A Memento Mori Refers To
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Memento Mori in Art and Literature
chapter 1 Memento Mori in Art and Literature Until recently, memento mori has received surprisingly limited critical attention relative to its cultural importance in art history, literature, and beyond. Even though memento mori artifacts and references to memento mori are ubiquitous, few comprehensive sources exist in the English-language scholarly literature. More precisely, memento mori has received, relatively speaking, surprisingly limited critical attention in a sustained manner. Related to memento mori, but distinct in emphasis, is Cheney’s work (1992). Hallam and Hockey (2001) give memento mori some minor explicit attention. No readily available European-language source that I am aware of offers a com- plete treatment, though there are some notable sources related to, but distinct from, the present study of memento mori in their emphases and methods (e.g, Schützeichel 1962; Ingen 1966; Haneveld 1995; Pennington 2001; and Warda 2011). The recent stunning photo book by art historian and photographer Paul Koudounaris, Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us (2015), makes important first steps toward a more focused and sustained attention on memento mori, but it remains a beginning point. As far as I know, critical sources outside the West on this theme are mini- mal at this point in time. One of the few references is Nakagawa’s work (1983). Isolated references to memento mori abound in Western and global art history monographs, but then often they are not given a listing as a subject term in the monographs’ indices. Memento mori does receive more attention in ar- ticles, essays, reviews, and museum catalogs especially on particular uses of memento mori in images and artifacts from the medieval period to the present (e.g., Ascher 2004; Bergström 1970; Carretta 1980; King 1981; Napoleone 1998; Vinken 1999). -
Remember Your Death : Memento Mori Lenten Devotional / by Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP
Front 5.25" 0.609" 5.25" “Teach us to count our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart.” —Ps 90:12 Journey through Lent to Easter Sunday with this memento mori-inspired devotional. Discover the ancient tradition of remembering death daily, encouraged by Scripture and countless saints. Experience Christ’s victory over sin and death as you meditate on the priceless treasure of each moment and the gift of heaven. 8" Each day includes ~ Scripture passage ~ Lenten meditation ~ Memento mori examen ~ Intercessory prayer ~ Prompts for journaling and prayer Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP, has a skull on her desk as a reminder of her inevitable death. Meditating on her death daily has changed her life. You can find her tweets about memento Lenten Devotional s n o m mori @pursuedbytruth. Si Jill Photo by $16.95 U.S. ISBN 0-8198-6517-6 NOBLE THERESA ALETHEIA NOBLE, FSP Green grid lines will not print. Grid lines can be toggled off in Acrobat using View>Show Hide>Navigation Panes>Layers Lenten Devotional By Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Noble, Theresa, author. Title: Remember your death : Memento mori Lenten devotional / by Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP. Description: Boston, MA : Pauline Books & Media, 2019. Identifiers: LCCN 2018036691| ISBN 9780819865175 (pbk.) | ISBN 0819865176 (pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: Death--Religious aspects--Catholic Church--Prayers and de- votions. | Lent--Prayers and devotions. | Memento mori--Miscellanea. Classification: LCC BT825 .N63 2019 | DDC 236/.1--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018036691 Many manufacturers and sellers distinguish their products through the use of trademarks. -
The Summons of Death on the Medieval and Renaissance English Stage
The Summons of Death on the Medieval and Renaissance English Stage The Summons of Death on the Medieval and Renaissance English Stage Phoebe S. Spinrad Ohio State University Press Columbus Copyright© 1987 by the Ohio State University Press. All rights reserved. A shorter version of chapter 4 appeared, along with part of chapter 2, as "The Last Temptation of Everyman, in Philological Quarterly 64 (1985): 185-94. Chapter 8 originally appeared as "Measure for Measure and the Art of Not Dying," in Texas Studies in Literature and Language 26 (1984): 74-93. Parts of Chapter 9 are adapted from m y "Coping with Uncertainty in The Duchess of Malfi," in Explorations in Renaissance Culture 6 (1980): 47-63. A shorter version of chapter 10 appeared as "Memento Mockery: Some Skulls on the Renaissance Stage," in Explorations in Renaissance Culture 10 (1984): 1-11. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Spinrad, Phoebe S. The summons of death on the medieval and Renaissance English stage. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. English drama—Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1700—History and criticism. 2. English drama— To 1500—History and criticism. 3. Death in literature. 4. Death- History. I. Title. PR658.D4S64 1987 822'.009'354 87-5487 ISBN 0-8142-0443-0 To Karl Snyder and Marjorie Lewis without who m none of this would have been Contents Preface ix I Death Takes a Grisly Shape Medieval and Renaissance Iconography 1 II Answering the Summon s The Art of Dying 27 III Death Takes to the Stage The Mystery Cycles and Early Moralities 50 IV Death -
From Address to Debate: Generic Considerations in the Debate Between Soul and Body
FROM ADDRESS TO DEBATE: GENERIC CONSIDERATIONS IN THE DEBATE BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY by J. Justin Brent Although many scholars think of debate as a distinctively medieval genre,1 just about every culture known to man has composed verbal contests of wit that might be termed debates.2 Their universal appeal results at least in part from two inherent features. One is the excitement and suspense that comes from observing a contest between two skillful opponents. Like spectator sports, verbal contests provide a vicarious pleasure for the audience, which shares the suspense of the contest with the two or more opponents. The second aspect, more frequently dis- cussed by students of medieval debate, is the tendency towards opposi- tion. Because a contest cannot take place without opponents, verbal contests tend to produce philosophical perspectives that are both op- 1Thomas Reed, for instance, claims that debate is “as ‘distinctly medieval’ as a genre can be” (Middle English Debate Poetry [Columbia 1990] 2); and John W. Conlee sug- gests that no other age was more preoccupied with “the interaction of opposites,” which furnishes the generating principle of debates (Middle English Debate Poetry: A Critical Anthology [East Lansing 1991] xi–xii). The medieval poets’ intense fascination or spe- cial fondness for debate poetry often receives mention in studies of this genre. 2As evidence of their existence in some of the earliest writing cultures, scholars have pointed out several debates in ancient Sumerian culture. See S. N. Kramer, The Sumer- ians (Chicago 1963) 265; and H. Van Stiphout, “On the Sumerian Disputation between the Hoe and the Plough,” Aula Orientalis 2 (1984) 239–251. -
The Cemetery: a Highly Heterotopian Place
Heterotopian Studies The Cemetery: a highly heterotopian place To reference this essay: Johnson, P. (2012) ‘The cemetery: a highly heterotopiaplace’ Heterotopian Studies [http://www.heterotopiastudies.com] In the UK as elsewhere in Europe, cemeteries are increasingly managed and developed as green open spaces, natural habitats, cultural or historical sites and educational amenities. English Heritage suggest that ‘in the main they are public…. open spaces with great amenity potential and are a diverse historical resource with tremendous educational potential’ (SCRC, 2001b: 80). Arnos Vale cemetery in Bristol aims to be a ‘place of remembrance, an historic park, and a learning and education resource for the City’ (SCRC, 2001b: 65). Carlisle local authority has produced teachers’ notes to assist in the ‘Citizenship’ component of the National Curriculum. Children are encouraged to ‘study areas of graves for the Victorian rich and paupers, and compare these with "green" woodland graves and conventional lawn type graves’ (SCRC, 2001b: 30). Have these developments radically altered the function of cemeteries? Walters (SCRC, 2001b: 45) is adamant: ‘though cemeteries provide positive values such as urban green space, and may be of historical or architectural significance, these benefits are subservient’ to the prime purpose of a cemetery which is to ‘bury the dead of the locality’. Moreover, its prime significance is ‘as a memento mori, a reminder that we will die that challenges citizens to consider their true values and motivates them to live fully in the meantime’. Contemporary cemeteries have adopted various ‘useful’ applications, but they also remain highly complex and ambiguous spatio-temporal enclosures. Worpole (2003: 56), in his study of cemetery landscapes, wonders whether we have the ‘vocabulary for describing what these unsettling landscapes mean culturally’. -
Ubi Sunt Dracones? the Inward Evolution of Monstrosity from Monstrous Births to Iain Banks’ the Wasp Factory
Master’s Degree in European, American and Postcolonial Languages and Literatures Final Thesis Ubi Sunt Dracones? The Inward Evolution of Monstrosity from Monstrous Births to Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory Supervisor Ch. Prof. Flavio Gregori Assistant supervisor Ch. Prof. Shaul Bassi Graduand Martina Nati 857253 Academic Year 2019 / 2020 CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1 – Monstrous Bodies 12 1.1 Monstrosity and Deformity from the Middle Ages to the 12 Enlightenment 1.2 The Abnormal Body in the 18th and 19th Centuries 36 Chapter 2 – Monstrous Minds 41 2.1 Monstrous Anxiety at the Turn of the 20th Century 41 2.2 The Monster Within 57 2.3 A Contemporary Monster: the Serial Killer 63 Chapter 3 – The Monstrous in Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory 70 3.1 Frank’s Monstrous Body 73 3.2 Frank as a Moral Monster 81 3.3 Frank’s Uncanny Double 88 3.4 Monstrous Beliefs 91 Conclusion 96 Acknowledgements 104 Bibliography 105 “if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you” Friedrich Nietzsche INTRODUCTION There is something fascinating about the aesthetics of monstrosity, which is not always understandable but undeniably universal. It is something dark, twisted and daunting which, nevertheless, lures us into its depths. Monsters scare, petrify and make one feel vulnerable and exposed; yet, they never disappear, they can never truly be annihilated. They lurk in the most obscure corners of one‘s mind, festering, dormant until summoned, and then they emerge from the shadows ready to wreak havoc. They embody terrific possibilities, violation, transgression and liminality: all that is dangerous, yet all that is unavoidable. -
The Meeting of the Three Living and the Three Dead
THE MEETING OF THE THREE LIVING AND THE THREE DEAD The meeting of the three living and the three dead shows an occasional meeting of three carefree very relevant men (normally three kings or a priest, a nobleman and a member or the upper-middle class) who enjoy life in their adulthood. These three men, apparently not acquainted with pain, go hunting and, on turning a curve or reaching a crossroads marked by a landmark, come up against three dead whose corpses are rotten and eaten by maggots. In some versions the dead ones regain consciousness for a moment to warn the living ones, we once were as you are, as we are so shall you be. However, in others the dead ones lie lifeless inside their coffins and it is a hermit that warns the living ones about the expiry of earthly goods. The living ones, impressed by the vision, change their existential attitude and, from that moment on, look after their souls, afraid of death’s proximity. The topic comes from the Buddhist sapiential literature by which the Prince Siddhartha Gautama had four meetings, one of them with a dead, before becoming Buddha. It must have passed to both the Persian and Abbasid literature through the trading routes and it reached the West deeply transformed, with the main characters tripled to gain dramatic intensity. Keywords: Dead, living, skeletons, hermitage, hermit, hawk, hunter, harnessed horses, noblemen, princes, kings, crossroads, landmark, cemetery, crown. Subject: The meeting of the three living and the three dead is found in French literature and bibliography under the expression: le dit des trois morts et des trois vifs or les trois vivant et trois mortis. -
Memento Mori+ David Dunnico
II MEMENTO MORI+ DAVID DUNNICO MEMENTO MORI (a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’) is a series of photographs by David Dunnico. Using contemporary photographic processes, Memento Mori looks at the Victorian romantic vision of loss, grief and mourning, with its rich and clearly defined symbolism. # Memento Mori is not about the living which was celebrating it’s 200th # Thomas Lynch the American poet being ‘haunted’ by the spirits of dead anniversary. He has also produced and undertaker wrote in his book people. Rather, the work looks at how images for this series in Barcelona, Kiev, ‘Bodies in Motion and at Rest’ (pub- people remember those they have lost Prague and Washington. lished by Johnathan Cape, 2000): and how in a sense, the dead continue to # In 2007, Weaste Cemetery the first “The facts of life and death remain the have an existence through the remem- and largest of Salford City Council’s same. We live and die, we love and brance of the living. four municipal cemeteries, celebrated its grieve, we breed and disappear. # For a number of years Dunnico has 150th anniversary. To mark this And between these existential gravities, pictured statues, and funerary monu- anniversary, Salford Museum and Art we search for meaning, save our memo- ments. He visited Paris to photograph Gallery asked David to photograph ries, leave a record for those who the famous Père-Lachaise cemetery Salford’s cemeteries for this exhibition. remember us”. SALFORD MUSEUM&ART GALLERY * Montage of spires from Salford’s four municipal cemeteries III * Montage of figures and tombs from Père Lachaise IV FOR THOSE WE LEAVE BEHIND # Traditionally people were buried in # Ronnie Scott writes in his 2005 book # New rituals and protocols have devel- churchyards, but by the 19th Century about the Glasgow Necropolis ‘Death oped. -
Danse Macabre in Text and Image in Late- Medieval England Oosterwijk, S
'Fro Paris to Inglond'? The danse macabre in text and image in late- medieval England Oosterwijk, S. Citation Oosterwijk, S. (2009, June 25). 'Fro Paris to Inglond'? The danse macabre in text and image in late-medieval England. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/13873 Version: Not Applicable (or Unknown) Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral thesis in the License: Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/13873 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable). CHAPTER 3 ‘Owte of the frensshe’: John Lydgate and the Dance of Death John Lydgate’s poem The Dance of Death was a translation ‘Owte of the frensshe’, as the author himself stated in his translator’s ‘Envoye’ at the end of the poem, yet ‘Not wordebeworde / but folwyng the substaunce’ (E:665-66) – an ancient topos.1 Even so, Lydgate’s poem was indeed no slavish imitation but an adaptation of a French poem that had been attracting attention since its incorporation in a wall-painting at the cemetery of Les Innocents in Paris not long before Lydgate’s presumed visit in 1426. Despite being an early adaptation of a popular French text, Lydgate’s Middle English Dance of Death has received less notice than it deserves, due to a number of factors. First of all, Lydgate’s reputation greatly declined after the sixteenth century and his ‘aureate’ style is no longer admired, which has affected the study of his work, although there has recently been a revival of Lydgate studies.2 Secondly, the poem is only a minor work in Lydgate’s huge oeuvre of well over 140,000 lines, and its didactic character has not endeared it to many literary scholars. -
Luxurious, Terrifying Visions of Death in Renaissance Memento Mori
ART Luxurious, Terrifying Visions of Death in Renaissance Memento Mori The Bowdoin College Museum of Art is exhibiting memento mori objects from Renaissance Europe, often grotesquely designed to startle viewers into recognizing mortality. Finials of a Chaplet (France or southern Netherlands, 1530 with mid-19th- century insertion) (ca. 1850–1860), elephant ivory (courtesy Victoria and Albert Museum, London) BRUNSWICK, Maine — The first object visitors encounter in The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art is a strand of prayer beads culminating with a three-faced carving. On one side is a man, on another a woman, and grinning sardonically between them is a skull. “Instead of the expected face of a person, you get death,” explained curator Stephen Perkinson, associate professor of art history at Bowdoin College, on a recent visit to the exhibition. “Its message is ‘never forget you are mortal, remember that death in the end levels us all,’ and it’s doing that through the winking irony of a luxury good.” Unknown Artist, Office of the Dead, Book of Hours, use of Rome, fol. 105 (Northern France, beginning of the 16th century), manuscript illumination on parchment (courtesy the Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California) Like all the approximately 70 objects in The Ivory Mirror, many on view for the first time in North America, the 1530 prayer beads are exquisitely crafted, down to the worms crawling through the skull’s bared teeth. The smaller beads have figures on either side representing classes from across society, from king to laborer, with a sudden corpse thrown into the mix. -
MEMENTO MORI Create Their Own “Memento Mori” Artwork Using Dirt Paint
LIFE NIGHT OVERVIEW ABOUT THIS LIFE NIGHT This Life Night begins with a Gather activity in which teens MEMENTO MORI create their own “memento mori” artwork using dirt paint. A LIFE NIGHT ON DEATH AND JUDGMENT The Proclaim reflects on our strained relationship with time, which ends in death and a particular judgment. The Break GOAL gives teens time to create a bucket list geared toward a life with Christ. The Send is a prayer for a happy death. The goal of Memento Mori is to acknowledge the reality of death and judgment as a consequence of original sin but ENVIRONMENT instill joy and hope in Jesus as our loving and merciful judge. For this Life Night, create an environment centered around KEY CONCEPTS time. Gather hourglasses and clocks to place around the room. Play a countdown or count up on a screen, and have • Jesus conquers the evil of death through His own death clock sound effects in the background. On the walls, post and Resurrection, giving us hope for eternal life. quotes from saints and Catholic prayers about death. Use the following to get started: • In Baptism, we die sacramentally with Jesus and are given the opportunity for new life in Him — physical death • What is death but the burial of sin and the resurrection completes this process. of goodness? (St. Ambrose) • Now and at the hour of death. (The Hail Mary) • Immediately after death, each person faces a particular • Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done. (The Lord’s Prayer) judgment before Jesus; the result of our judgment — heaven, hell, or purgatory — is determined by faith in Him • The sting of death is extinguished in Christ. -
Photodeath As Memento Mori- a Contemporary
Photodeath as Memento Mori- A Contemporary Investigation by Catherine Dowdier, B.A., B. Vis Arts, Grad. Dip. Faculty of Fine Arts, Northern Territory University Master of Arts by Research 18. 09. 1996 ThesisDeclaration: I herebydeclare that thework herein,now submitted as a thesis for the degree of Master by Research, is theresult of my own investigations, and all references to ideas and work of otherresearchers have been specifically acknowledged. I herby certify that the work embodied in this thesis has not already beenaccepted in substance for any degree, and is not beingcurr ently submittedin candidature for any other degree. 1i4 U/�� .l... .................................................... Catherine Bowdler Table of Contents Introduction . 1 Chapter 1: Memento Mori . 5 Chapter 2: Photodeath . 15 Chapter 3: ChristianBoltanski . 26 Chapter 4: Joel Peter Witkin . 48 Chapter 5: Peter Hujar . 64 Conclusion........... ..............................................7 4 Bibliography . 80 lliustrations . 84 List of Illustrations 1. "LesArchives", Christian Boltanski, 1989 2. "Reserves:La Fete de Purim", 1989 3. "Still LifeMarseilles", Joel Peter Witkin, 1992 4. "Le Baiser", Joel Peter Witkin, 1982 5. ''Susan Sontag", Peter Hujar, 1976 6. "Devine", PeterHujar, 1976 Abstract This thesis is an exploration of the links between the notions exemplified in traditional memento mori imagery and the Barthian concept of 'photodeath'. In order to do this I have chosen three contemporary photographers: Christian Boltanski, Joel Peter Witkin andPeter Hujar, in whosework bothconcepts are manifest in completely different ways. Theconcepts of mementomori and photodeath are initially discussed separately in some detail. Then, by careful examinationof key works in each artist'soeuvre, some critical observations aboutthe nature of both concepts are teased out and explored.