1211 she became a patron of the new mendicant orders, converting her palace at Alenquer int o a Franciscan friary. Around 1215 she founded a Cistercian convent at Celas. She professed there, died in 1229, and was beatified in 1705. Teresa and Sancha were not only buried next to each another at Lorvão but were included in the same beatification process. To the extent that most of their posthumous miracles involved marvelous cures accomplished through soil scraped from their tombs and worn in small sacks around the neck, such miracles were attributed to their joint celestial advocacy. Born around 1200, Blessed Mafalda of Portugal married her second cousin Henry I of Castile in 1215, but Berenguela, Henry s older sister, denounced the marriage to the pope, who annulled it in 1216 on the grounds of consanguinity. It appears that the marriage was never consummated, and Mafalda s epitaph declares that she died a virgin. Around 1217 Mafalda returned to Portugal and became a Benedictine nun at the convent of Arouca, where she convinced the community to adopt the Cistercian rule. Mafalda died in 1256, her body was discovered to be incorrupt in 1616, and she was beatified in 1793. The royal family and the Cistercian Order promoted the beatification inquiries of the three sisters, for all three princesses were known above all as founders of Cistercian houses. The chronicles furnish few details regarding their spiritual lifestyle, and the processes of Teresa and Sancha are largely based on their posthumous miracles, a majority of which were wrought centuries after their deaths. In addition to discussing the details of their lives, I am interested in the posthumous evolution of their holiness and, why, despite the antiquity of their cult, they were only beatified in the eighteenth century.
“Portugal: The View from the Court
of Fernando III of Castile”
Bernard F. Reilly, Villanova University,
Pennsylvania
The “Chronica Latina Regum Castellae” was composed by the chancellor of the court of Fernando III, Juan, bishop of Osma and subsequently of Burgos. He was a major figure in the politics of the age, a close confidant of the king, and therefore an author whose views of the historical importance of the neighboring realm of Portugal are worth examining, both with regard to the current attitude toward Portugal and its place in contemporary events as well as the attitude toward its past, reflected in the sorts of materials, drawn from the traditional historiography of Leon-Castille, especially as this latter was embodied in the works of Juan’s contemporary historians at court, Lucas of Tuy, “Chronicon Mundi” and the Archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada, “De Rebus Hispanie.”
“Religious Piety or Social Distinction:
Patrician Patronage of the Dominican Convent of Santa Catalina in Thirteenth-Century
Barcelona”
Antonio M. Zaldivar, Princeton
University, New Jersey
Thirteenth-century Barcelona witnessed the formation of a cohesive and identifiable urban patriciate, the creation of a permanent city council, and the rise of the newly founded mendicant orders. My paper proposes to examine the relationship that developed between Barcelona s ruling patriciate class and the Dominican convent of Santa Catalina precisely during this formative period in the city s history. Using primary sources collected in the Archives of the Cathedral of Barcelona, the Archives of the Crown of Aragon, and the University of Barcelona Manuscripts and Reserves Room, I argue that Barcelona s patriciate and the Dominican friars forged a mutually beneficial relationship. According to the extant data, the patriciate contributed more charitable donations to Santa Catalina than any other religious institution. In return, patricians obtained certain religious and social benefits from the friars, including the dissemination of a novel urban spirituality that suited their economic interests. The friars also offered patricians a more educated and better trained sacerdotal ministry. Yet, the patriciate s unique patterns of testamentary bequests to Santa Catalina intimate that it was these elite families desire to demonstrate and bolster their distinguished social status in the city that primarily attracted their patronage.
“In Gold We Trust: Notes on the
Gold Trade in Medieval Iberia”
Clara Estow
As we enter an age when entities such as governments and environmental groups‹for their own unique purposes-- are re-examining the central role gold has played in many aspects of contemporary life--from monetary policy to fashion‹it is instructive to look back at ways in which medieval societies dealt with the challenges surrounding gold and grappled with questions about its rightful place in the scheme of things. Focusing on Iberia, Castile in particular, this paper will examine official decrees, narrative sources, and iconography to elucidate a number of themes associated with the precious metal. Particular attention will be paid to prevailing “economic theories” about the relationship between gold and the creation of wealth, factors influencing the availability of gold in the marketplace, patterns of circulation, and principal uses in the social and artistic spheres.
1:15 – 3:00 Lunch (on your own)
Friday 3:00 – 5:00
6A. Hispanic Studies and the Mediterranean II
Chair: Roxana Recio, Creighton
University, Omaha, Nebraska
“La Suerte de Jorge Manrique
en Alemán”
Charlotte Frei, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz, Germany
En esta comunicación
me interesa estudiar la recepción literaria via
traducción en lengua alemana del poeta español Jorge Manrique y más concretamente
de su obra: Coplas por la muerte de su padre.
El estudio se centrará en la versión del filólogo Ernst Robert Curtius de 1944.
La traducción o la ausencia de una traducción de una obra o autor extranjero en
una lengua y una cultura determinada se debe a razones sistémicos e históricos concretos.
Las normas preliminares que permiten o promueven una traducción dependen también
del proyecto individual del traductor, de su valoración crítica, ideológica y estética
del autor. En el caso de Ernst Robert Curtius analizaremos algunos aspectos formales
y metódicos que orientaron su versión. Será preciso preguntar en qué medida la “mentalidad
restaurativa” del “nuevo humanismo” que el romanista Curtius defiende a partir de
1932 (Deutscher Geist in Gefahr) repercute
en el modo de traducir de una obra que elogió como “el más famoso poema de la literatura
española”. Finalmente nos proponemos evaluar la traducción de Curtius sobre el horizonte
anterior e posterior de la obra de Manrique en alemán.
“El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes y sus relaciones con la narrativa
bufonesca del Mediterráneo”
Enrique Rodrigo, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska
La obra
El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes, escrita
por Alonso Carrió de la Vandera en 1776, presenta varios rasgos comunes con la Vida y hechos de Estebanillo González, a
pesar de que se trata de dos libros con temas, estructuras e intenciones muy diferentes.
Además de la mención expresa del Estebanillo
que se hace en la obra de Carrió, existe una serie de aspectos paralelos en
la estructura de las dos obras (a los cuales me he referido en un trabajo ya publicado)
que no parecen casuales y que hacen suponer que el autor de El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes leyó cuidadosamente
el Estebanillo y aprovechó algunas de
sus características para los propósitos de su libro. Existe, sin embargo, un aspecto
fundamental que afecta al marco narrativo de ambas obras. Siguiendo la crítica de
los últimos años sobre el Estebanillo,
que se inclina a considerar, a partir de los estudios de Marcel Bataillon, que otra
mano escribió el relato de la vida de Estebanillo
González, se llega a la conclusión de que, aunque las dos obras se presentan
como una narración en primera persona de hechos verdaderos, en ellas existe un “escribidor”
que da forma a la narración y que media entre el protagonista y el lector. Si bien
es cierto que este rasgo se presenta de forma diferente en los dos textos, no cabe
duda de que les da una gran profundidad que permite, entre otras cosas, mezclar
aspectos serios y cómicos en la misma obra o incluir otros géneros en la misma narración.
Esta particularidad es responsable en gran parte de la confusión de los críticos
con respecto a la verdadera naturaleza de las obras y a las intenciones de sus autores.
Así, no es extraño que en los dos casos la crítica ha debatido durante bastante
tiempo si la autoría real de la obra corresponde a la persona que figura como tal
en la portada del libro. En este trabajo me propongo examinar cómo Carrió de la
Vandera hace uso del “escribidor” para introducir en su libro un discurso bufonesco
similar al del Estebanillo González. Los
temas y las estructuras diferentes de ambos textos, sin embargo, van a producir
resultados muy diferentes.
“Costana y el amor a lo Petrarca: una poética desarollada
del Mediterráneo”
Josefa Conde de Lindquist,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
No hay duda de la
influencia de Il Canzoniere y los Trionfi de Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)
en la poesía cancioneril de la Península Ibérica. La popularidad de Petrarca se
incrementó en la península con el Triunfo
de Amor (1510). El Triunfo de amor
es el más popular de los Trionfi gracias
a las traducciones e imitaciones que de él hicieran los poetas del cancionero. Si
se tiene en cuenta la importancia de Petrarca en la lírica peninsular, no es de
extrañar que se necesite un análisis de la poética cancioneril. El Cancionero general
(1511) ofrece una plétora de autores que merecen una atención especial. Entre otros
se destaca Costana, cuyo poema “Vnos conjuros de amor que hizo assu amiga conjurandola con todas las fuerças dell amor” están claramente inspirados en la poética
petrarquista. Para entender la influencia de Petrarca en Costana se seguirán dos
pasos. En primer lugar se especificará brevemente qué es la tradición poética amorosa
petrarquista y, a continuación, se ofrecerá un análisis sobre cómo Costana usa veladamente
a Petrarca para crear su propia voz poética cuando habla de los conjuros amorosos
y los males del amor.
“María de Aragón, Isabel de Portugal e Isabel de Castilla:
Un estandarte en defensa de las mujeres en la tardía Edad Media”
Jaime Leaños, University of Nevada-Reno
El propósito de este
ensayo es el de asentar una nueva teoría en cuanto a la génesis y desarrollo de
la llamada novela sentimental española del siglo XV. El género sentimental es un
movimiento literario del Prerrenacimiento español y una vuelta a los valores de
la antigüedad clásica que rompe el molde de las actitudes medievales caracterizado
por una postura misógina que condena a la mujer como instrumentum diaboli. Es aquí en este siglo donde resalta un contraste
con la actitud paronomástica medieval de la mujer como AVE/EVA, a la vez salvación
y perdición del hombre. Los pensadores y predicadores medievales habían luchado
por esclarecer las afirmaciones neotestamentarias, de forma que nunca llegaron a
crear una visión positiva de la mujer, sin que la acusaron como la simple reencarnación
de EVA, madre de todos los pecados que se opone a AVE/MARÍA, instrumento de la gracia
divina y corredentora de la humanidad. Durante el siglo XV este conjunto binario
AVE/EVA desvanece paulatinamente frente a los distintos valores sociales de la nueva
casta intelectual que se encumbra comenzando en la corte de María de Aragón (1419-1445),
continuando con Isabel de Portugal (1447-1454) y concluyendo con una de las más
conocidas y estudiadas reinas de Castilla, Isabel la Católica (1474-1504). No obstante,
las damas pertenecientes a la nobleza o a la alta clase media del siglo XV, y amparadas
por Isabel, no se consideraban a sí mismas como víctimas sino como heroínas. Y es
dado a este regio patrocinio por el cual observamos un nuevo tipo de literatura
en donde el arquetipo de la mujer como débil se convierte en uno con poder y fuerza
que le da la vitalidad a la trama. En contraste con el antiguo esquema en donde
observamos a la mujer como elemento de estamento secundario frente a la figura del
hombre.
6B. Contemporary Mediterranean Issues
Chair: John Naylon, Keele University,
UK
“Confetti of Empire: Gibraltar,
a British Colony in the Mediterranean”
John Naylon
The traditional historic role of the British crown colony of Gibraltar
has been that of a garrison town and fortress guarding the western gateway to the
Mediterranean – plus an inglorious reputation
as a center for smuggling and other illicit activities such as drug-money laundering.
Since the 1990s, however, the Rock has made a transition to a more normal and transparent economy. The-British-Ministry-of
Defense, which used to account for the bulk of Gibraltar’s GDP (mainly through
the naval dockyard), now has an almost negligible presence. The Rock has achieved
economic self-sufficiency and a sustainable prosperity by diversifying into banking,
insurance, investment services, gaming, tourism, bunkering and other shipping services – despite having a population of only
30,000 (less than some neighboring Spanish
pueblos) and an area of only 6.5 square kilometers, and being under
constant pressure from Spain over the question of sovereignty.
“Forms of Mediterranean
resistance against the Atlantic Imperialism”
Elina (Carmelina) Gugliuzzo,
Università degli Studi di Messina, Italy
The aim of this paper is to provide an
interpretation of some Maltese strategies adopted to resist against the
continous attempts of European powers to take total possession of their
Islands. As the nineteenth century progressed the strategic value of Maltese
islands became increasingly patent and the Melitensium
Amor formula had to camouflage the real intention and determination of
Britain to transform the archipelago into a strong fortress for the defence of
its Mediterranean interests. In 1794 the British consul in Malta, William
England, had sent a “Memorandum respecting Malta”, in which he explained advantages
that could derive dal possession of the island: “The possession of Malta would
ensure in time of peace every advantage of commercial intercourse with Italy,
Sicily, the Eastern half of the Mediterranean, Egypt, the coast of Africa. It
would be a great Warehouse for the commodities of England and by means of its
Lazaretto’s would enable to carry on without loss of time the Turkey Trade. In
time of war it would give the most effectual protection to our trade vessels”.
The British protection sought by the Maltese leaders (after two years of French
occupation) soon degenerated into another leech-like domination which was no
easy matter to shrug off. The Treaty of Paris in 1814 converted the
protectorate into an inalienable possession. Language, religion, tradition will
represent the main elements of local ‘resistance’ in order to maintain Maltese
identity.
“‘A British Jihadist’: Co-existence
and Muslim Radicalism”
Amikam Nachmani,
Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Hassan Butt, a 24 year old British born radical Muslim from Manchester, helped recruit Muslims to fight Coalition Forces in Afghanistan. His British passport was withheld by British authorities and he complains that he is under constant surveillance by police and MI5 agents. In a long, most revealing, even chilly interview (Aatish Taseer, “A British Jihadist”, PROSPECT MAGAZINE, Issue 113, August 2005), Butt speaks about his vision of having a Muslim Caliphate in Britain, about the right of second generation British born Muslims to use force against Britain (in contrast with first generation migrants who should abide by the “covenant” that says: “you Britain gave me a shelter, I would not resort to violence against you”), about the prospects for co-existence with Western values, democracy, Christianity, Judaism, and so on. Butt belongs to the 15 percent of European Muslims who are considered to be radicals; among Muslims in Europe the British Muslim community is the most rad ical and extreme one. Why do Muslims in Britain resort to violence more than others? How come British Muslims bomb London’s transportation system, kill the people and hurt the country that absorbed, educated and trained them, the country whose benevolent welfare system sustained and supported them, the country whose culture they are fond of? (Three of the four suicide bombers who carried out the July 7th, 2005 attack on London Transportation were second generation British citizens; the fourth was a Jamaican born British resident. One of the terrorists, the British born Shehzad Tanweer, grew up in Leeds, and was described as “a keen cricketer”). One of the explanations for the radicalization of British Muslims is their Pakistani-Kashmiri descent - - the majority of Britain’s Muslims come form the Indian sub-continent - - meaning they are “hot headed by nature”. Few other aspects contribute to this radicalization; our paper attempts to give a wider analysis to this phenomenon, presently prevalent among second generation European Muslims in general, and in Britain in particular.
6C. Architecture and Art
Chair: Memory Holloway, University
of Massachusetts Dartmouth
“Roman Period Theater Construction
in Sicily: A Theoretical Approach Based on Fernand Braudel’s ‘Three Planes of Historical
Time’”
Zeynep Akture, Izmir Institute
of Technology, Turkey
Fernand Braudel (1995, 1980) approaches to the past in three planes of historical time: the almost timeless history of the relationship between man and the environment that is called geo-history, the gradually-changing history of economic, social and political structures, and the fast-moving history of events . He argues that the history of events is unintelligible without the history of structures, which is in turn unintelligible without geo-history. The proposed presentation will adopt this theoretical framework for an interpretation of the geographic distribution of ancient theatres in Roman Sicily by size as emanating from the hierarchies intrinsic in the network of cities that emerged in the Mediterranean under the Roman rule (Woolf 1997: 1), changing the settlement pattern on the island, especially through the establishment of five or six coloniae (i.e. Catania, Syracuse, Taormina, Termini Imerese, Tindari and possibly Palermo). These cities cam e to feature the largest theatres in Sicily after Roman modifications, in a period when more modest pre-Roman theatres, such as those in Morgantina, Monte Iato, or Segesta, were falling out of use, after the apparent marginalisation, in the new urban system, of the cities in which they were located. The location of the theatres in the Roman coloniae on the northern and eastern shores of Sicily, along the major sea routes connecting Rome to its eastern provinces (Wilson 1990: 35), is explained best in terms of Braudel s geo-history and explains best the construction of the cavea on a hillside even in the Theatres at Catania and Taormina, which were comprehensively remodelled in Imperial Roman times. The largest known pre-Roman theatre in Syracuse would appear as an event conditioned by the same structures, for it was built by Hieron II (270-215 BC), who supported the Roman cause during the Punic War (241-11 BC) that won Sicily for Rome.
“The Poetics of Rupture,
Oblivion and Remembrance: Connecting Past and Present in Nicosia, Cyprus”
Suna Guven, Middle East Technical
University, Ankara, Turkey
This paper concentrates on the current ambivalent perception of the multi-layered historical, cultural and architectural narratives in Nicosia, the 1000 year old capital of Cyprus. Encircled by the impressive 16th century fortifications of J. Savorgnano, the city has now grown far beyond the physical limits of the still extant and visible star-shaped military formation which has been continuously penetrated, breached and built upon in later centuries, simultaneously denying and acknowledging its monolithic presence. The trilogy of rupture, oblivion and remembrance poses a cogent metaphor connecting the various pasts and the checquered present in the extraordinary trajectories of memory in Nicosia. Based on selected episodes pertaining to the omnipresent Wall, I will analyze the multi-faceted dynamics of fabricated histories and memorial recovery.
“Time Traveling and Visions of
the Future: Pan-Antropos Path”
Paula Soares, Universidade de Évora
This paper aims at sharing some of the
results of a PhD research that focuses within a Consciousness Studies approach,
through time travelling, on the evolution of perception of human consciousness as
portrayed in art. Going back in time in search for meanings and guidelines in a
macroscopic methodology on a right brain hemisphere basis, can lead to a diagnosis
of patterns that eventually can be applied in order to project possible visions
of the future. In being so, the human being of the future, the Pan-Antropos (Soares,
2003), carries, on one side, the archetypal memory of evolution of human consciousness,
and, on the other side, the wisdom of integral development needed for the 3rd Millennium.
Starting with a brief analysis of the origins of the contemporary global crisis,
following a macroscopic time travelling through the evolution of the perceptions
of art in Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance up to
nowadays in search for patterns of the human evolution of consciousness portrayed
in art, this paper aims at figuring out the change of paradigms needed for the 21st
Century.
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6D. Lusophone Literature and Culture
Chair: Ana Luísa Vilela, Universidade de Évora
“O mar como metáfora do espaço criativo na poesia portuguesa
contemporânea”
Maria Cristina Firmino Santos, Universidade
de Évora
O trabalho que me proponho apresentar incide sobre o uso imaginativo que vários
poetas portugueses contemporâneos como Luís Miguel Nava, Ramos Rosa ou Nuno Júdice
do mar como espaço literário por excelência (Maurice Blanchot, L Espace Litteraire)
na medida em que se configura como estrutural para a definição do sujeito, da sua
poesia e da sua relação com o mundo. O carácter densamente cultural e estético de
que os lugares marítimos são investidos, em parte próximos de um cronótopo idílico,
permitir-me-á estudar o grau e a consecutividade do impacto destes lugares em cada
um dos poetas considerados e no seu conjunto. Ao investigar a centralidade do mar
na poesia contemporânea portuguesa, não deixarei de considerar a relevância decisiva
deste na história de Portugal e a articulação indispensável com os topoi pertinentes
da tradição literária e pictórica de molde a valorizar as virtualidades e o vigor
da rede metafórica que se tece em torno da figura do mar. Finalmente, a projecção
imaginativa suscitada pelos lugares marítimos, muitas vezes historicamente emblemáticos,
levar-me-á a averiguar a sua dimensão auto-reflexiva porque faculta aos poetas em
causa o pretexto para interrogar o próprio processo criativo, as potencialidades
e os limites da palavra (retomando a conceptualização de Wittgenstein) e o lugar
incerto de quem escreve e assim se procura situar.
“O sujeito da História também rediscute o discurso
mítico e o discurso poético nas literaturas portuguesa e brasileira”
Mônica de Souza Lopes, Faculdade de Artes do Paraná,
Brazil
Pretende-se discutir os discursos mítico-místico e poético por textos de Gil
Vicente, de Ariano Suassuna e de João Cabral de Melo Neto, além de obras de autores
da literatura de Portugal e do Brasil: Cesário Verde, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen,
Fernando Pessoa, Cecília Meireles, por exemplo. Todos esses que usam as ferramentas
desse mesmo mundo: a palavra sempre intencional. Estuda-se ainda o caminho condutor
do texto para o feitio do poema que o levará para a realidade histórica de uma poética
relacionada a uma experiência histórica, precisa, liada a outras precisas alternativas
históricas da articulação poética. Também vai-se mostrar que, no meio do dado e
da interpretação, apõe-se o campo das regiões discursivas em que se depositam os
objetos e a partir dos quais eles diferem. Ao final há que se estudar a passagem
do mítico para a região díspar da literatura. Demonstrar tais propriedades dos discursos
mítico e poético é tarefa profícua, quando se pensa nas diferentes f ormações discursivas
que penetram nas ciências e as tornam mais vívidas. Enfim,pretende-se constatar
que esses mesmos discursos mítico e poético vêm no quadro de desconstrução da modernidade
rediscutir o sujeito da história.
“Presence of the Sacred Bull, Seen
through Two Divergent Aspects”
Antonieta Costa, Universidade do Minho, Braga
Behaviours exhibited from the inhabitants
of Terceira Island, in the Azores, may be seen as displaying the archaic Mediterranean
conception of sacredness, attributed to the bull. In one way, they directly relate
the bull with the rituals of the Holy Spirit. But on the other hand, the bull is
run on the streets, although admired and seen with respect. In both contexts the
Cretan bull seems to reappear before our eyes, turning visible the presence of the
underlying old meaning.
6E. Music History II
Chair: Nermin Kaygusuz, State Conservatory of Turkish Music, Istanbul
Technical University, Turkey
“‘Fasil’
in Turkish Music”
Şerife
Güvençoğlu, State Conservatory of Turkish Music, Istanbul Technical
University, Turkey
“Fasıl”, is the name given to the concert program in which
songs and pieces composed in the same makam (key) are grouped and performed according
to certain rules. From past until now, it has been performed both in Palaces, mansions
and in front of music lovers. “Fasıl” is a musical form that Turkish Society
has appreciated for centuries because of its dynamism and continuity. At the moment, fasıl is
trying to be kept alive by performing the neo-classic song forms in the concerts
of certain musical associations and in certain historical places. Today, the “fasıl”
is a chain of songs that is comprised of a Pesrev (instrumental piece) at the beginning
followed by a song in the Agır Aksak rhythm and then songs in simple rhythms.
However, when the history of “fasıl”, which is very similar to “suite” is taken
into consideration, it will be seen that it is a compilation of a very different
sort. In this paper, the history of “fasıl” will be explored paying heed to
its divergent dimensions.
“The Musical Notation of Hamparsum
Limonciyan as Introduced to Turkish Music in the First Quarter of the Nineteenth
Century”
Gulay Karamahmutoglu, State Conservatory of Turkish Music, Istanbul
Technical University, Turkey
Manuscripts, especially consist of musical notation, has long been an essential tool for the music researchers which enlighten us to have some ideas about the past of musics. Although musical notation, which can be defined as a mode of transmitting tonal and rhythmic musical thoughts through a set of written codes, is an indispensable instrument in dealing with music, the compositions were memorised by performing in many times by musicians in the multinational Ottoman Empire. Those compositions had been studied, taught and inherited to next generations by the method called Mesk which was based on the relationship between pupil and his master. Besides, to perform the work by noting was not acceptable for many Turkish musicians at that time so, music performed and transmitted from generation to generation without musical notation. Therefore, many valuable compositions of classical Turkish music had been forgotten or, could only be existed changing their original form.
“The
Meşk Method in Turkish Music Education”
Nermin
Kaygusuz
We can observe the education methods in Turkish Music significantly only after when The Ottoman Palace started to support and determine this music as its own. This was rendered possible by the institutionalization of Enderun after 16th century. Meşk, means the teaching of a musical piece to a student by the teacher through repetitions of the piece either part by part or completely. The teacher gets the song repeated countless times until the piece gets memorised by the student. The final purpose is to leave an imprint of the song that is taught through “meşk” in the memory of the student so as to pass it on to the next generations. The defining characteristic of this method is that it is not based on sheet music.The musical pieces are performed on the basis of memory.Sheet music is an ultimately new phenomenon in Turkish Music and hence the complete repertory has been written down in musical notation as sheet music only in the last 90 or 100 years. The advantage of the Meşk system was that it was letting the inner dynamics of Turkish Music develop and prevail throughout its course. It was so that the music was changing through development and this meant that the artistic value was improving. It was through Meşk system that Turkish music could persist throughout the time and reach our day. The disadvantage, however, of the Meşk system was that since the purpose was to transfer the information in a way, there was no difference between technical education and repertory education. Since this method did not thus allow the vocal and instrumental training in the contemporary understanding of the term, no virtuoses in the western sense could have emerged through Turkish Music. Since there is no sheet music available to us from those times, it must have been a fact of the matter that the musical pieces have been altering and diverging from what they originally were due to the initiative, appreciation, mood and capacity of the performer and hence must have been constantly re-created on the basis of changing appreciations, likes and dislikes of the era. For this reason, it is impossible to find and analyse the original version of a musical piece. Thus, a period and style analysis could never have been developed in Turkish music which is another disadvantage. In this paper, I will try to put forward the “meşk” method in detail and illustrate its defining features through examples.
“La soirée du Henné dans la tradition turque”
Fulsun Komutan, State Conservatory
of Turkish Music, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
En Turquie, les coutumes
et les cérémonies de mariage qui se passent dans les petites villes et les villages,
montrent une grande diversité. Tout d’abord on se rend chez la jeune fille pour
la voir. Puis si elle convient à la famille, on la demande en mariage.Ensuite se
déroule une soirée au cours de laquelle les deux familles s’entendent sur une datte
pour les fiançailles. On prépare alors la dot qui comprend le trousseau et tout
ce qui se trouve dans une maison. La cérémonie du mariage lui-même ne vient qu’après.
Ces coutumes et traditions sont toujours vivaces. La soirée du Henné est une partie
importante de la cérémonie du mariage traditionnel, car la famille est la base de
la société turque comme dans tous les pays méditerranéens. Sous la forme d’une “power
point”, nous présenterons les mélodies, danses, jeux, vêtements et accessoires.
La fête présentée a lieu dans un village, important dès l’Antiquité, devenu aujourd’hui
un centre actif de tourisme.
“The Educational System and Institutions
in the Ottoman Empire”
Zeynep Barut, State Conservatory of Turkish Music, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
The basic education system that the
Ottoman/Turkish culture is based on is called “MEŞK”. Meşk is a face to
face education style. Along with being an education method, Meşk’s role that
it takes in the shaping and transfer of the societal values cannot be disregarded.
In the meaning of the word, Meşk is a term that means “writing sample” or “writing
scribbling”. In a wide frame, this method which shapes the traditional aesthetics
has also been the indicator of society’s improving morals that shape around the
master-apprentice relationship. The word “Meşkhane” which means the place where
Meşk is done and where there is education, is not often seen used in the other
education areas than music. In this presentation, the institutions in which Meşk
was realized and which are each a quality of basic education and performance and
which made music liked, become widespread and improved in the society (Mehterhane,
Mevlevihane, Enderun) will be introduced considering the characteristics of our
music and Meşk’s implementation, as Ottoman’s basic education system which
still today cannot be renounced, will be opened up to discussion with its pros and
cons.
Saturday, June 2, 9:00 – 11:00
7A. Late Medieval & Renaissance Literature
Chair: Robert G. Collmer, Baylor
University, Waco, Texas
“Rodrigo Cota: A Case of Converso
Poetics?”
Amy Aronson-Friedman, Valdosta
State University, Georgia
A controversial issue in the study of Medieval Peninsular literature has centered on the validity of various literary critics’ claims to detect a specific voice that identifies the works of converso authors. A converso text can be thought of as a culture-coded text whereby textual meaning and message depend on the interpretation of audience and reader. A converso text contains linguistic elements, which, while entirely opaque to some readers, remain entirely clear to to others. Once the converso element is perceived within the text, the work yields a meaning quite other than the one more easily understood by most readers. A descendant of a renowned converso family from Toledo, Rodrigo Cota, also known as Ruy Sanchez Cota, was born between 1430 and 1440 and died sometime after 1505. His life spanned the reigns of two Castilian monarchs, Juan II (1406-54) and Enrique IV (1454-74). According to various sources, Cota was a man of substantial means as he was employed by the government as a clerk and tax collector-features that are common with other conversos of Jewish origin. Gregory Kaplan, who has written extensively on Cota, claims that he did not have the advantage of a formal, professional education as no documents refer to him as “bachiller, licenciado, or doctor.” Nevertheless, Kaplan believes that Cota was influenced by his Jewish past and probably had much more of a Jewish education than a Christian one. As he states, “Cota was poorly schooled in Christianity” (31) as his “education may well have emphasized some traditional Jewish doctrines which made him part of a Hispan0-converso community” (29). This paper will explore those elements within Cota’s poetic corpus which constitute what I consider to be traces of his converso voice.
“In Search of Constantinople: The
Mediterranean Adventures of Tirant lo Blanc”
Montserrat Piera, Temple University,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The 15th century produces, within the domain of the Crown of
Aragon, a very entertaining and remarkably well-written chivalry novel which will
daringly challenge the boundaries between fiction and history: Tirant lo Blanc, written between 1460 and
1464 by the Valencian writer and aristocrat Joanot Martorell. In this novel, which
makes ample use of historical events and references, a young Breton knight, Tirant,
leaves his land in search of fortune and, after defeating the Turks, dies in Constantinople.
Two of the historical events which conflate in Martorell’s novel are closely connected
to the history of Constantinople and relate to the final conquest of the city by
the Turks in 1453. The first is the pillaging of Constantinople during the Fourth
Crusade in 1204; the second was the expedition of the “almogavers”, who in 1302
sold their services to the Byzantine emperor Michael IX. Several key episodes of
the novel are inextricably linked to these events. The purpose of my study is to
analyze these instances of appropriation and reinterpretation of history undertaken
by Joanot Martorell and to demonstrate how this relates to contemporary perceptions
of the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
“Motherhood and Ritual Murder in
Spain: The Case of El Santo Niño de la Guardia”
Barbara F. Weissberger, University
of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Spain’s best-known case of ritual murder allegedly took place
around 1488 in the town of La Guardia, not far from Toledo. In the Inquisitional
trial and auto de fe that followed the crime in 1490-1491, eight men--five New Christians
and three Jews—were found guilty of kidnapping a small child from Toledo and crucifying
him in order to use his heart along with a consecrated Host to cast a magic spell
that would destroy all of Christendom. The auto de fe at which the supposed conspirators
were burned at the stake took place in November of 1491, just four months before
Isabel and Fernando issued the Edict of Expulsion of all Spanish Jews. Despite the
fact that scholars have long deemed the Santo Niño case to be instrumental in Isabel
and Fernando’s decision to expel the Jews, little work has been done on subsequent
non-fictional and fictional accounts of the ritual murder. This talk focuses on
the representation of mothers in Lope de Vega’s historical play, El niño inocente de La Guardia (1594-1597)
and its primary source, the Memorial del Santo
Niño de La Guardia written by Damián de Vegas, apostolic prothonotary of La
Guardia, in 1544. Both Vegas and Lope use folkloric and fictional motifs to make
their anti-Semitic case against the La Guardia “conspirators.” A striking element
in Vegas’s presentation of the crime and central to my discussion is his representation
of the martyred child’s mother. In contrast to similar figures in northern Europe’s
anti-Semitic mythography—Chaucer’s “The Prioress’s Tale,” for example—the mother
of the martyred Christian boy in Vegas’s narration is not sentimentalized. Quite
the contrary, she is portrayed as indifferent to her son’s cruel fate. Literally
and figuratively blind, she is, I argue, assimilated to the Jews themselves. Lope’s
representation of Cristobalico’s mother is highly sentimentalized, but he elaborates
on the motif of blindness in other ways, even going so far as to apply it to the
Catholic Monarchs.
“John Donne: His Spanish Connections”
Robert G. Collmer, Baylor University,
Waco, Texas
John Donne (1572?-1631), English Metaphysical poet, possessed elements of Spanish as a survey, in reversed chronological order, from 1623 ro 1591 reveals. In 1623 he wrote that in his library he had more books by “authors of that nation (Spain) than of any other. In 1607-08 he wrote a defense of suicide, in which he asserted, “I had my first breeding and conversation with Men of a suppressed and afflicted Religion.” He was referring to his lineage from Sir Thomas More and to his two Jesuit uncles. In 1596 he was a soldier in the Anglo-Dutch attack on Cadiz. Izaak Walton, his first biographer, cllaimed that after the Cadiz invasion and another attack on Spanish interests, in 1597, Donne “staid some years first in Italy, then in Spain.” Other sources show that Donne could not have spent years outside England after 1597. A theory recently proposed holds that at the age of twelve or thirteen he accompanied an English Catholic diplomat to Antwerp. Proof of an early reflection of Spanish lies in his portrait dated 1591 with Donne’s age as 18. The quotation from Montemayor, “Antes muerto que mudado,” provokes spectulation about why the young Donne had this Spanish connection. My original theory connects a little-known Jesuit college in Cadiz wit Donne’s possibly having been sent there by his English Catholic family.
7B. Portuguese History II
Chair: Francis Dutra, University of California at Santa Barbara
“Knights, Squires and Foot Soldiers—With
Reference to the 16th-Century Military Revolution in Portugal”
Pedro de Brito, Porto
The chancery books from D.Afonso V down to at least Filipe II (I) are full of copies or document references to knights’, squires’ and foot soldiers’ (cross bowmen and hand gunners’) charters. In the late fifteenth, early sixteenth century, a knighthood still seems to be linked to military service, but as the Military Revolution progresses and cavalry looses its importance in warfare, knighthoods will be just granted as social promotions. According to the wording of squires’ charters, these are in no way connected to military service, but establish a link between the beneficiary and the king, in which the first pledges special service and the second corresponds with special protection. As to the crossbowmen and hand gunners’ charters, a simultaneous decrease of the first and increase of the second will take place. All together one gets the impression that this solemn (also because it is written) granting of ‘titles’ to commoners, corresponds to a wish by the crown to counter balance the influence of the second estate by honouring the third, exactly when the mounted military nobility is demoted to second rang in the battlefield, and noblemen are forced to offer other kinds of service so as to retain their influence.
“Commendas da Ordem do Hospital
em Portugal e no Sul de Itália: Fontes documentais e enquadramentos metodológicos”
Paula Pinto Costa, Universidade do Porto
Este trabalho é, igualmente feito, por outros Professores e investigadores portugueses
e italianos, a saber: Luis Adao da Fonseca (Universidade Lusiada - Portugal), Maria
Eugenia Cadeddu (Consiglio Nazionale de Ricerche - Italia), Antonella Pellettieri
(Istituto per i Beni Archeologici e Monumentali - Italia) e Nicola Montesano(Istituto
per i Beni Archeologici e Monumentali - Italia). Com este estudo pretendemos apresentar a rede de comendas
da Ordem do Hospital, tanto em Portugal como no Sul de Italia, no periodo medieval.
Assim, o objectivo é fazer uma abordagem de historia comparada entre estas duas
regioes de perfil medietrranico. Neste sentido, serao avaliadas as fontes documentais
que sustentam este tipo de estudos e os problemas que as mesmas levantam. Sera,
tambem, nosso interesse definir o perfil sociologico dos comendadores responsaveis
por estes nucleos.
“Populações vulneráveis: histórias de vidas na Misericórdia
de Évora—sécs XVII-XVIII”
Rute Pardal,
Universidade de Évora
Charity, poor relief, health-care constitute subjects of great relevance and full actuality, in a time where the contemporaries societies start to put in question the assistance models. Their social and politic importances justify the persecution of studies that give to know the problems and the solutions that had been put in practice in these fields throughout History. It s from this theoretician departure that we will develop the text to present. Its main purpose is the reconstitution of life-course of some individuals attended in the Évora Misericórdia, for instance through the almses, fixed or doubtful, endows for marriage, home assistance, sustenance of children, or jails release. To materialize this objectiv, it is necessary to reconstruct the social/ economic and familiar structure of these individuals. And from then on identify key-points in its life-cycle, to, in some way, helps to understand why they had appealed to the assistance practised by the Misericórdia of Évora. Nevertheless, it is convenient to state that we are conscientious that this kind of support it s a bit, inserted in a vaster assistance system, where other institutions fit - as the more linked to the Church ones, and other informal ways of assistance as the neighbourhood ties, this approach will be made in a vaster study on the assistance net of Évora, that we have in preparation in scope of our PhD thesis.
7C. Art History II
Chair: Gilbert Fernandez,
Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville
“Tales of the Great Mosque of Cordoba”
Jennifer Roberson, Minnesota State
University, Moorhead
Most are familiar with Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra. Less well known are the stories surrounding the Great Mosque of Córdoba. Its history is well documented; it was begun in 785 by Abd al-Rahman I and served to visually indicate the establishment of Islam in the region. In the following centuries, the building was expanded and modified to reinforce the rulers’ authority. When Córdoba was conquered by King Ferdinand in the 13 th century, the mosque was consecrated as a Catholic cathedral and the return of Christianity proclaimed. Just as significant as the visual symbolism are the stories that developed about the mosque. Even before it was constructed the site of the mosque was foretold in a Solomonic prophecy. Abd al-Rahman’s flight from the Abbasid uprising in Syria adds to the drama of the building’s history. Even today Muslims from Spain and abroad look to the Great Mosque of Córdoba as a structure of almost mythical proportions, representing al-Andalus, the lost land of Islam. This paper examines the tales that have developed about the Great Mosque of Córdoba and what they indicate about those who lived during the height of Islamic power in addition to those who remembered the Great Mosque after the fall of Córdoba.
Luís Urbano Afonso, Universidade de Lisboa
The old council-house (Câmara) of Monsaraz, near Évora, presents
the single medieval painting of justice still in situ in the Iberian Peninsula.
It consists of a representation of the Last Judgment painted above an allegory of
justice where the Righteous Judge contrasts with the Corrupt Judge. In this paper
we present an interpretation of the paintings structures of meaning (in terms of
internal contrasts and similarities) as well as an interpretation of the context
in which the painting was produced.
“Ottoman Carpets in Holland: From
Baroque Painting to the Industrial Revolution”
Gulgun Yilmaz, University of Thrace, Edime, Turkey
Dutch East India Company in 1602 in order to organize the maritime trade with Southeastern. After the establishment of the company, exotic goods coming to Europe and the oriental style started to affect the local production. Holland started in 1650’s to use Izmir Harbor in Turkey. As a result of the intense trade relations, a lot of Dutch tradesmen became rich in Leiden, where was an important center for the textile exportation. The bust of a Turk with a turban and the script “IN DEN VERGULDEN TURK” (the gilded Turk) at the front of the house in Leiden, which was built in 1673 is an indicator of gratitude. Poseidon, the god of sea, and Hermes, the protector of the traders, were located on each side of the bust of the Turk was symbolizing the maritime trade. Between 1660 and 1670 is the period that West Anatolian carpets were mostly seen in Dutch painting. The carpets that are used as the table cloth or as the complementary object to the scene on the genre paintings, portraits and still-lifes. The imitations of the Aegean Region carpets were weaved in the carpet factories built in Deventer in the 19th century. Koninklijke Vereenigde Tapijtfabriek (KVT) was built on the “Smyrnastraat” meaning “Izmir Street” in Deventer, and the carpets furnished with Anatolian motifs and made on the handlooms were named as “Smyrnatapijten” meaning “Izmir carpets”. Examples of Ushak carpets with medallions, which were changed according to the taste of the 19th Century Europe were among the products of the factories.
7D. Early Modern English Drama II
Chair: Susan O. Shapiro,
University of Kansas, Lawrence
“Portia: Conniving or Evolving”
Elizabeth Acosta, University of
Texas at El Paso
Much of the criticism on The Merchant of Venice tends to focus, as the title suggests, on monetary issues, as well as the Christian / Jewish dichotomy through Antonio, Bassanio, and Shylock. I offer a different perspective in that Shakespeare challenges social conventions through Portia. Portia employs various strategic tactics to interrogate gender roles and to establish ownership over her own body. For instance, when Bassanio chooses the correct casket, Portia only seemingly renders herself and her property to Bassanio; however, in a calculated move, she gives the gift of the ring intending it to symbolize everything that she has surrendered. Since Portia sets a condition upon the gift of the ring, she reclaims all that she gave with the ring when Bassanio fails to uphold the condition. As the ring represents everything that Portia has surrendered to Bassanio, it comes to represent her vaginal ring as well. Because of the likelihood of a homosexual relationship between Bassanio and Antonio, the ring representing Portia’s vaginal ring becomes crucial to her strategic maneuvering. When Portia re-gives the ring to Bassanio through Antonio, the ring now comes to represent Antonio’s anal ring. With this move, Portia reclaims and ensures full ownership of her body. Portia takes full agency to break through culturally established and patriarchal restraints.
“Host and Hostage: Caliban, Prospero
and The Tempest’s Hostil/pitality”
David Ruiter, University of Texas
at El Paso
“Visible Whispering, Audible Shouts,
Enacted Signs: The Making of Meaning in Macbeth”
Richard Raspa, Wayne State University,
Detroit, Michigan
When
Duncan expresses his reaction to the betrayal of the Thane of Cawdor at the
beginning of Macbeth, the King sounds an important theme in the tragedy: “There’s
no art/To find the mind’s construction in the face” (Act 1.4.12-13). As the
play unfolds, Shakespeare uses bodily gesture to dramatize the ultimate
inscrutability of human expression. In Macbeth, gesture amplifies the stream of
dialogue to reveal motive and shape action. Macbeth whispers to Banquo in sight
of Ross and Angus in Act 1.2, and later kneels before Duncan as a visible
display of loyalty. Macduff screams when he discovers Duncan’s murder. During
the dinner scene in Act 3.4, Macbeth screams at the invisible Banquo as Lady
Macbeth whispers to her husband and simultaneously implores the guests for
compassion. In this analysis I will use Goffman’s distinction of front and
backstage, and Eco’s semiotics of space to illuminate the whispers, shouts, and
signs that frame the drama of Macbeth.
“Wherefore Verona in Shakespeare’s
Two Gentlemen of Verona?”
David M. Bergeron, University of Kansas, Lawrence
The greatest variety of titles of Shakespeare’s plays can be found in the comedies. This paper thus focuses on the title of Two Gentlemen of Verona. I argue that Shakespeare (or somebody) misnamed this play, that Shakespeare may have used the reference to Verona as a stopgap measure, intending to return to the play and name it appropriately. This play, despite its title, never mentions Verona in the opening act, during which most of the characters prepare to journey to Milan, which the play does specify. This curiosity, unlike, say, the situation in Romeo and Juliet, stands out. Shakespeare would not have gotten the city Verona from his sources for the play. As a sign of the playwright’s reluctance or failure to name Verona, I cite several instances from the play in which indicating Verona would be logical. I close by suggesting alternative titles. Two Gentlemen of Verona is thus the story of a playwright who has not made up his mind.
8A. Mediterranean Cultural Studies II
Chair: Sheila Pelizzon, Middle
East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
“Marginalized in the Mediterranean:
The Lack of an African Presence in Mediterranean and Ottoman Economic History”
Sheila Pelizzon
The interaction between Africa and those societies more conventionally thought of as Mediterranean has been largely ignored, in spite of (1) the considerable importance of African gold to the economies surrounding the Mediterranean, (2) the African continent has a long Mediterranean coastline, and (3) historical interaction between the Levant, Western Europe and North Africa is well known. This marginalization is reflected in historical literature: a search through electronic journal archives reveals that articles pertaining to Africa appear only in journals relating to African Studies; North African matters may appear in journals relating to Middle Eastern Studies, while the designation Mediterranean Studies is generally reserved for matters pertaining to Spain, Italy, Portugal and Southern France, the volume of Spanish work on Muslim Spain notwithstanding. Where Africa does enter such literature, the story is often told from a European standpoint. Africa is also marginalized in Ottoman Studies, which itself is marginalized within Mediterranean Studies . If the Ottoman Empire constitutes a kind of European other at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, then North Africa constitutes a kind of other in Ottoman studies. This paper discusses both the fact of, and the reasons for, the exclusion of Africa from Mediterranean Studies and Ottoman Studies.
“Mediterranean Studies: Cui
Bono?”
Eyup Ozveren, Middle East Technical
University, Ankara, Turkey
A critical evaluation of the Mediterranean Studies is intended here. After several decades, it is still not clear whether Mediterranean Studies puports to become a discipline, a subfield or a particular approach. This lack of clarity can be explained by recourse to the general state of academic disciplines, subfields and methodologies. This involves no less than mapping Mediterranean Studies with the worldwide structures of knowledge such as academic programs, journals and associations. It is the contention here that the existing body of literature, programs and activities within the domain of Mediterranean Studies are biased in favor of the long nineteenth century. Yet the constitution of the Mediterranean world as a unit of analysis is less the effect of the nineteenth century. Fernand Braudel s long sixteenth century remains paradigmatic from the viewpoint of the theoretical constitution of the unit of analysis. Another candidate for the historical constitution of the Mediterranean as a unit of analysis is the antiquity. Both deserve a thorough discussion for the sake of reorienting Mediterranean Studies. Be that as it may, it remains to be seen whether there should be a strong or a loose relation between Mediterranean Studies and the conceptualization of its unit of analysis.
“From Prospective-Turks to Pseudo-Citizens:
Kurds and Citizenship in Turkey”
Mesut Yegen, Middle East Technical
University, Ankara, Turkey
In this essay, I explore the public images and citizenship status of Turkish citizen Kurds in Turkey. I basically argue that a fundamental change is gradually taking place in the public image of Kurds in Turkey and that it is likely that Kurds, who have traditionally been subject to assimilationist practices of citizenship, may now be subject to discriminatory practices. Throughout my work, I first show that Kurds in Turkey have mostly been seen as prospective-Turks, i.e. as the potential members of the Turkish ethno-cultural community. Citizenship practices that Kurds have enjoyed have been shaped accordingly. As records demonstrate, while non-Muslim citizens of the Republic have regularly been subject to discriminatory practices of citizenship, Kurdish citizens have mainly been subject to assimilationist practices of citizenship in the republican period of Turkey. In other words, Kurds have traditionally been invited to become Turkish, and many have during the eighty years of the Republic. This was seen by the Turkish State and by the Turkish people as the evidence of Kurds inclination towards being the loyal members of the national community. In turn, the idea that Kurds are prospective-Turks has worked almost as a meta-image during the whole Republican period. However, today s current images concerning Kurds indicate that this meta-image is not as stable as it has been. I argue that the signs in circulation signify that the status of Kurds vis-à-vis Turkishness and Turkish citizenship is on the brink of a major change. Although it is yet impossible to argue that the Kurds are now perceived outside of the circle of Turkishness and of Turkish national community, it is understood that the traditional contention that Kurds are prospective-Turks is now weaker at both public and popular levels. A symptomatic sign to this effect has been the appearance of symbols building a connection between Kurdish people and various forms of non-Muslimhood. Starting from the early 2000 s, terms defining Kurds as crypto-Jews and native-Greeks entered popular discourse. As non-Muslims in Turkey have characteristically been seen as Turkish in terms of citizenship only and as they have accordingly been subject to discrimination in public, the connection built between Kurds and Jews or Greeks is quite telling. Such signs indicate that the establishment in Turkey is now profoundly hesitant as to whether Kurds in Turkey are loyal and qualified citizens of the Republic or not. Considering the citizenship practices in the past, especially those experienced by non-Muslim citizens of the Republic, one may suspect whether Turkish citizens of Kurdish origin will also be subject to practices of discrimination. In other words, it is reasonable to suspect whether Kurds will also be regarded as Turkish in terms of citizenship only. That some Kurds have occasionally been defined as pseudo-citizens by Turkish officials in the past few years indicates that Kurds status vis-à-vis Turkish citizenship is indeed getting closer to that of non-Muslims of Turkey. After documenting the occasional examples of discrimination against Kurdish citizens, my work concludes with an argument as to why such a fundamental change is taking place in the public image and citizenship status of Kurds in Turkey. In this respect, the establishment of a federal Kurdish state in Iraq and the pressure exerted by the EU on Turkey are particularly discussed.
“Mediterranean Landscapes along
Waterways: The Challenge of Heritage, Territory, and History”
Laura Verdelli,
University of Tours, France
Along centuries, territorial distribution and structure as well as human, social, economic, agricultural, industrial development had been based on water presence, able to organise a synergic and complex relation system between man and environment, along linear axis or multi-polar nets. Recently recognised as heritage, cultural landscape attracts a growing interest and attention both from researchers and institutions as new object of patrimonial identification and protection on one hand, and of patrimonial valorisation and exploitation on the other. The sustainability of the combination of these two parallel tendencies appears to be a developing field of activity for different disciplines (archaeology, planning, geography, architecture, economy, cultural heritage and landscape managment, tourism marketing), with significant potential of growth within the coming decades. Whitin the multiplicity of cultural landscape along waterways, our advanced study cases are represented by some European rivers: the Loire (Fr), the Douro (Pt) and the Po basin (It); while we re recently spreading our approach towards southern Mediterranean area, specially on Egypt (Nile river and Suez canal) and Morocco (Draa and Dades valleys). As significant and relevant examples to conceive an analysys model we assume vineyards landscapes as a priority, while it s emerging that private enterpreneurs as well as cultural actors and public bodies are producing convergent policies which are apparently compatibles among them and with the existing protection procedures within most of Mediterranean countries. Nowadays, practicians and scientifics are producing a less dogmathic and more fine territorial history while territorial actors are trying to manage a landscape which will be worthy to represent our time in the future history.
8B. Modern Literature and Theater
Chair:
Ricardo Bigi de Aquino, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil
“Telling stories of culture through literature: D.
H. Lawrence and the Mediterranean”
Ana Clara Birrento, Universidade
de Évora
Disappointed
with the face of England after WWI, D. H. Lawrence and Frieda travelled south, to
Italy, where the artist stored material for further writings. It was during the
years he wandered around the Mediterranean places that Lawrence wrote literary texts
(travelogues, novels, short stories and poems), which, in one way or the other,
told stories of the Mediterranean culture. Departing from questions of cultural
representation, the paper aims at understanding the image of southern Europe
that D. H. Lawrence reconfigured in three of his texts: Twilight in Italy, Sea and Sardinia
and Etruscan Places. In all we can
find not only the ordinary life of modern people in a civilization prior to
industrialization, but also intense personal reflections of an artist.
“Venting the Malaise of Contemporary
Life: Young Voices in Portuguese Theater”
Ricardo Bigi de Aquino
Members of a postmodern society undergoing mutation according to the norms of a globalized economy, breaking the bonds with tradition, trying to find themselves in the terra incognita between the old and the new, many contemporary men and women experience a malaise before the uncertainties that befall us at the beginning of the new millenium. In the visions of José Maria Vieira Mendes (T1, 2004), André Murraças (As peças amorosas, 2005) and Castro Guedes (À esquerda do teu sorriso, 2005), we catch glimpses of life as lived by a generation that often looks back in anger at the past and faces the future with ambivalence, despondency and mistrust.
“Análise sociológico-literária de três peças de Jorge
Andrade”
Rosemari Bendlin Calzavara, Universidade Norte do Paraná,
Brazil
O estudo de três formas dramáticas - tragédia, drama burguês e comédia - em
três peças do dramaturgo brasileiro Jorge Andrade procura mostrar o efeito das mudanças
econômicas na sociedade brasileira, durante os ciclos do ouro, café e industrialização,
mais especificamnte representadas pelas famílias mineiras e paulistas. Em Pedreira
das Almas a dignidade de uma família aristocrática, no final do ciclo da mineração,
é representada tragicamente, em A Moratória a dignidade familiar durante a crise
cafeeira de 1929 é representada em termos do drama burguês.Em Os Ossos do Barão,
já no ciclo da industrialização, a inversão de valores é representada comicamente.
8C. Art History III
Chair: M. Rebecca Leuchak, Roger Williams University,
Bristol, Rhode Island
“Gaela Erwin: ‘Saintly’ Self-Portraits”
Dorothy Joiner, LaGrange
College, Georgia
Joining her eminent forbears who portrayed themselves as holy
figures -- Dürer as Christ and Rembrandt as Saint Paul, to cite two celebrated examples
-- Gaela Erwin depicts herself in the guise of Christian saints and martyrs. Painting
“perceptually” while looking into a mirror, Erwin employs chiaroscuro and stark dramatic lighting. She directs her intense green
eyes at the observer, face with little make-up save lipstick, brow furrowed, skin
weathered with florid splotches, nostrils flared, blonde hair limp and wispy. Almost
nothing leavens the piercing gaze and unmitigated psychic pain. The most agonized
is Self-Portrait as Ste. Agathe (2001),
a just under life-sized interpretation of the early Christian martyr. Holding to
her chest a blood-soaked rectangle of red chiffon, Erwin covers the wounds inflicted
by Quintian, a spurned lover who had her breasts cut off. Clad only in a loin cloth
like those worn by the crucified Christ, the figure stands against a desolate backdrop,
unspeakable anguish convulsing her features. A subtle grid, nonetheless, frames
the composition signifying an unseen but actual divine support sustaining this victim
of ruthless brutality. With dramatic aplomb, Erwin also appropriates the iconography
of the male. In Self-Portrait as St. Sebastian
(2000), her nude body is covered only at the hips with a white cloth. In accord
with the erotic implications frequent in historical depictions of the saint, the
artist raises her left arm, holding it behind her head in a conventional gesture
of self-display. Three arrows pierce her flesh, their entry marked with rivulets
of blood. Despite the visible wounds, however, the pain appears more psychological
than physical, lining her face and defining her expression.
“Low Objects and Dead Things: Picasso
and the Still Life of War”
Memory Holloway, University of
Massachusetts Dartmouth
In his studio during the German occupation of Paris, Picasso painted skulls, candles, books, ceramic vessels and food. We recognize these objects as part of a still life tradition, of low objects and dead things. The period between 1937 and 1945 was a time of deep anxiety, of material lack, of food and heating shortages. In response, Picasso turned to simple objects, and transformed them into anxious containers that invoke death and war. His still life paintings draw on a Spanish tradition of moralized bodegones, in which the physical reality of human figures and things is shaped into a layered narrative that incorporates the memento mori, and the vanitas themes. On the surface, still life as a genre makes few claims. Nothing exceptional occurs. There is only material existence. But in Picasso s hands simple objects speak of discomfort, deprivation and fear. Everyday objects are called upon to express the confinement and oppressive climate of the war, and to address the most pressing of questions: how we live and how we die.
“‘But, Lady, Since I Drank of Thee,
I Never Have been Sated’: On Love Pots and Love Poems in Medieval Rhodes”
Cristina Stancioiu, University
of California at Los Angeles
The medieval City of Rhodes kept a
secure position as artistic and commercial crossroads in the Mediterranean, where
pottery was the most intensely traded commodity. I focus on a group of fifteenth-century
ceramics decorated with profile busts of men and women excavated in the city, near
the Church of St. Spyridon. The figures were represented in Italianate Renaissance
costumes, suggesting that such fashions might have been available at the upper levels
of the Rhodian society. The function of these ceramics, however, remains more elusive,
as they resemble strikingly a group of better-researched maiolica love pots a type
of vessel commemorating a betrothal which were exchanged as ritual gifts between
spouses and lovers in Europe. While the vessels from Rhodes were locally produced
for indigenous consumers patrons of romantic poetry as well, these ceramics borrowed
elements of design, and the concept of portrait-ceramics from Europe. Thus, they
echoed the more expens ive pendant marriage portraits and medals celebrating the
sitters virtues. I explore the patronage, production, and function of these ceramics
within the specifics of Rhodes, to see how they were suited to serve this cosmopolitan
society governed by the military Knights of St. John, while displaying comparable
feelings of power and romantic character common in Italian portraiture.
8D. Lusophone Literature
Chair: Maria Cristina Firmino Santos,
Universidade de Évora
“Liber Pater: O Louvor de
Baco da Antigüidade Greco-Latina ao Renascimento Luso-Italiano”
Luiza Nóbrega, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
Um tema de interesse aos investigadores da zona fronteiriça em que Literatura,
História e Mitologia se intercomunicam diz respeito à vertente literária na qual
o deus Baco é decantado objeto de louvor, e também signo de um código partilhado,
através do qual se transmite uma resistência poético-ideológica ao avanço civilizacional.
Evocar essa diacronia poético-literária - que num arco de espaço-tempo aproxima
geograficamente Grécia, Itália e Portugal, e historicamente vincula à antiguidade
greco-latina o Renascimento lusitano - leva-nos a refletir sobre o sentido da vinculação
dos humanismos luso e italiano ao antigo imaginário mítico europeu. Analogamente,
indagar dos motivos e propósitos com que humanistas e renascentistas dos dois citados
países veiculavam tais formas e conteúdos corresponde a inquirir o sentido da presença
de Baco n’ Os Lusíadas de Camões, e as
funções que ele efetivamente desempenha no emblemático poema. Considerações que
nos levam a comparações por vezes surpreendentes, no que têm de aproximativas, ao
evidenciar convergências de poéticas aparentemente distantes, como em temas homéricos
que Horácio, Ovídio e Virgilio cotejam, e reverberam ainda em Baudelaire. Ilações
que, por fim, levam-nos à reflexão, já teórica, sobre a função da metáfora mítica
no sentido dos textos poéticos.
“Dido, Senhora do Mediterrâneo”
Elisa Nunes Esteves, Universidade de Évora
A comunicação que pretendemos apresentar tem como objecto de estudo a história
de Dido na obra de Afonso X “Estoria de España” (c. 1270). Trata-se de uma crónica
geral da Espanha, texto fundador da historiografia peninsular em língua vulgar,
caracterizado pelo enfoque territorial da matéria histórica cujo alcance remonta
aos tempos bíblicos do Dilúvio e aos primórdios do povoamento da Europa. É no âmbito
da história romana e a pretexto da importância que nela teve a cidade de Cartago
que o compilador insere o relato da fundação da cidade africana. Assim, encontramos
Dido, primeiro ainda em Tiro e depois viajando pelo Mediterrâneo, carregando o seu
tesouro em demanda de um espaço seguro, não de acolhimento mas de povoamento e exercício
de poder. Focaremos a nossa atenção na construção desta magnífica personagem feminina
que emerge da literatura e da história da Antiguidade, e que a tradição cultural
da Idade Média incorporou. No texto afonsino a ênfase temática incide na sua r elação
com as cidades mediterrânicas de Tiro, a sua cidade de origem, Cartago, que fundou,
e Cartagena que mandou povoar. Três cidades unidas pelo mar onde se joga todo o
seu destino, o mesmo mar que lhe trouxe e lhe levou o amor.
“‘Este luminoso e magnífico céu azul’: reflexões queirosianas
sobre o clima meridional”
Ana Luísa Vilela, Universidade de Évora
Num texto de cariz jornalístico, escrito na plena maturidade da sua vida literária,
em 1895, Eça de Queirós, o maior romancista português do século XIX e, talvez, da
contemporaneidade, reflecte irónica e liricamente sobre a decantada “influência”
do clima sobre a mentalidade, a cultura e a economia dos povos europeus. É seu pretexto
uma cómica palinódia dos seus passados sarcasmos juvenis àcerca de um romântico
e ridículo desabafo poético-político de um ex-primeiro-ministro português, que enaltecia,
como principal riqueza nacional, o “luminoso e magnífico céu azul que nos cobre!”.
Já desde a década de 1870, no advento da sua vida de escritor, como director e principal
redactor do periódico “O Distrito de Évora” que, para Eça, é tema recorrente uam
espécie de “mitologia do Sul”, em que impera a tutela benfazeja e doce do céu meridional.
Nesta crónica, no fim da sua vida, Eça de Queirós retoma e desenvolve, definitivamente,
uma representação cultural, psicológica e cultural do clima meridional, pretexto
para uma magnífica síntese contrastiva sobre o Norte e o Sul da Europa, enternecida
apologia do sol, do calor e da luz “mediterrânicos”, saudosamente evocados durante
um Inverno sombrio em Paris.
8E. Modern Portugal and Spain
Chair: Gilbert Fernandez, Tennessee
Technological University, Cookeville
“Humanism and Physics in Ortega y Gasset, a Quantum
Leap?”
Joseph A. Agee, Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia
Although Albert Einstein popularized his theory of relativity through numerous public lectures and articles, he had no equivalent when it came to quantum mechanics, which was unquestionably as great an achievement in physics as relativity. One reason was that there was no one individual who could be credited with the development of quantum theory but also because the very nature of its structure defied common sense, making it a difficult subject to broach even among scientists themselves. However, the Spanish philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset, who began his career just about the time that both quantum and relativity theories were surfacing, did not shrink from confronting these amazing developments in science for the purpose of exploring their significance for culture in general. There were few philosophers, particularly in the Continental sphere, who were as versed in physics as was Ortega and even fewer who attempted a correlation between the humanities and science in a way that did not make philosophy and literature ancillary pursuits or treat science as a relative social phenomenon. The point I want to make in my paper is that Ortega demonstrated exceptional originality in providing a workable synthesis of two very different worlds of thought. He certainly did not take the route of many contemporary popularizers of science, such as Edmund O. Wilson and Stephen Jay Gould who purport to salvage meaning for the humanities either by fully explaining them through science, as does Wilson, or by relegating them to a narrow range of experience as does Gould. What Ortega attempted was a wide-ranging historical analysis that emphasized the intimate relation that science and humanities have always shared. Both represented heroic aspirations to truth, wherever it could be found, and in this large sense the only difference was the methodology of pursuing that truth. He also noted the necessary interdependence between these two realms but not by direct influence but rather through participation in what he called the spirit of our times . The task of the philosopher was not to support or attack science but to understand the common cultural currents that would account for such diverse developments as the highly complex and revolutionary trends of both literary Modernism and the relativity/quantum theories. For Ortega, this was a wholly metaphysical approach that did not rely on questionable ontological assumptions but took the world as it can be observed and interpreted.
“Portuguese Economy and Foreign
Policy Confronting Middle Eastern Crises: From 1956 to 1973”
Fernando Martins, Universidade
de Évora
From the end of WW 2 until the fall
of the Portuguese right wing, nationalist and authoritarian regime in April 1974,
the main focus of Portugal s foreign policy and diplomacy was the preservation of
the integrity of her colonial empire. Scattered through three continents and displayed
in the shores of three oceans, it depended for its safety on international political
stability and on a steady expansion of Western Economy. During the famous glorious
thirty years of economic growth sometimes jeopardized by serious international political
and military crises such as the 1956 Suez Crisis, 1958 Lebanon Civil War, 1967 Six
Days War and 1973 Yom Kippur War part of the precarious balance that sustained Portuguese
foreign and colonial policy was seriously disturbed. This meant that Middle Eastern
crisis had consequences on a small power whose main desire for almost 30 years appeared
to be staying out of international stage except, and unwillingly on colonial matters.
Those Middle East crises previously mentioned, even if geographically far away from
every piece of Portuguese territory had serious consequences for Portuguese diplomacy,
foreign policy and economic stability. Not only sea communications between the different
parts of Portuguese empire through the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal were
partially blocked or on the verge to be blocked in some of those four crisis, but
those crises also imposed deep economic stress because shortage of oil in world
market with consequences on its prices which deeply and suddenly increased. Finally,
and more than once, those regional crisis and its sometimes international consequences
implied that Portuguese diplomats and diplomacy had to take a stand on delicate
and important matters in which they didn t want to be and feel mixed up. The goal
of this paper is to describe very briefly Portuguese political and diplomatic attitude
towards each of those crises and evaluate how regional and international political
conflicts in the Middle East, and its distant wars, forced Portuguese Government
not only to take a diplomatic stand, but also to deal with indirectly political
and economic consequences sorting out of those crisis: quasi-blockade in sea navigation
and unpredictable and undesirable price increase of oil and, naturally, on all types
of energy associated with this vital raw-material. Shortly we will be able to argue
how and why stability on seafaring and of oil (or energy) supply was of extreme
vitality to a country with a peculiar colonial policy, a frail international position
and an unavoidable external dependence on oil and energy for private and public
consumption.
“Ageing in Portugal: An Overview”
António M. Fonseca, Catholic University of
Portugal, Porto
One of the most prominent characteristics of the present Portuguese society is the growth trend of its senior population. Having been used to living for decades with high rates of birth and mortality, Portugal is presently facing a reality that, although common to most European countries, is starting to come to terms with the relevant social impact that this is causing. It is based on this assumption that we propose to reflect on some of the predominant traits of the aging experience in Portugal, identifying areas of psychosocial analysis and intervention. The evaluation of and intervention with elderly populations implies a consideration of material, social, bio-behavioural, psychological, emotional and health measures, frequently establishing a conclusion between one of several of these measures and the quality of life. The big question is to understand how and which of the psychological, social and other aspects that make the quality of life of the elder vary. Only after answering this question can we, therefore, define one (or more) standard(s) of quality of life for the elderly, hence deriving policies for preventive and optimized interventions of successful aging.
1:15 – 3:00 Lunch (on your own)
Saturday 3:00 – 5:00
9A. Medieval Studies
Chair: James F. Powers, College
of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts
“All Choked Up: The Portrayal of
Asphyxiophila (Strangulation to Achieve Orgasm) in Twelfth-Century Iberian Church
Scripture”
Glenn Olsen, University of Utah,
Salt Lake City
Some years ago I discovered an exterior canecillo (French: corbel) on the rural church of St. Martin at Elines in Palencia province, Spain, of a monkey-headed figure with a very large erect penis (partly broken off) strangling himself by twisting a cord around his neck ever-more tightly with a baton. The monkey regularly in Romanesque art signifies sexual promiscuity or libidinousness. Then over the years I discovered at other sites variations on this subject, sometimes involving monkies, sometime humans. On some of these a man being hanged from a rope is simultaneously stroking or tugging his beard with one hand, another gesture of sexual license or prowess, and with the other hand masturbating; on others, where a rope is not present, the man is stroking or tugging on his beard with one hand while choking himself with the other, or choking himself with one hand while masturbating with the other. I am now ready to offer an interpretation of these sculptures, and this is the subject matter of my proposed paper. These sculptures seem to be the earliest known European representations of asphyxiophilia. From Leo Steinberg s The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion it is known that late medieval men were quite familiar with the phenomenon of erection as a result of (judicial) hanging, a subject the Marquis de Sade later pursued at some length. My argument is that twelfth-century people had discovered this phenomenon, and as a part of what I have elsewhere called rural carnivalesque, sculpted it.
“Sex and the Foreign Ambassador:
Gendering Diplomatic History and Other Challenges to Traditional Studies”
Lorraine Attreed, College
of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts
Royal and noble brides have always been recognized as having diplomatic influence upon their realms of birth and marriage, serving to unite discordant states and underline cooperative ventures. This paper turns instead to female figures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries who took an active and independent role in diplomatic relations, moving beyond ties of marriage to negotiate policy and to craft treaties. Such figures include Isabel of Portugal, wife of Philip of Burgundy and daughter of João I and his English spouse Philippa of Lancaster, and Margaret of Austria, daughter of Emperor Maximilian. Isabel worked consistently through the 1430s and 1440s to bring peace to warring England and France, assembling conferences and leading negotiations. Margaret is best known as Charles V’s aunt and regent, but less recognized are her negotiating skills with the leading monarchs of the turn of the sixteenth century. The paper also examines whether such a traditional field as diplomatic history can be enriched by the contributions of gender analysis, by expanding its notions of the nature of ambassadors and their duties beyond the dismissive “petticoat diplomacy” notion. The presentation is complemented by illustrations delivered via PowerPoint.
“The Finance and Preparation of Royal Reception
Ceremonies: Reconsiderations of Models of Hegemony”
Luis X. Morera,
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
The finance of ceremonies of royal reception
remains a largely unexamined subject. Yet the issues raised by finance and preparations
are vitally important, and not just in economic terms. Such ceremonies were enormously
expensive and required vast resources of various kinds. They were, therefore, significant
not only economically, but also in political, social, and even ecological terms.
Cities had to pay for reception ceremonies, and preparations often entailed forced
contributions. The finance of such ceremonies has, therefore, traditionally been
interpreted using models of hegemony if only implicitly . These idealized models,
however, are largely based on modern notions of absolute monarchy, and the historical
sources themselves often portray more nuanced scenarios. A close examination of
a cache of municipal documents (for the 1506 reception of Philip the Fair and Juana
la Loca in Burgos) reveals that the practices used in preparation for these receptions
were not necessarily unilateral and hegemonic. To the contrary, the specific mechanisms
devised for the finance of the royal receptions, the intricacies for how provisions
were acquired, and means by which decisions were made for determining forced contributions,
all show a much more complicated picture, denoting examples of negotiative and conciliatory
practices.
9B. Italian Cultural Studies
Chair: Antonieta Costa, Universidade do Minho, Braga
“The Inferiority of the Mediterranean
Race in Italian Positivist Anthropology at the Turn of the Century”
Tulio Pagano, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
An analysis of Alfredo Niceforo’s influential “trilogy” on Southern Italian culture, written at the turn of the century, in which he theorized the decline of the Mediterranean race. I will juxtapose his theses with the writings of Franco Cassano, a contemporary Italian thinker who has been developing a new line of thought, called “pensiero meridiano,” in which Mediterranean culture is presented as an alternative to the current hegemonic models.
“And the Journey Never Ended: Notes
from the Italian Transoceanic Emigration”
Sebastiano Marco Ciccio, Università degli Studi di Messina, Italy
A journey over sea marks the beginning of many stories of emigration. Between the latter half of the 19th century and the early thirties of the following century, millions of Italians have crossed the Atlantic Ocean, looking for work and a more fulfilling life. The steamship transport of emigrants was a big business for the Italian mercantile marine. Being the Italians lacking in law s effective patronage, the misdemeanors of shipping companies could make the transoceanic travel a highly risky experience. The medical logs, journalists and travellers, letters and diaries by migrants themselves draw a sad picture. They were packed in old and unsafe steamboats or, three decks below sea level, in the steerage compartments. They sailed for the 2 to 3 weeks trip to the New World in very unsanitary conditions; many died, some became sick en route and were rejected when they landed. As bad as the steerage conditions were, however, passengers main worrying was that the ship would sink. Italian emigrants were involved in tens of wrecks. It is no wonder that the Italians referred to travelling to America by steamship as “la via dolorosa” (the sorrowful way).
“Genoa, the G8 and Globalization”
Vincenzo Binetti, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor
This paper will investigate how the dramatic confrontation between the police and the “no global” during the G8 at Genoa has been negotiated and represented through a series of visual and literary texts. With a particular reference to Non siamo stati noi and to other filmic and documentary material representing those events (such as Un mondo diverso è possible, Genova. Per noi, and Carlo Giuliani, ragazzo ), I would argue that Genoa had been previously reterritorialized and militarized by the state in order to offer a global, homogeneous model for a perfectly functional urban setting capable of mirroring and symbolically advertising the demands of the G8, thus creating within the collective imaginary of the Italian people a credible form of public memory. At the same time, however, I would also argue that this hegemonic discourse and its representations have been problematized through a process of destabilization of the urban space by private and collectivepolitical-cultural initiatives and social actions, which were capable of constantly (re)shaping and transforming the rigidity of the city constructed by the nation/state and of producing instead, precisely by asserting their nomadic presence within the same territory, temporary areas of autonomy and political resistance.
9C. Music and Dance History
Chair: Juan La Manna, State University
of New York, Oswego
“Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune:
Sensuality and Innovation”
Juan La Manna
Claude Debussy is recognized as one
the most influential composers in the 20th century. His Prélude
à l’après-midi d’un faune, first
heard in 1894 and inspired by Mallarmé’s poeme, is considered a milestone in music
history. After summarizing Debussy’s life, this paper will dwell upon the musical
innovations present in the piece and relate them to Mallarmé’s sensual poem.
“Nijinksy’s ‘Faun’: Tracing His
Madness”
Ligia Ravenna
Pinheiro, Wittenberg University, Ohio
Vaslav Nijinsky, Russian’s principal dancer with the “Ballets
Russes,” shocked the Parisian audiences with his ballet L’après Midi D’un Faune in its 1912 debut. Nijinsky’s first attempt
at choreography brought the Diaghilev company fame and scandal in one performance.
Nijinsky’s short careers, both as a choreographer and performer, have nonetheless
left an indelible mark in the history of dance. In Faune we can see the complexity of his mind, and the daring choices
he made in choreographing a work that has survived its infamous and scandalous debut
in the early twentieth century. This presentation will focus on Nijinsky’s choreography,
connecting its elements to Nijinsky’s early signs of mental illness, which eventually
caused him to retire from the stage.
9D. Ancient Greece and Rome
Chair: Christos E. Evangeliou,
Towson University, Maryland
“Poetic Inspiration in Ancient
Greek Poetry”
Catherine Collobert, University
of Ottawa, Canada
The Ancient Greek conception of poetry is based on the idea of inspiration. The link between the poets and the Muses stems from the fact that poetry is a divine activity. Thus every poet before starting a song must invoke the Muses. The invocation is usually regarded as a call for the gift of the song, therefore, as I shall argue, as a matter of divine inspiration. I shall defend the thesis that to regard poetry as a divine gift does not prevent one from considering poetry as a techne. There are various indications in poetry that divine inspiration is compatible with poetic skill on the part of the poet. Even though the compatibility precludes any contradiction, it does not rule out any tension. The tension between being inspired and possessing a techne is due, to some extent, to the general idea that all human achievements are the product of a mandatory collaboration between gods and humans. From this perspective, understanding the very nature of this collaboration is the key to understanding the specific idea of inspiration in Ancient Greek poetry. In this paper, I shall first clarify the conception of poetry as a divine gift by elucidating the relationship between the human recipient and the divine donor. I shall, in the second place, explain the epistemic need for inspiration. Finally, I will demonstrate how inspiration and techne work together to produce a song whose status is both divine and human.
“Odysseus as Hellenic Cultural
Hero”
Christos E. Evangeliou
That Odysseus was the favorite hero of both Athena, the goddess of Hellenic wisdom, and Homer, the poet par excellence of Ancient Hellas, is evident from the fact that the poet devoted to this hero one of his two great poems, the Odyssey. However, a careful reading of the other poem, the Iliad, indicates clearly that even there Odysseus is exalted above the other two heroes who dominate the plot from beginning, the two protagonists in the unfolding Greek tragedy in Troy, Agamemnon and Achilles. Odysseus was able to overcome both the ruling power of Agamemnon and the matchless prowess of Achilles because of the power of his superior intellect, his unusual cunning, and his practical wisdom of human affairs, that was guided by Athena with deep insight and foresight. More than any other Homeric hero, Odysseus is active in the epic drama, from beginning to end, on every front: in the main battlefield, in special military missions, in the general assembly of the warriors, and in embassies exchanged between the two feuding parties. Wherever Odysseus is, and whatever he does or says, his intelligence shines through his every political act and spoken word. In every case he saves the miserable Greek army from impending certain disaster. For instance, it was Odysseus’ wise advice that persuaded Agamemnon to try to come to terms with Achilles. Although ruthless Achilles was not persuaded at that time, later and after much pain and suffering he was forced to listen to Odysseus’ advice and limit his personal and limitless rage for the sake of the common good of the Hellenic host in the hostile territory of Troy. Apparently his moment of triumph, as Homer saw it, came not when he was awarded the armor of Achilles in the contest with the great Aiax; or when Troy fell due to his strategic invention of the Wooden Horse; but when Odysseus met the shades of these heroes in Hades. They had all been dead, but he was still alive and in his way to beloved Ithaca. Little wonder, then, that even Helen herself will praise Odysseus above all other Hellenic heroes, including Menelaus, her chosen husband. Here in Troy and far away from Greece Helen can only sigh that she did not choose Odysseus for her husband. According to the legend, he was one of the Hellenic princes who courted the beautiful daughter of Zeus. Her dream would come almost true ages later, in Nikos Kazantzakis’ wonderful poem, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. Willingly, she will run away from Sparta again, but this time not with youthful Paris, but with crafty Odysseus, King of Ithaca, captain of hid ship and in his way to Minoan Crete and to distant Pharaonic Egypt. It is my purpose in this study to take a close look at Homer’s portrait of Odysseus, destined to become the Hellenic cultural hero over the centuries. I will discuss his role in the great epic drama as it unfolds. We will see him in action from the beginning, the moment when Achilles started his verbal attack on Agamemnon, to the end, the moment when Odysseus scolds triumphant Achilles advising him to think of the army too, not just his honor and his wounded pride. By exalting Odysseus above Agamemnon and Achilles, above Ajax and Menelaus, the Poet of Hellas apparently wanted to praise and to elevate the virtue (arete) of practical wisdom (metis) above the other heroic virtues, courage (andreia) and justice (dike). He thus set the stage for Hellenic philosophy to appear later.
“Hypermestra as Seen by Ovid in
Heroides 14”
Vaios Vaiopoulos,
Ionian University, Corfu, Greece
The paper concentrates
on the myth about the Danaids as seen by the Romans, especially Ovid in Her. 14,
but also by Horace in Od. 3.11 and Propertius in el. 4.7 and 11. These poets are
mainly interested in Hypermestra, the maid who spared Lynceus life despite her father
s will, while her 49 sisters murdered their husbands obeying to Danaus orders. Horace
uses Hypermestra s exemplum as a model of pietas and conjugal amor; Ovid in Her.
14 presents the maid addressing a letter written in elegiac couplets to Lynceus,
and lamenting for her sufferings. Ovid places a character known from epic (Danais)
and tragic (Aeschylean trilogy: Suppliants, Egyptians, Danaids) poetry in elegiac
ambience. The poet will present Hypermestra in a critical moment of her life, facing
a very difficult situation; the reader will be able to know the myth through the
memories, the hopes and the fears of Danaus daughter. What seems to be really peculiar
about Ovid is that he passes over the im portance of love as a motive for Hypermestra
s disobedience, although the Epistulae Heroidum are dominated by the notion of love.
On that issue suggestions about the poet s new poetic directions can be made.