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Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.
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Late Gothic Architecture: Its Evolution, Extinction, and Reception
Bork, Robert. Late Gothic Architecture: Its Evolution, Extinction, and Reception. Architectura Medii Aevi, 10. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. Pp. x, 552. $155.00. ISBN: 978-2-503-56894-2.
Reviewed by Katherine A. Rush
University of California, Riverside
katherine.rush@ucr.edu
Late Gothic Architecture: Its Evolution, Extinction, and Reception (2018) by Robert Bork is a work impressive both in physical size and scholarly breadth. Totaling 552 pages, including 337 black and white illustrations and 32 color illustrations (the majority the author's own), Late Gothic Architecture succeeds in broadly spanning not only architectural style, time, and geography, but also intended audience.
Indeed, of Late Gothic Architecture's numerous strengths, one that stands out is its ability to engage both readers that are relative newcomers to the study of medieval architecture, as well as more experienced and focused scholars. Bork achieves this by providing (in each of Late Gothic Architecture's seven chapters) a clearly-written survey of medieval European architecture in manageable twenty-five to fifty-year chunks, as well as a carefully researched argument for the reconsideration of late Gothic architecture as worthy of renewed study. This mix of clearly explained architectural elements and history, such as the creation and evolution of the term "Gothic," with astute analysis of the events, structures, and texts at the heart of the Gothic-to-Renaissance transition allows for Late Gothic Architecture to serve as both an introductory text for students of Gothic architecture as well as a scintillating read for trained specialists.
Bork takes as his main point the stylistic movement away from the Gothic in the sixteenth century, which he refers to as the "anti-Gothic turn" (1). Although he provides a comprehensive overview of European architecture from late antiquity through 1500, Bork's central aim is to provide a new perspective on the cultural transition from Gothic to Renaissance (i.e., classicizing) architecture. To this end, Bork explains the fall of Gothic architecture as a "crisis imposed by social forces beyond the [medieval] builders' control" (13). Although Bork discusses at some length, in both his introduction and epilog, his efforts to steer clear of value judgements of medieval and renaissance architecture, his constant insistence that the Gothic style was unfairly treated gives the opposite impression.
This sense of the Gothic style's mistreatment at the hands of the Renaissance is most evident when Bork states that "the Gothic tradition did not die of natural causes, but rather...was effectively murdered by a confluence of external factors" (15). As a medievalist who focuses on the visual culture of late medieval France, I agree with Bork's revisionist approach to the Gothic-to-Renaissance architectural transition. I take issue, however, with Bork's use of what I see as a faulty theoretical model. In both the introduction and the epilog Bork suggests the use of a biological model to better explain and understand this architectural transition. He states that:
"Darwinian evolutionary theory...deserves recognition as a
powerful and highly flexible intellectual model for the discussion
of change over time, one that merits far more sustained attention
from art historians than it has received to date" (15).
Although I agree that the use of interdisciplinary models can often help to better explain complex historical theories and events, I disagree with the sort of downtrodden agency that Bork's Darwinian model allocates to the late Gothic style. By characterizing the "collapse of the Gothic tradition" as not necessarily predetermined, but increasingly inevitable, Bork seems to suggest that the late Gothic style itself could have turned the tide of popularity back towards the Gothic and away from the classical (16).
This theoretical disagreement, however, does little to dampen my overall enthusiasm for Late Gothic Architecture. There is much in Late Gothic Architecture that is eye-opening, and worthy of applause. For example, as part of his defense of the Late Gothic style, Bork discusses the changing definition of "modern" architecture during the medieval and renaissance eras, wherein "modern" originally referred to the ahistorical Gothic style, which was viewed in the medieval period as "progressive or innovative" yet later came to represent the classicizing Renaissance style when compared to the now "outmoded and unfashionable" Gothic style (3, 14). Examples such as this serve to illustrate the arbitrary nature of the shift in popularity from Gothic to classicizing Renaissance architecture.
Bork also does well to point out and debunk some of the most grievous misunderstandings about medieval architecture. First, that there was an utter lack of classical or antique architectural influences during the Middle Ages, which was corrected by the Renaissance, a period that is typically defined as a rebirth of all things classical. Secondly, Bork also deals in multiple chapters with the idea that the late Gothic style, such as the French Flamboyant, was characterized by a lack of organization or structural reason. Bork points out how Gothic architecture, while it lacked the flashy theoretical background of Renaissance architecture (Vitruvius' De Architectura, most notably), made up for it in practical know-how achieved through a millennium of guild-organized work. Indeed, much of Bork's reasoning for the rise of the classical Renaissance style rests on his point that "the association of Renaissance architecture with theory has given it an attractive air of intellectual sophistication that late Gothic architecture seems to lack" (9).
Bork also demonstrates his familiarity with both scholarly and survey-level texts on medieval architecture, referencing the way in which the Northern Renaissance is more often than not presented in an "architecture-free" way due to the supposed backwardness of Northern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, which unlike Italy, still drew on Gothic rather than antique architectural models (5).
Late Gothic Architecture does much to make us, as scholars of medieval art and architecture, question our use of periodization, most notably that of the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance. Bork posits that rather than viewing late Gothic architecture as the visual form of the decline of the Middle Ages and therefore the rise of the Renaissance, we should instead treat late Gothic architecture as a distinct period in and of itself, worthy of closer study and consideration.
Bork concludes his epilog to Late Gothic Architecture by stating that the overarching goal of the book is to "foster conversation about the dynamics of the anti-Gothic turn" and that "to the extent that it energizes the debate...it will have fulfilled its purpose" (436). Late Gothic Architecture most certainly fulfils its purpose, providing a welcome and much needed new voice to the scholarly chorus of art historical texts on Gothic architecture.
Reviewed by Katherine A. Rush
University of California, Riverside
katherine.rush@ucr.edu
Late Gothic Architecture: Its Evolution, Extinction, and Reception (2018) by Robert Bork is a work impressive both in physical size and scholarly breadth. Totaling 552 pages, including 337 black and white illustrations and 32 color illustrations (the majority the author's own), Late Gothic Architecture succeeds in broadly spanning not only architectural style, time, and geography, but also intended audience.
Indeed, of Late Gothic Architecture's numerous strengths, one that stands out is its ability to engage both readers that are relative newcomers to the study of medieval architecture, as well as more experienced and focused scholars. Bork achieves this by providing (in each of Late Gothic Architecture's seven chapters) a clearly-written survey of medieval European architecture in manageable twenty-five to fifty-year chunks, as well as a carefully researched argument for the reconsideration of late Gothic architecture as worthy of renewed study. This mix of clearly explained architectural elements and history, such as the creation and evolution of the term "Gothic," with astute analysis of the events, structures, and texts at the heart of the Gothic-to-Renaissance transition allows for Late Gothic Architecture to serve as both an introductory text for students of Gothic architecture as well as a scintillating read for trained specialists.
Bork takes as his main point the stylistic movement away from the Gothic in the sixteenth century, which he refers to as the "anti-Gothic turn" (1). Although he provides a comprehensive overview of European architecture from late antiquity through 1500, Bork's central aim is to provide a new perspective on the cultural transition from Gothic to Renaissance (i.e., classicizing) architecture. To this end, Bork explains the fall of Gothic architecture as a "crisis imposed by social forces beyond the [medieval] builders' control" (13). Although Bork discusses at some length, in both his introduction and epilog, his efforts to steer clear of value judgements of medieval and renaissance architecture, his constant insistence that the Gothic style was unfairly treated gives the opposite impression.
This sense of the Gothic style's mistreatment at the hands of the Renaissance is most evident when Bork states that "the Gothic tradition did not die of natural causes, but rather...was effectively murdered by a confluence of external factors" (15). As a medievalist who focuses on the visual culture of late medieval France, I agree with Bork's revisionist approach to the Gothic-to-Renaissance architectural transition. I take issue, however, with Bork's use of what I see as a faulty theoretical model. In both the introduction and the epilog Bork suggests the use of a biological model to better explain and understand this architectural transition. He states that:
"Darwinian evolutionary theory...deserves recognition as a
powerful and highly flexible intellectual model for the discussion
of change over time, one that merits far more sustained attention
from art historians than it has received to date" (15).
Although I agree that the use of interdisciplinary models can often help to better explain complex historical theories and events, I disagree with the sort of downtrodden agency that Bork's Darwinian model allocates to the late Gothic style. By characterizing the "collapse of the Gothic tradition" as not necessarily predetermined, but increasingly inevitable, Bork seems to suggest that the late Gothic style itself could have turned the tide of popularity back towards the Gothic and away from the classical (16).
This theoretical disagreement, however, does little to dampen my overall enthusiasm for Late Gothic Architecture. There is much in Late Gothic Architecture that is eye-opening, and worthy of applause. For example, as part of his defense of the Late Gothic style, Bork discusses the changing definition of "modern" architecture during the medieval and renaissance eras, wherein "modern" originally referred to the ahistorical Gothic style, which was viewed in the medieval period as "progressive or innovative" yet later came to represent the classicizing Renaissance style when compared to the now "outmoded and unfashionable" Gothic style (3, 14). Examples such as this serve to illustrate the arbitrary nature of the shift in popularity from Gothic to classicizing Renaissance architecture.
Bork also does well to point out and debunk some of the most grievous misunderstandings about medieval architecture. First, that there was an utter lack of classical or antique architectural influences during the Middle Ages, which was corrected by the Renaissance, a period that is typically defined as a rebirth of all things classical. Secondly, Bork also deals in multiple chapters with the idea that the late Gothic style, such as the French Flamboyant, was characterized by a lack of organization or structural reason. Bork points out how Gothic architecture, while it lacked the flashy theoretical background of Renaissance architecture (Vitruvius' De Architectura, most notably), made up for it in practical know-how achieved through a millennium of guild-organized work. Indeed, much of Bork's reasoning for the rise of the classical Renaissance style rests on his point that "the association of Renaissance architecture with theory has given it an attractive air of intellectual sophistication that late Gothic architecture seems to lack" (9).
Bork also demonstrates his familiarity with both scholarly and survey-level texts on medieval architecture, referencing the way in which the Northern Renaissance is more often than not presented in an "architecture-free" way due to the supposed backwardness of Northern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, which unlike Italy, still drew on Gothic rather than antique architectural models (5).
Late Gothic Architecture does much to make us, as scholars of medieval art and architecture, question our use of periodization, most notably that of the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance. Bork posits that rather than viewing late Gothic architecture as the visual form of the decline of the Middle Ages and therefore the rise of the Renaissance, we should instead treat late Gothic architecture as a distinct period in and of itself, worthy of closer study and consideration.
Bork concludes his epilog to Late Gothic Architecture by stating that the overarching goal of the book is to "foster conversation about the dynamics of the anti-Gothic turn" and that "to the extent that it energizes the debate...it will have fulfilled its purpose" (436). Late Gothic Architecture most certainly fulfils its purpose, providing a welcome and much needed new voice to the scholarly chorus of art historical texts on Gothic architecture.
Monday, October 24, 2022
Sunday, October 23, 2022
Journeys to the Underworld and Heavenly Realm in Ancient and Medieval Literature
| Stephens, John C. Journeys to the Underworld and Heavenly Realm in Ancient and Medieval Literature. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2019. Pp. viii, 175. $49.95. ISBN: 978-1-47667-451-3. Reviewed by Eileen Gardiner University of Bristol and Italica Press eileen.gardiner@ This book aims to "examine the ways in which religious experience became articulated in otherworldly journey narratives originating in the ancient West and early medieval Europe" (2). John C. Stephens relies on a wide variety of texts: ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Jewish, and Early Christian. Although claiming to include Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythological literature from the "early period up until the 9th century CE" (15), medieval coverage is limited to Beowulf and the Eddas of Snorri Sturluson (13th C). With principles derived from theologians, philosophers, and sociologists, such as Émile Durkheim, Rudolph Otto, Mircea Eliade, and William James, Stephens defines six categories of religious experience. He devotes a chapter to each, seeking to "clarify the ways in which these narratives [of otherworldly journeys] give expression to religious experience" (2). Stephens begins with a brief introduction outlining his strategy. This is followed by chapter 1, "Ancient Cosmology," where he looks at three systems: Ancient Near Eastern, Greco-Roman, and Norse. His Ancient Near Eastern texts include the Babylonian narrative of Enûma Eliš, the Egyptian Heliopolis myth, and the Hebrew Bible, all of which describe the formation of a sky above and an earth below without reference to an underworld, the main focus of Stephens' thesis. For the Greco-Roman world, he examines Hesiod's Theogony, where he finds Tartarus, the underworld created for the punishment of the old gods, the Titans. For Norse cosmology he relies on the Sibyl's Prophecy from the Poetic Edda. With chapter 2, Stephens begins in earnest to examine otherworld journeys according to these six categories of religious experience: numinous, mystical, the experience of spiritual transformation, the experience of courage in the face of death, the intellectual apprehension of the sacred, and the experience of moral judgment before god. chapter 2, entitled "Numinous Otherworldly Journeys," provides a detailed description of the underworld journeys of Odysseus, Aeneas, and Hercules, then shifts to "Ancient Near Eastern Traditions," to briefly discuss the Egyptian Pyramid and Coffin texts, the heavenly journeys of the Mesopotamian mythical figure Adapa and the Sumerian King Etana, and of the Old Testament Prophet Elijah. Stephens defines numinous as "having contact with divine beings in a world beyond this one" (47), although for Rudolph, who coined the term, [1] the quality of the contact--of the experience--must be holy, but without either moral or rational implications. In chapter 3, "Mystical Otherworldly Journeys," Stephens describes mysticism as "an inner psychological event" (48). He explains that "whereas numinous experience involves contact with supernatural beings existing outside oneself, mystical experience...typically involves finding the divine within oneself, either deliberately or through various means such as asceticism or spontaneously without any preparation" (48). Examples detailed in this chapter include Orphism and Orpheus's descent into the underworld, Jacob's Vision in Genesis 8, the Gnostic "Allogenes the Stranger" and "Ascension of Isaiah," the Conversion of Paul in Acts 9.1-9, the writing of the Neoplatonist Plotinus, and the visions of St. Perpetua, the 2nd-century, North African Christian martyr. Chapter 4, "Journeys of Spiritual Transformation" acknowledges that "spiritual transformation often springs from...numinous and mystical experience" (68) but is intrinsically connected to "conversion." The unfortunate example of religious conversion showcased here is from Lucian of Samosata, a 2nd-century Roman satirist. He tells of Peregrinus Proteus, a Cynic philosopher, who converted back and forth between Christianity and paganism, before finally committing suicide, hardly a tale of religious conversion. Associating conversion and transformation experiences with fertility cults of rebirth and regeneration, Stephen's further examples include the Sumerian Descent of Inanna and the Babylonian Descent of Ishtar, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and the Egyptian Myth of Isis and Osiris. The most successful example in this chapter is the conversion of Lucius from Apuleius's Metamorphosis or Th "Courageous Journeys in the Face of Death" (chapter 5) outlines how the development of the notion of an immortal soul provides for the possibility of a better afterlife and enables the individual to face and accept death, sometimes for the good of a community. Stephens' examples of this type of religious experience include the Epic of Gilgamesh, whose hero discovers immortality in the underworld but cannot bring it back to this world, and Beowulf, whose hero escapes mortality by becoming a hero. The author cites these two works as providing examples of apprehending the sacred through face-to-face encounters with death. The Myth of Er from Plato's Republic and Cicero's Dream of Scipio are the examples presented in Chapter 6 entitled The Journey to Philosophic Wisdom. The former describes the embrace of philosophy as the gateway to eternal life, while the latter extends philosophical wisdom to its application in bringing about political change in this world. In chapter 7, "The Journey to Moral Awareness," Stephens describes "ethical action [as] an outward expression of one's inner apprehension of sacred reality" (123). He uses numerous examples from Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and Judeo-Christian traditions. More impressionistic and descriptive than rigorously analytic, Stephens has brought together a wide-ranging collection of otherworld journeys in this slim volume. By far most of them are underworld rather than heavenly journeys, and despite the volume's title, hardly any of them are medieval. However, the greatest difficulty with this volume is its attempt to pose questions to ancient texts based on contemporary spiritual philosophy and theology. Encounters between heroes and mythical beings in the underworld are not originally described as religious experiences, numinous or mystical. Fertility myths do not concern individual transformations. Unlike medieval visions of heaven and hell, this literature, by and large, does not reveal the state of consciousness of its heroes and does not describe conversions either to a new set of moral principles or to an advanced realm of enlightenment, both of which characterize a contemporary understanding of religious experience. Definitions of mysticism are notoriously difficult, [2] and while Stephens definition in chapter 3 may stand, it does not enable a distinction among any variety of psychological events, nor does it encompass the notion of the uniative experience with the divine, which is often an essential characteristic of mystical experience. Stephens is on more solid ground when describing otherworld travelers as achieving moral or philosophical awareness, and although such awareness may often come about as the result of a religious experience, even of a conversion, these are not religious experiences as James, Eliade, or Otto would have understood them. |
Saturday, October 22, 2022
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Wednesday, October 12, 2022
History This Week Captain Kidd and the Nazis
May 23, 1701. Captain William Kidd is hanged at Execution Dock in London. His death sentence cements his legacy as one of history’s most notorious pirates, but he went to the gallows claiming to be an innocent man. And he may have been telling the truth. Nonetheless, his execution began a worldwide ripple effect that would change the high seas forever and ultimately help prosecute one of the most infamous Nazis that ever lived.
Special thanks to Richard Zacks, author of The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd https://amzn.to/2X5Etth.
Special thanks to Richard Zacks, author of The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd https://amzn.to/2X5Etth.
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