Dienstag, 21. Januar 2025, 18:15 - 19:30 iCal

Touching narratives in prayerbooks

Vortrag von Kathryn Rudy (Bishop Wardlaw Professor, Univ. of St Andrews)

Hörsaal des Institutes für Orientalistik, Campus Uni Wien, Hof 4.1
Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Wien

Vortrag

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Medieval manuscripts rarely survive without some damage. Deliberate damage has often been labeled "iconoclasm," or, more oven, when such examples are reproduced in scholarly books, the damage is simply ignored. However, the sheer number of examples of lay devotional manuscripts that have been deliberately touched demands an explanation. Many images have been visibly damaged through what I call "action-touching," in which the user enacts the narrative with a finger. This is distinct from venerative touching, where the finger (lips, hand) touch down on the surface of the image once. With action-touching, the user drags the finger across the surface in order to trace the action of the narrative. Doing so amplified small images with the users' gestures. In this illustrated talk, I will pursue this hypothesis with examples from books of hours, propose ways of distinguishing the emotions behind deliberate image-touching, and consider channels through which such behaviors were transmitted.

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Veranstalter

Sektion Manuskriptkulturen der Doktoratsschule der philolog.-kulturwiss. Fakultät

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Kontakt

Elvira Wakelnig
Institut für Orientalistik
Arabistik
4277-43426
elvira.wakelnig@univie.ac.at

Erstellt am Mittwoch, 08. Januar 2025, 19:07
Letzte Änderung am Montag, 13. Januar 2025, 11:03