Description
Book SynopsisAnthropomorphism – the projection of the human form onto the every aspect of the world – closely relates to early modern notions of analogy and microcosm. What had been construed in Antiquity as a ready metaphor for the order of creation was reworked into a complex system relating the human body to the body of the world. Numerous books and images - cosmological diagrams, illustrated treatises of botany and zoology, maps, alphabets, collections of ornaments, architectural essays – are entirely constructed on the anthropomorphic analogy. Exploring the complexities inherent in such work, the interdisciplinary essays in this volume address how the anthropomorphic model is fraught with contradictions and tensions, between magical and rational, speculative and practical thought. Contributors include Pamela Brekka, Anne-Laure van Bruaene, Ralph Dekoninck, Agnès Guiderdoni, Christopher P. Heuer, Sarah Kyle, Walter S. Melion, Christina Normore, Elizabeth Petcu, Bertrand Prevost, Bret Rothstein, Paul Smith, Miya Tokumitsu, Michel Weemans, and Elke Werner.
Trade ReviewA “scintillating collection” and a “generous Kunstkammer of a book.” Martha Hollander, Hofstra University. In: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Spring 2016), pp. 255-256.
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Notes on the Editors Notes on the Contributors Introduction Michel Weemans and Bertrand Prévost ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND THE ORDER OF THINGS Delineating the Boundaries of the Human 1 Revolting Beasts: Animal Satire and Animal Trials in the Dutch Revolt Anne-Laure van Bruaene 2 Monkey in the Middle Christina Normore 3 Landscape and Body in Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel Paul J. Smith 4 The Migrating Cannibal: Anthropophagy at Home and at the Edge of the World Miya Tokumitsu Empathy and the Constitution of the Self 5 Picturing the Soul, Living and Departed Nathalie de Brézé 6 Patience Grows: The First Roots of Joris Hoefnagel’s Emblematic Art Marisa Bass 7 The ‘Album Αmicorum’ and the Kaleidoscope of the Self: Notes on the Friendship Book of Jacob Heyblocq Aneta Georgievska-Shine Visualizing the Body Politic 8 Picturing the ‘Living’ Tabernacle in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible Pamela Merrill Brekka 9 A New Heraldry: Vision and Rhetoric in the ‘Carrara Herbal’ Sarah R. Kyle 10 Anthropomorphic Maps: On the Aesthetic Form and Political Function of Body Metaphors in the Early Modern Europe Discourse Elke Anna Werner FIGURATION AND SEMIOTIC POTENTIAL Anthropomorphosis and Its Critics 11 Prodigies of Nature, Wonders of the Hand: Political Portents and Divine: Artifice in Haarlem ca. 1600 Walter S. Melion 12 Between Fiction and Reality: The Image Body in the Early Modern Theory of the Symbol Ralph Dekoninck Anthropomorphosis and Its Conditions 13 Anthropomorphizing the Orders: ‘Terms’ of Architectural Eloquence in the Northern Renaissance Elizabeth J. Petcu 14 Visage-paysage. Problème de peinture Bertrand Prévost Figuring the Impossible 15 Nobody’s Bruegel Christopher P. Heuer 16 Morbid Fascination: Death by Bruegel Larry Silver Metamorphic Figuration 17 Jan van Hemessen’s Anatomy of Parody Bret L. Rothstein 18 The Smoke of Sacrifice: Anthropomorphism and Figure in Karel van Mallery’s ‘Sacrifice of Cain and Abel’ for Louis Richeome’s ‘Tableaux Sacrez’ (1601) Michel Weemans Index Nominum List of Illustrations
