[...]iterary activities

[*]baroque: ***the art of not rejecting anything*** (el arte de no renunciar a nada -Montesinos)
(am i baroque?)

different types of frontispiece:
1. divided into geometrical compartments (german origin?)
2. depicting a particular scene (german invention) [images/elements chosen/included for doctrinal and controversial significance]
3. single cartouche (school of Fontainebleau), a predilection for Mannerist irrationality and illusionism; interlocking, complicated scroll-work and strapwork; imitating the three-dimensional scrolling, with edges curling forward around the inscription; fantastic architectural structures, and grotesque figures and monsters taken from classical mythology
4. architectural title page (with the most monumental and most three-dimensional character), arrangement of sculpture-like allegorical figures or personifications


shifts from the techniques of woodcut --to--> engraving (--to-->? digital) ==> greater pictorial detail & better illusionism


*Sa'di's advice and devices* [title]
(Sa'di's relationship to) ‘the accumulated knowledge’(==> device)
[*]device (symbolum): a combination of a picture and a personal motto. a private adage (امثال و حکم) or clever aphorism --> heraldic image --fusion~=> device: a personal message by means of which a knight would define himself--developed from the chivalric tradition** ==?==> Sa'di's moral devices
-theoretical advice and examples of devices
-a craftsmann, a painter or goldsmith, would then supply the visual form of the idea that the learned scholar created
(moral) device --discuss--> general qualities and characteristics such as courage, nobility, obligation ==> (genre of) [*]emblem: --(pictorial + verbal)-striving--> for *universal applicability*
*emblem <-- the desire to understand the mysteries of antiquity, especially ancient Edgyptian hieroglyphs (in obelisks, sphinxes, lions), which were thought to represent a secret language [original wisdom of early man] (<== concerns of Renaissance [for example Hieroglyphica written in Greek by Horapollo 14th century])
(what are my ‘hieroglyphics’ in ajayeb?) Renaissance humanists wanting to research and understand antiquity, also wiched to *make it come alive*, by using hieroglyphics + Pythogorean symbols (were added, since metaphors and allegories of the ancients supposedly derived from the wisdom of Edgyptian priests)
ancient mythologies and medieval allegories in Renaissance applied hieroglyphic science:
•ancient coins (interpreted as hieroglyphics)
•biblical imagery
•medieval animal
•plant books
•cabalistic number mysticism
•old testament motifs
}==> emblematics became a kind of a language, that scholars and then readers of the vulgar tongue deciphered in books and then applied to a number of fields in daily life

spiritual symbols of allegory and myth + factual/fractal world --common--> visual art
}--> ‘title page’ : interplay of symbol & reality <-- interaction of different spheres of imagery:
•historical characters
•living people
•stuff of geography
•stuff of astronomy
•architectural views
•(in the 14th century scholars began to collect) ancient coins (and medals) [one side: great events, historic individuals -and- the reverse: depicted allegorical subjects, gods or the *fates*, allegorical personifications inherited from the middle ages [arts and vices]] ~--> *moralizing nature of (someone's) ‘specifications’* [--> frontispiece: personifications as simulated sculptures in niches flanking the archway]

Sa'di =/= author's portrait updated ~ Olearius



Olearius had three printing presses installed in his house, and required that the engravers live and work there, under his direct supervision

“Concerning the Changeability of Worldy Things, and the Wonder and Praise of Virtue”

‘flaming hearts’ symbolizing “their” union

symbolism (of the frontispiece tries to) contain the subject matter (of the text that follows)


the triumph of death (but with a happy end for the deceased) # Adventure Time

“that which i wish for is not mortal” (Duke's motto)
“virtue lives on after the funeral rites”

his home, name, heraldry, figure, allows the viewer to grasp the entire span of the deceased's life (and death) *at a single glance*

horn of plenty

cupid is astride (with a leg on each side of)
astrilized

*winged sphere*
winged fame trumpets the deceased's accomplishments

christian mastery over the infidel--who is blinded to the true faith

a group of international admirers


**methods used in Europe to disseminate information about foreign people** during the early modern era:
•Flugblatt (broad-sheet or broadside, 14th century), a medium directed at the illiterate classes (that needed visual cue) [included: news about battles, astrological prediction, sighting of comet, birth of a monstrous creature (animal or human), execution of a famous criminal, tales of witches, devils, religious or political propaganda]
Flugblatt counterparts:
◦Flugshrift (flying writ, flying pamphlet), popularized by Martin Luther, four pages with woodcut gracing, for audience with ability and leisure to read longer tracts
•illustrated costume book. with Mannerist strapwork, grotesque, garlands, allegorical personifications; in scenes representing the original reason why humans need to wear clothing
•(Norbert when he uses “we” in his language) --> *author*: active, nude, individual with his scissors, not dressed for battle, who will actively clothe the other figures ... [in frontispiece to Hans Weigel's Trachtenbuch the personifications of the non-Europeans are all prepared for battle] (male warriors in female continents [continents are usually represented by female figures, derived from biblical and classical sources such as Roman coins]) {Amerindian's headdress once was removed from its original ethnographic context, “decontextualized,” and then “recontextualized in a different setting --> europeans might have thought that it was a skirt. the reverse is the story of shalite شلیته?}

mid 16th century also saw the development of the periodical newssheet (adapted from broadside)
consisting of image and text--work together in order to provide meaning for the design --> view needed to combine ==> a composing/composer subjectivity

allegorical putti (symbolizing industry)
inscription at their feet
flora beside each of them

Olearius's frontispiece for Orientalischen Reise:
•mixture of realistic and fantastic
•illusionistic cloths denote a process not only of uncovering, but of discovery as well (theatrical curtains pulled back to reveal the true subject: the paradisical scene of “natives”) [the scenic event of arrival in any civilized zone is embodied by the monument of the natives]
•flora and fauna of Paradise



to place the viewer in (an atrium-like building)

monumental inscription

(our anti-globe video in the exhibition =/=?) a scene showing a robed man standing on a globe ~-> “You lead me through your counsel”

the explorer writes his observation into his *magnum opus*, the traveler account (just as God writes in “das grosse Wunderbuch die Welt”)
=/= my amazon project

textual proclamation of the author's faith



Olearius's translation of the sufi lore collected by the celebrated Persian poet Sa'di, in a condensed visual form, (acknowledged later by Goethe) with the help of Hakwirdi

Brancaforte: Golestan speaks to an audience that has recently suffered from the ravages of war (or predicting it?!)
-Golestan (“valley of roses”) written soon after the bloodbath is therefore a document of its time composed by a man of reason who always stresses the practical [praised by Olearius as a “lustiger Kopff” (funloving spirit)]--appealing to a classical authority
-blending personal experience, humorous insights, and aphorisms (of an ethical/didactic nature)
-Muhammadian like the manner of Virgil-->{the past as legacy, disposing with the divine mechanism, purchase Virgil's tomb and worshipped it, poetry as a tool of divination, embodiment of experience, pastoral and erotic, attraction toward people of any gender, agriculture as man's struggle against a hostile natural world, way of a comparison with foreign marvels,}

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