Oxford Graduate Symposium in Spanish Golden Age Studies
Looking at the World Sideways: Perspective in the Spanish Golden Age
Saturday 16 January 2010
Taylor Institution, St Giles’, University of Oxford
Keynote speaker: Prof. Jeremy Robbins
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The Renaissance saw a flourishing, both conceptually and technically, in the understanding of perspective, taken in the Baroque to new extremes of distortion and dynamic movement. In contrast to the modern conception of a ‘right way’ in which to perceive things, artists and authors in the Golden Age worked with multiple perspectives, allowing for different interpretations from different audiences, challenging their readers to decipher several meanings, consistently treading the fine line between illusion and reality. In modern usage, the term is far more frequently applied to the visual arts than to literary texts; to poetry, prose or drama. However, the definition of perspective as ‘a figure designed to appear distorted or confused except when viewed from a certain position’ is just as applicable to satire or literature written under censorship as it is to visual illusion. The description of ‘a device for producing an unusual optical effect, e.g. the distortion of an image’ is relevant to our reading of culteranismo; its use as ‘a picture drawn according to the rules of perspective, (esp. theatrical backdrop) appearing to enlarge or extend the actual space’ can apply both to dramatic language and scenography, as well as to the architecture of churches and palaces. Moreover, the Spanish definition, ‘apariencia o representación engañosa y falaz de las cosas’, implies as much for our readings of Cervantes, Quevedo or Calderón as it does for our interpretations of Velázquez or Coello.
Throughout the symposium, we will be working with these, and other definitions of perspective in order to answer the following questions: Are ideas of perspective applied to the visual arts also relevant to literature? How does this affect our understanding of the relationship between different modes of perception? What are the implications for our understanding of perspective(s) in the Early Modern Hispanic World? How can we extend the idea of perspective beyond the visual arts to provide a more holistic definition encompassing ways of envisioning the world, articulating experience and inhabiting spaces in the Golden Age?
PROGRAMME:
9.00-9.15 Coffee and Registration
9.15-9.30 Opening Remarks
9.30-10.10 Tyler Fisher (Exeter College, University of Oxford)
Text as Manna in Golden-Age Spain: Dimensions of Taste and Perspective
10.10-10.50 Scott Hendrickson (Campion Hall, University of Oxford)
Bajeza and hermosura: Imaging the World in the Ascetical Treatises of Juan Eusebio de Nieremberg
10.50-11.10 Coffee
11.10-11.50 Oliver Noble Wood (University of Nottingham)
Ut pictura poesis: Poetic and Pictorial Conceits in the Golden Age of Spain
11.50-12.30 Carles Gutierrez-Sanfeliu
Ut poesis, pictura: Pacheco’s Arte de la pintura (1648)
12.30-13.30 Lunch
13.30-14.10 Arantza Mayo (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Perspective and Baroque Religious Celebrations
14.10-14.50 Laura Fernández Gutierrez
The Architectural Order in the City: Political Propaganda and Visual Display in the Celebration of the Union of the Lusitanian-Hispanic Empire. Lisbon, 1581.
14.50-15.10 Coffee
15.10-15.50 Melanie Henry (Queen’s University Belfast)
Cervantine Theatre as Counter-Perspective Aesthetic: Reconsidering El rufián dichoso
15.50-16.30 Roy Norton (Merton College, University of Oxford)
Crossing the Sceptics’ Rubicon: Questioning the Nature of the Supernatural in the Golden-Age Comedia de tema religioso.
16.30-17.30 KEYNOTE SPEECH: Professor Jeremy Robbins (University of Edinburgh)
Title tbc.
17.30-17.45 Closing Remarks
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