Building Knowledge
The Creative Uses of Lived Ancient Religion: A Methodology for Creating Historical Fiction
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Alexis Landau
The primary methodology for my research and writing is “bricolage,” based on Levi-Strauss’s definition from his 1966 book The Savage Mind, in which he illuminates how artists ask their materials to yield answers, how to manipulate texts for meaning-making, and as we locate our research path we might discover new questions and modes of creating narratives. Levi-Strauss sees the bricoleur as “engaging in a sort of dialogue…before choosing tools and materials” and if the creative pathways available do not seem promising, the writer will search out others (22). He further emphasizes how, “Art lies half-way between scientific knowledge and mythical or magical thought. It is common knowledge that the artist is both something of a scientist and of a bricoleur. By his craftsmanship he constructs a material object which is also an object of knowledge” (ibid). As a creative writer who engages with visual and material culture to recreate past worlds, I employ material culture and “lived ancient religion” as a methodology to use Rubina Raja and Jorg Rupke’s term, in which the reader feels, on a sensory level, what it’s like to enter, for example, an Asclepian temple at dusk, feel the coolness of the marble against their skin in the abaton where dream incubation occurs, as well as the physical and spiritual thresholds of entering and exiting these sacred spaces, and how this informed the character's interaction with the divine in an attempt to reconstruct emotional experiences from archeological material.
The Cult of Vulnerability and Wounds in Medieval Religious Practice and Iconography
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Edit Ujvari PhD
The paper approaches the theme of vulnerability and woundness from visual semiotic and primarily western Christian iconographic perspective. The sensitive iconographic type Vir Dolorum (The Man of Sorrows) the representation and worship of the wounded body of Christ, came to the fore in religious practice from the 13th to the 14th century onwards, with the spread of a new sensitive religious life initiated by the mendicant orders. What were the meanings and functions of the susceptible cult of vulnerability and wounds? How can we interpret the iconography of woundness, wounded body and its role in medieval religious practice? I approach the interpretation of this theme by drawing on historical sources and by analysing the depiction on Christ in the Crucifixion panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece (16th century, Colmar, Musée d'Unterlinden).
