scholarly journals “My Soul’s Imaginary Sight”: renaissance poetics and the notion of imagination

Letras ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Lavinia Silvares

Nos séculos XVI e XVII, o significado conceitual de “imaginação” atrelava-se sobretudo à teoria aristotélica da phantasia, traduzida como imaginatio, em latim, e amplamente discutida em tratados sobre poesia e retórica. Neste artigo, propõe-se explorar brevemente algumas ideias relativas à especificidade histórica da noção de “imaginação” na poética renascentista, com vistas a evitar as abordagens transistóricas da poesia e de sua interpretação. Para tanto, serão comentados trechos específicos dos tratados The Defense of Poetry (1595), de Philip Sidney, Advancement of Learning (1605), de Francis Bacon, bem como algumas passagens das obras de William Shakespeare.

Author(s):  
Hilary Gatti

This chapter discusses the freedom of thought and speech as it relates to the political, artistic, cultural, and scientific realms. The question of liberty here is raised as ideas of a new institution began to form during the sixteenth century: the parliaments, or general councils, which were inherited from both the classical and medieval worlds. Next, the chapter explores the tensions between author and authority through the figure of William Shakespeare, here considered not so much for his remarkable poetic and dramatic achievement as in his relationships with other figures of his time who were deeply involved in a discourse on liberty and the toleration of new and unorthodox forms of thought. Finally, the chapter considers ideas of liberty as they are applied to the scientific thought of Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei.


2010 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 491-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
William M. Hamlin

AbstractEarly English readers of Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) annotated their copies of John Florio's (1553[?]–1625) translation with remarkable frequency and vehemence, creating a context within which printed appropriations of the essayist may be fruitfully examined. No topic intrigued these readers more than custom. Drawing from transcriptions of over 4,000 marginal annotations and situating the Montaignean borrowings of William Shakespeare (1564–1616), Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), and other English writers within a culture of active reader response, this essay treats the Montaignean account of custom as a case study wherein differences between manuscript and print appropriation may be investigated. Montaigne's reception in seventeenth-century England cannot be understood without scrupulous attention to both traditions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Miola

Throughout their careers both Jonson and Shakespeare often encountered Homer, who left a deep impress on their works. Jonson read Homer directly in Greek but Shakespeare did not, or if he did, he left no evidence of that reading in extant works. Both Jonson and Shakespeare encountered Homer indirectly in Latin recollections by Vergil, Horace, Ovid and others, in English translations, in handbooks and mythographies, in derivative poems and plays, in descendant traditions, and in plentiful allusions. Though their appropriations differ significantly, Jonson and Shakespeare both present comedic impersonations of Homeric scenes and figures – the parodic replay of the council of the gods (Iliad 1) in Poetaster (1601) 4.5 and the appearance of “sweet warman” Hector (5.2.659) in the Masque of the Nine Worthies (Love's Labor's Lost, 1588–97). Homer's Vulcan and Venus furnish positive depictions of love and marriage in The Haddington Masque (1608) as do his Hector and Andromache in Julius Caesar (1599), which features other significant recollections. Both Jonson and Shakespeare recall Homer to explore the dark side of honor and fame: Circe and Ate supply the anti-masque in the Masque of Queens (1609), and scenes from Chapman's Iliad supply the comical or tragical satire, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1601). Both poets put Homer to abstract and philosophical uses: Zeus's chain and Venus's ceston (girdle), allegorized, appears throughout Jonson's work and function as central symbols in Hymenaei (1606); Homer's depiction of the tension between fate and free will, between the omnipotent gods and willing humans, though mediated, inflects the language and action of Coriolanus (c. 1608). Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare practice a kind of inventive imitatio which, according to classical and neo-classical precept, re-reads classical texts in order to make them into something new.


2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. C. Ambrose

This paper develops a detailed reading of Deleuze's philosophical study of Bacon's triptychs in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. It examines his claims regarding their apparent non-narrative status, and explores the capacity of the triptychs to embody and express a spiritual sensation of the eternity of time.


Author(s):  
Ian Sabroe ◽  
Phil Withington

Francis Bacon is famous today as one of the founding fathers of the so-called ‘scientific revolution’ of the seventeenth century. Although not an especially successful scientist himself, he was nevertheless the most eloquent and influential spokesperson for an approach to knowledge that promised to transform human understanding of both humanity and its relationship with the natural and social worlds. The central features of this approach, as they emerged in Bacon’s own writings and the work of his protégés and associates after 1605, are equally well known. They include the importance of experiment, observation, and a sceptical attitude towards inherited wisdom (from the ‘ancients’ in general and Aristotle in particular).


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-336
Author(s):  
Zosia Kuczyńska

The Brian Friel Papers at the NLI reveal a long and relatively unexplored history of major and minor influences on Friel's plays. As the archive attests, these influences manifest themselves in ways that range from the superficial to the deeply structural. In this article, I draw on original archival research into the composition process of Friel's genre-defining play Faith Healer (1979) to bring to light a model of influence that operates at the level of artistic practice. Specifically, I examine the extent to which Friel's officially unacknowledged encounter with a book of interviews with painter Francis Bacon influenced the play in terms of character, language, and form. I suggest that Bacon's creative process – incorporating his ideas on the role of the artist, the workings of chance, and the extent to which art does violence to fact – may have had a major influence on both the play's development and on Friel's development as an artist.


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