{"title":"Religious Dimensions of Beethoven’s Ode “To Joy”","authors":"David B. Greene","doi":"10.1163/15685292-02605004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02605004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Hearing a song, listeners can often pick up the syntactical relationships among its words only with great difficulty. The musical flow washes away most of the syntax, and the musical connections from one phrase to the next or one section to the next, sometimes even from one note to the next, are what connect the words to one another and give them meanings very different from their submerged syntactically fixed meanings. This article probes the musical relationships joining the phrases in Beethoven’s Freude theme and attempts to paraphrase “joy” and “brotherhood” as their meanings are qualified by the musically determined relation of each to the other. It pays particular attention to the music that sets texts with a religious dimension, and the way their musical connections change the meaning of joy and brotherhood.","PeriodicalId":41383,"journal":{"name":"Religion and the Arts","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42430302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Facing the Plague in Renaissance Italy","authors":"N. Ben-Aryeh Debby","doi":"10.1163/15685292-02605003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02605003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this article I focus on two of the most prominent female saints: the Franciscan St. Clare of Assisi (1194–1253) and one belonging to the third order of Saint Dominic, St. Catherine of Siena (1347–1380). I analyze a series of visual examples that picture their roles as saviors against epidemics and point out similarities and differences between them. I emphasize the power of the images in providing relief and salvation. St. Clare of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena offer two distinct models of female sanctity that protect against the plague: the first owing to her symbolic power and her being a kind of a second Mary and the second because of her unique personality and actions in healing the sick and saving the dying in Italian cities.","PeriodicalId":41383,"journal":{"name":"Religion and the Arts","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45216143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Atom in Seventeenth-Century Poetry , by Gorman, Cassandra","authors":"Wesley Garey","doi":"10.1163/15685292-02604007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02604007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41383,"journal":{"name":"Religion and the Arts","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43049827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Creation and Beauty in Tolkien’s Catholic Vision: A Study in the Influence of Neoplatonism in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Philosophy of Life as “Being and Gift.” , by Halsall, Michael John","authors":"E. Eklund","doi":"10.1163/15685292-02604008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02604008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41383,"journal":{"name":"Religion and the Arts","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44046228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"United in Love: Essays on Justice, Art, and Liturgy , by Wolterstorff, Nicholas","authors":"W. Teixeira","doi":"10.1163/15685292-02604005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02604005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41383,"journal":{"name":"Religion and the Arts","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45453963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Sins of G.K. Chesterton , by Ingrams, Richard","authors":"Kevin J. Gardner","doi":"10.1163/15685292-02604009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02604009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41383,"journal":{"name":"Religion and the Arts","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47666490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modernism, Identity, and Spirituality in Joseph Stella’s Paintings of Christian Subjects","authors":"H. Hartel","doi":"10.1163/15685292-02604004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02604004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Joseph Stella is best known today as one of the first modernist painters in the United States. He created colorful Cubist-Futurist inspired paintings of modern urban structures and spaces, especially the Brooklyn Bridge and Coney Island. He occasionally did some paintings and drawings of Christian subjects, most often of the Virgin Mary and Jesus and more frequently in the late-1910s and 1920s, but these remain little-known and have received scant scholarly attention. Stylistically, they are rooted in a complex fusion of Symbolism, Cubism, and Futurism and often reflect the post-World War I return to greater verisimilitude and clear, solid forms and believable spaces. These works reveal Stella’s complex spirituality and how he reconnected to his Roman Catholic, Italian roots and reconciled them with American urban, industrial, and secular values. Most of them are complex syntheses of his Christian piety and sexual desires and needs. Although limited in quantity and scope, some writings by Stella and those who knew him suggest his sexual concerns were often intensely lustful and frenzied. Therefore his paintings of the Madonna usually show her as spiritually pure and sensuously arousing. A few paintings, particular from his last years and which do not depict female figures, are more introspective and tranquil in mood and attitude. Stella’s paintings of Christian subjects are an intriguing case study of how modernists returned to traditional religious themes and depicted them in ways that combined the old and the new, the modernist and the more traditionally representational, and the urban and industrial twentieth century with pre-modern life.","PeriodicalId":41383,"journal":{"name":"Religion and the Arts","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44517493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Bishan Commune and the Practice of Socially Engaged Art in Rural China , by Corlin, Mai & Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China: Voices from Below , by Wang, Meiqin","authors":"Yanhua Zhou","doi":"10.1163/15685292-02604003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02604003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41383,"journal":{"name":"Religion and the Arts","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41634310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Visualizing the Emperor’s Pantheon","authors":"Zhenpeng Zhan","doi":"10.1163/15685292-02604002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02604002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the early 1740s, a set of carved lacquer containers were imperially commissioned in Suzhou to hold Daoist and Buddhist scriptures transcribed by the Qianlong emperor. Decorated with numerous deities in bas-relief, these understudied luxury objects shed new light on Buddhist and Daoist material cultures at the High Qing court and offer a glimpse of the imperial patron’s religious cosmology. Focusing on Qianlong’s two miniature pantheons and tracing the life history of objects in Qing palaces, this article explores the key role played by sacred images in elevating devotional objects of religious significance. As the most important offerings to Daoist and Buddhist deities, the lacquer boxes containing imperially transcribed scriptures were set on altars in different temples in the Forbidden City, even after Qianlong’s death. Characterized by rich religious symbolism, the Daoist and Buddhist icons designed for the containers embody visual efficacy that elevated the concealed scriptures and complemented the sacred spaces where they were enshrined.","PeriodicalId":41383,"journal":{"name":"Religion and the Arts","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48869762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cistercian Adventures in Glass","authors":"Jonathan Koestlé-Cate","doi":"10.1163/15685292-02604001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02604001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Stained glass windows created by Jean-Pierre Raynaud and Pierre Soulages for the Abbeys of Noirlac and Conques employ a minimalistic style sensitive to their Romanesque contexts but also express qualities one might call Cistercian, even though only one of the commissions was created for an actual Cistercian abbey. As a form of monasticism, “Cistercian” signifies values of simplicity, poverty, and austerity presented by the founders of the Cistercian Order as essential to the monastic life and embodied in the rigor of their architecture. Natural light is a key element in Cistercian fenestration, differing significantly from the display of color associated with Gothic stained glass. I argue that a form of neo-Cistercianism is evident in and exemplified by the works of Raynaud and Soulages for their respective abbey commissions, in which an aesthetic of restraint and economy aims, above all, to treat the configuration of light as the primary consideration.","PeriodicalId":41383,"journal":{"name":"Religion and the Arts","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43314701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}