Jas Elsner
University of Oxford, Classics, Faculty Member
- The British Museum, Empires of Faith Project, Faculty MemberUniversity of Chicago, Art History, Faculty MemberUniversity of Chicago, Divinity School and Art History, Faculty Memberadd
- I was born and brought up in London, and then studied Classics and Art History at Cambridge, Harvard and London, taki... moreI was born and brought up in London, and then studied Classics and Art History at Cambridge, Harvard and London, taking my doctorate from King's College Cambridge in 1991. I am married with four children. After a research fellowship at Jesus College Cambridge, I taught the art history of Greek and Roman antiquity at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London for 8 years as a Lecturer and Reader, before coming to the Humfrey Payne Senior Research Fellowship in Classical Art and Archaeology at Corpus in 1999. I have been a regular Visiting Professor of the History of Art at the University of Chicago from 2003-13 and since 2014 have been Visiting Professor of Art and Religion in the Divinity School and the History of Art Department at Chicago. I have held visiting attachments at the British School at Rome, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Humboldt University in Berlin, the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, UCLA, the Institute of Fine Art in New York and Princeton University. I was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017 and a member of the Max Planck Gesellschaft in 2019. I serve on the editorial boards of a number of Journals around the world, am editor of the new Oxford series Visual Conversations in Art and Archaeology and am joint editor of two monograph series, Greek Culture in the Roman World, with the Cambridge University Press and Routledge Studies in Pilgrimage, Religious Travel and Tourism. From 2013 to 2018, I was Principal Investigator on the Empires of Faith Project between the British Museum and Wolfson College, Oxford, which is exploring the visual cultures of the world religions in the Mediterranean and Asia between 200 and 800 AD. The major international exhibition arising from this project runs at the Ashmolean Museum from October 19, 2017 to February 15, 2018.
My main interest is the art of the Roman empire, broadly conceived to include late antiquity and the early middle ages including Byzantium as well as the pre-Christian Classical world. I began my researches by looking at the way art was viewed in antiquity -- and this has led to an interest in all kinds of reception from ritual and pilgrimage in the case of religious art to the literary description of art (including the rhetorical technique known as ekphrasis) to the more recent collecting and display of art as well as its modern historiography and receptions. Since the art of antiquity has such a privileged, indeed canonical, position in our culture, the study of its receptions is an exploration of more recent history's varied, competing and often ideologically understandings of its own past. It has also for me be an entrée into the history of art history as a discipline and into the need for constructing comparative and non-Eurocentric models for thinking about visual culture and the ways we study it.edit
Research Interests: Buddhist Art, Indian Buddhism, Indian Art, Buddhist art and architecture, Buddhology, and 10 moreIndian Archaeology and History of Art, Archaeology of Early Buddhism, early Buddhism, Art and Religion, Buddhist Art History and Archaeology, Indian art and architecture, Ancient Indian Art and Architecture, Buddhist Narrative Art, Religion and the Arts, and Early Indian Buddhism
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The decision to include a chapter on 'material culture' in a Critical Guide to Latin Literature bears witness to a fundamental truth: without 'material culture' there would be no 'Latin literature' to speak of. 1 The study of Latin is... more
The decision to include a chapter on 'material culture' in a Critical Guide to Latin Literature bears witness to a fundamental truth: without 'material culture' there would be no 'Latin literature' to speak of. 1 The study of Latin is predicated on a series of physical survivals. Sometimes, albeit comparatively rarely, Latin texts are transmitted on scraps of ancient papyrus rolls or early parchment codices. 2 More often, they are preserved through Carolingian, later mediaeval and Renaissance manuscriptsthat is, by scribes who copy a text from one material context to another, thereby providing a principal source for later printed editions. 3 At other times, Latin texts come to us via epigraphic means 4whether inscribed as grand monumental declarations in stone, marble or metal (consider Augustus' Res gestae, which survives only epigraphically), 5 or else as wholly
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In his seminal 1998 book, Homer and the Artists: Text and Picture in Early Greek Art, Anthony Snodgrass makes no mention of the Imagines, or indeed of its author, the Elder Philostratus. As Anthony would no doubt remind us, one would need... more
In his seminal 1998 book, Homer and the Artists: Text and Picture in Early Greek Art, Anthony Snodgrass makes no mention of the Imagines, or indeed of its author, the Elder Philostratus. As Anthony would no doubt remind us, one would need have a very late (probably Byzantine) view of ‘Greek art’ to conceive of Philostratus alongside the word ‘early’. Yet the Imagines, written at around the beginning of the third century ad, provides one of the most scintillating accounts of ancient painting to survive from pre-Christian antiquity; it probes the very categories of ‘text’ and ‘picture’ that defined Snodgrass’ project.
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she outlines what the clergy wanted lay people to know. This included biblical stories, Psalms, prayers and fundamental doctrines such as the incarnation, the nature of Christ and the afterlife. Dialogue, the exploration of doubt and... more
she outlines what the clergy wanted lay people to know. This included biblical stories, Psalms, prayers and fundamental doctrines such as the incarnation, the nature of Christ and the afterlife. Dialogue, the exploration of doubt and theories of reciprocity between human and divine all served as mechanisms through which lay instruction was undertaken and demonstrated, even if the results did not always meet clerical expectations. The brief survey of epitaphs with which the chapter ends offers a glimpse into lay attitudes towards the afterlife, perhaps less difficult to document than other theological beliefs, but still an elusive element of religious experience. Although it is not itself a study of lived Christianity in late Roman and Merovingian Gaul, the written and material evidence that B. analyses here offers many of the elements that such a study would include, with lay experience at its centre rather than its periphery. Her book can be recommended to any reader with an interest in the rich religious culture that flourished in the last phases and long aftermath of Roman imperial rule in Gaul.
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From classical Greece to Graceland, people of all religions and cultures have made sacred journeys to confirm their faith and their part in a larger identity. This text is a guide through the vast and varied cultural territory such... more
From classical Greece to Graceland, people of all religions and cultures have made sacred journeys to confirm their faith and their part in a larger identity. This text is a guide through the vast and varied cultural territory such pilgrimages have covered across the ages.
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Research Interests: Late Antique and Byzantine History, Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Historiography, Late Antique Archaeology, Late Antiquity, and 6 moreHistoriography (in Art History), History of Historiography, Late Antique Art and Archaeology, Byzantine historiography, Paleochristian and Late Antique Archaeology, and Historiography of Art History
On Museums, memory, Berlin, the WinckelmannInsititute in the Humboldt University, the Humboldt Forum
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Research Interests: Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Book History, Manuscript Studies, Vergil, Late Antique Literature, and 9 moreLate Antique Art and Archaeology, Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Codicology of medieval manuscripts, Medieval illuminated manuscripts, Ancient Greek and Roman Art, Paleochristian and Late Antique Archaeology, Virgil, Roman Art, and The Reception of Vergil
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This article, in honour of one of the greatest living scholars of early Christian Medieval art, attempts to use a comparative method to examine the development and uses of narrative in the arts of early Christianity and early... more
This article, in honour of one of the greatest living scholars of early Christian Medieval art, attempts to use a comparative method to examine the development and uses of narrative in the arts of early Christianity and early Buddhism-both new religious interventions in their respective landscapes, which conducted major revisions of their visual and dogmatic worlds, and employed visual imagery in relation to Scripture. In particular I compare images that conflate different times from the arts of each religion-a typological juxtaposition of Old and New Testaments in a fourth century Roman sarcophagus found in southern France and the thematic juxtaposition of a scene from the Buddha's final life with ones from his earlier incarnations as recounted in the Jātaka tales on a probably third-century CE frieze from a stūpa in southern India. At stake art historically are the ways that images supplied commentarial competition to the forms of commentary and exegesis offered by texts in both religions and cultural contexts, through parallels of visual narrativity implied by the themes juxtaposed.
Research Interests: Late Antique Archaeology, Buddhist Iconography, Buddhist Art, Late Antique Art and Archaeology, Early Christian Art, and 10 moreComparative Study Of The Ancient Arts And Iconologies, Buddhist art and architecture, Early Christian Archaeology, Paleochristian and Late Antique Archaeology, Roman Sarcophagi, Early Christian Art and Iconography, Buddha Stupa, Buddhist Narrative Art, Comparative Literature and Arts, and Early Indian Buddhism
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Research Interests: Near Eastern Archaeology, Late Antique and Byzantine History, Late Antique Archaeology, Roman Religion, History of Classical Scholarship, and 6 moreLate Antique Art and Archaeology, History of Archaeology, Roman Near East, History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Paleochristian and Late Antique Archaeology, and History of Classical Archaology
This article examines a profound contradiction inherent in the idea of utopia as conceptually formulated by Thomas More in the Renaissance and clearly implicit in pre-humanist utopian, Arcadian, or paradisal imagery and descriptions,... more
This article examines a profound contradiction inherent in the idea of utopia as conceptually formulated by Thomas More in the Renaissance and clearly implicit in pre-humanist utopian, Arcadian, or paradisal imagery and descriptions, reaching back via early Christianity to Greco-Roman antiquity and resonating equally within Asian Buddhism. The idea of utopia from Greek antiquity to ancient India has evoked an optimism not unconnected to the conviction that there is a better place to which we will go after death, such as heaven. This kind of faith can have no rational basis, but the human condition is susceptible to a good deal more than the mere constraints of reason. Arguably, the only philosophically viable utopia is apophatic-that is, a place or state undescribable by any of the concepts or discourses used to define real spaces. Despite clear awareness across Eurasian cultures of the irrationality of a positive utopia (as we still continue to understand the word), their visual productions proceeded to give full vent to this optimism. This article examines a comparative range of such visual approaches across ancient Eurasia.
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This paper explores the genesis and functions of visually-conceived prefatory matter in the creation of the book in late antiquity. Beyond pragmatic use of prefaces to help guide readers through the new structure of the composite or... more
This paper explores the genesis and functions of visually-conceived prefatory matter in the creation of the book in late antiquity. Beyond pragmatic use of prefaces to help guide readers through the new structure of the composite or collected set of texts, which is what a codex constitutes, the chapter examines the multiple interpre-tive impacts of various kinds of prefatory images as they resonate in the structure and reception of the early book. From the start, prefatory structures for the written codex included visual ornamentation: the kinds of framing needed to help readers find their way through this new kind of artefact intrinsically sought pictorial as well as textual cues.
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Research Interests: History of Religions, Late Antiquity, Late Antique Art and Archaeology, Late Antiquity and Byzantium (History and Art), Paleochristian and Late Antique Archaeology, and 4 moreArt and Religion, Historiography of Islamic Art, Historiography of Art History, and Historiography of Late Antique and Early Christian Art
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In a famous paper of 2002, Bert Smith made a powerful case for the place of images (not by any means only in high art) in the study of ancient history-focusing on both visual culture as such and its styles. 1 In an essay of 2008, he... more
In a famous paper of 2002, Bert Smith made a powerful case for the place of images (not by any means only in high art) in the study of ancient history-focusing on both visual culture as such and its styles. 1 In an essay of 2008, he applied his theoretical model to the analysis of the sarcophagi of Aphrodisias in their historical context, especially those manufactured during the early third century AD. 2 In this paper, written in his honour and in acknowledgement of his great contribution to the study of Imperial Roman art, I attempt to explore the implications of one particular thematic group of sarcophagi-those with the imagery of Dionysus-in order to understand two particular issues within the social and cultural history of the Roman Empire. These are, first, the question of representing gender identities in visual form and, second, issues in the formal relationship between some pagan mythological themes.
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Research Interests: Art History, History of Art, Ornament (Archaeology), Ancient Greek and Roman Art, Mise en abyme - Theory, and 9 moreTheory of ornament, History of Ornament, Greek and Roman Art and Architecture, Roman Sarcophagi, Roman Art, Roman Funerary Art, Ornament studies, Roman Archaeology, and Greek and Roman Art
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On Friday 12 June, the Cult of Saints Project, in association with the Empires of Faith Project, co-organises a colloquium dedicated to the iconography of saints in late antique art. Six talks will be given by members of the two project... more
On Friday 12 June, the Cult of Saints Project, in association with the Empires of Faith Project, co-organises a colloquium dedicated to the iconography of saints in late antique art. Six talks will be given by members of the two project teams (Jaś Elsner, Bryan Ward-Perkins, Maria Lidova, and Efthymios Rizos) and guest speakers (John Mitchell and Ine Jacobs), discussing aspects of the emergent iconography of saints in Christian art.
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Seventy years ago Sirarpie Der Nersessian published a translation into French of a little known Armenian treatise in defence of icons. Claimed by some to be the earliest example of this genre of writing to survive intact and imagined by... more
Seventy years ago Sirarpie Der Nersessian published a translation into French of a little known Armenian treatise in defence of icons. Claimed by some to be the earliest example of this genre of writing to survive intact and imagined by others to have had a decisive influence on the theology of John of Damascus, it remains fundamentally unstudied. “Concerning Iconoclasm” is an extraordinary seventh-century treatise in support of the veneration of holy images. The author offers an extended argument (against an unnamed opponent) with ample textual citations from biblical and historical sources. This work offers a robust sense of the position of images within contemporary theology and culture. It also offers precious insight into a range of issues, including the relations (particularly regarding image-making) between the Armenians and Byzantines, and regarding the subject matter, and materials used to make, paintings.
Amid the flood of icon studies in recent decades, Vrt‘anēs’ contribution goes unexamined and virtually unmentioned. It is the purpose of the present Workshop to offer to the scholarly community a fresh translation into English of this critical document and to open the field to new scholarship, to which the scholars mentioned below cordially were invited to contribute from their own valuable background in the field.
The new translation prepared by Christina Maranci, Arthur H. Dadian and Ara T. Oztemel Chair of Art History, Tufts University, with Theo Maarten van Lint, Calouste Gulbenkian Chair of Armenian Studies at the University of Oxford, will be circulated in advance among the contributing participants. The place of the treatise in the history of the Armenian language and literature, the theological premises of its argument in the debate among Orthodox and Monophysite theologians, its background in earlier writings – Jewish, pagan and Christian – its contribution to the Byzantine dialogue on icon cult and its long-range impact on the history of art will all be under discussion in the two day conference.
The workshop will convene at Pembroke College, University of Oxford 30-31 October as part of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Calouste Gulbenkian Professorship of Armenian Studies at the University of Oxford.
The workshop is convened by: Dr Jaś Elsner, Professor Thomas F. Mathews, Professor Christina Maranci, and Professor Theo Maarten van Lint.
The workshop is hosted by Theo van Lint, incumbent of the Calouste Gulbenkian Professorship of Armenian Studies and Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Oxford.
The workshop is made possible by a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Amid the flood of icon studies in recent decades, Vrt‘anēs’ contribution goes unexamined and virtually unmentioned. It is the purpose of the present Workshop to offer to the scholarly community a fresh translation into English of this critical document and to open the field to new scholarship, to which the scholars mentioned below cordially were invited to contribute from their own valuable background in the field.
The new translation prepared by Christina Maranci, Arthur H. Dadian and Ara T. Oztemel Chair of Art History, Tufts University, with Theo Maarten van Lint, Calouste Gulbenkian Chair of Armenian Studies at the University of Oxford, will be circulated in advance among the contributing participants. The place of the treatise in the history of the Armenian language and literature, the theological premises of its argument in the debate among Orthodox and Monophysite theologians, its background in earlier writings – Jewish, pagan and Christian – its contribution to the Byzantine dialogue on icon cult and its long-range impact on the history of art will all be under discussion in the two day conference.
The workshop will convene at Pembroke College, University of Oxford 30-31 October as part of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Calouste Gulbenkian Professorship of Armenian Studies at the University of Oxford.
The workshop is convened by: Dr Jaś Elsner, Professor Thomas F. Mathews, Professor Christina Maranci, and Professor Theo Maarten van Lint.
The workshop is hosted by Theo van Lint, incumbent of the Calouste Gulbenkian Professorship of Armenian Studies and Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Oxford.
The workshop is made possible by a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
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Research Interests: Archaeology, Comparative Literature, Art History, Art Theory, Comparative History, and 15 moreChinese Art, Historiography (in Art History), Theory and Practice of Visual Arts, Aesthetics and Theory of Arts, Aby Warburg, Eurocentrism, Alois Riegl, Comparative studies, History and Theory of Art, Chinese and Southeast Asian Art History and Archaeology, Art Theory and Criticism, Erwin Panofsky, Chinese art history, Art History and Theory, and Historiography of Art History
This book reveals the rewards of exploring the relationship between art and religion in the first millennium, and the particular problems of comparing the visual cultures of different emergent and established religions of the period in... more
This book reveals the rewards of exploring the relationship between art and religion in the first millennium, and the particular problems of comparing the visual cultures of different emergent and established religions of the period in Eurasia-Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroas-trianism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and the pagan religions of the Roman world. Most of these became established and remained in play as what are called 'the world religions'. The chapters in this volume show how the long traditions of studying these topics are caught up in complex local, ancestral, colonial and post-colonial discourses and biases, which have made comparison difficult. The study of late antiquity turns out also to be an examination of the intellectual histories of modernity.
Research Interests: Roman Historiography, Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Medieval Historiography, Late Antique Archaeology, Late Antiquity, and 11 moreOttoman Historiography, Historiography (in Art History), Jewish historiography, Late Antique Art and Archaeology, Byzantine historiography, Late Antiquity and Byzantium (History and Art), Islamic Historiography, Vienna School of Art History, Historiography of Art History, Empires of Faith Project, and Historiography of Late Antique and Early Christian Art
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The Seductions of Pilgrimage explores the simultaneously attractive and repellent, beguiling and alluring forms of seduction in pilgrimage. It focuses on the varied discursive, imaginative, and practical mechanisms of seduction that draw... more
The Seductions of Pilgrimage explores the simultaneously attractive and repellent, beguiling and alluring forms of seduction in pilgrimage. It focuses on the varied discursive, imaginative, and practical mechanisms of seduction that draw individual pilgrims to a pilgrimage site; the objects, places, and paradigms that pilgrims leave behind as they embark on their hyper-meaningful travel experience; and the often unforeseen elements that lead pilgrims off their desired course. Presenting the first comprehensive study of the role of seduction on individual pilgrims in the study of pilgrimage and tourism, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, cultural geography, tourism, heritage, and religious studies.
Research Interests: Sociology of Religion, Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology of Pilgrimage, Pilgrimage, and 13 moreAnthropology of Christianity, Anthropology of Eastern Christianity, Anthropology of Europe, Affect/Emotion, New Age (Western Esotericism), Affect (Cultural Theory), Anthropology of ethics and morality, Anthropology of Islam, Seduction, Seduction theory, Anthropology of Judaism, Anthropology of Religion, and New Age Religions
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The past two decades have been marked by a renewed concern with the agency, presence, and ontological status of crafted things, witnessed in a shift of interest across several fields from questions of iconography and meaning to questions... more
The past two decades have been marked by a renewed concern with the agency, presence, and ontological status of crafted things, witnessed in a shift of interest across several fields from questions of iconography and meaning to questions of affect and efficacy. These developments call into question some of the binary oppositions that are foundational to the epistemologies and ontologies of Enlightenment (and post-Enlightenment) thought: animate-inanimate, subject-object, material-meaning, and so forth. They raise significant questions about the nature and operation of things in the world, their materiality, their ability to act or inspire action, and their relation to speech, texts, and words. Acknowledging the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the profound questions raised by these developments, the conference aims to examine the historical antecedents for these 'new' ways of thinking about the material world, to consider their implications, and to imagine the ways in which they might help us develop novel approaches to images, things, and words.
The 49th Spring Symposium of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies INSCRIBING TEXTS IN BYZANTIUM: CONTINUITIES AND TRANSFORMATIONS 18-20 March 2016, Exeter College, Oxford In spite of the striking abundance of extant... more
The 49th Spring Symposium of the Society
for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies
INSCRIBING TEXTS
IN BYZANTIUM:
CONTINUITIES AND TRANSFORMATIONS
18-20 March 2016, Exeter College, Oxford
In spite of the striking abundance of extant primary material – over 4000 Greek texts produced in the period between the sixth and fifteenth centuries – Byzantine Epigraphy remains largely uncharted territory, with a reputation for being elusive and esoteric that obstinately persists. References to inscriptions in our texts show how ubiquitous and deeply engrained the epigraphic habit was in Byzantine society, and underscore the significance of epigraphy as an auxiliary discipline. The growing interest in material culture, including inscriptions, has opened new avenues of research and led to various explorations in the field of epigraphy, but what is urgently needed is a synthetic approach that incorporates literacy, built environment, social and political contexts, and human agency. The SPBS Symposium 2016 has invited specialists in the field to examine diverse epigraphic material in order to trace individual epigraphic habits, and outline overall inscriptional traditions. In addition to the customary format of panel papers and shorter communications, the Symposium will organise a round table, whose participants will lead a debate on the topics presented in the panel papers, and discuss the methodological questions of collection, presentation and interpretation of Byzantine inscriptional material.
for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies
INSCRIBING TEXTS
IN BYZANTIUM:
CONTINUITIES AND TRANSFORMATIONS
18-20 March 2016, Exeter College, Oxford
In spite of the striking abundance of extant primary material – over 4000 Greek texts produced in the period between the sixth and fifteenth centuries – Byzantine Epigraphy remains largely uncharted territory, with a reputation for being elusive and esoteric that obstinately persists. References to inscriptions in our texts show how ubiquitous and deeply engrained the epigraphic habit was in Byzantine society, and underscore the significance of epigraphy as an auxiliary discipline. The growing interest in material culture, including inscriptions, has opened new avenues of research and led to various explorations in the field of epigraphy, but what is urgently needed is a synthetic approach that incorporates literacy, built environment, social and political contexts, and human agency. The SPBS Symposium 2016 has invited specialists in the field to examine diverse epigraphic material in order to trace individual epigraphic habits, and outline overall inscriptional traditions. In addition to the customary format of panel papers and shorter communications, the Symposium will organise a round table, whose participants will lead a debate on the topics presented in the panel papers, and discuss the methodological questions of collection, presentation and interpretation of Byzantine inscriptional material.
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A half-day program of discussions on material culture and the study of religion in the ancient and late antique worlds run by TORCH, the British Museum and Oxford based Empires of Faith project, and the student-run Talking Religion group... more
A half-day program of discussions on material culture and the study of religion in the ancient and late antique worlds run by TORCH, the British Museum and Oxford based Empires of Faith project, and the student-run Talking Religion group based at Oxford University.
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With a history of use extending back to Vedic texts of the second millennium BC, derivations of the name Mithra appear in the Roman Empire, across Sasanian Persia, and in the Kushan Empire of southern Afghanistan and northern India during... more
With a history of use extending back to Vedic texts of the second millennium BC, derivations of the name Mithra appear in the Roman Empire, across Sasanian Persia, and in the Kushan Empire of southern Afghanistan and northern India during the first millennium AD. Even today, this name has a place in Yazidi and Zoroastrian religion. But what connection have Mihr in Persia, Miiro in Kushan Bactria, and Mithras in the Roman Empire to one another?
Over the course of the volume, specialists in the material culture of these diverse regions explore appearances of the name Mithra from six distinct locations in antiquity. In a subversion of the usual historical process, the authors begin not from an assessment of texts, but by placing images of Mithra at the heart of their analysis. Careful consideration of each example's own context, situating it in the broader scheme of religious traditions and on-going cultural interactions, is key to this discussion. Such an approach opens up a host of potential comparisons and interpretations that are often side-lined in historical accounts.
What Images of Mithra offers is a fresh approach to the ways in which gods were labelled and depicted in the ancient world. Through an emphasis on material culture, a more nuanced understanding of the processes of religious formation is proposed in what is but the first part of the Visual Conversations series.
Cover
Images of Mithra
Philippa Adrych, Robert Bracey, Dominic Dalglish, Stefanie Lenk, and Rachel Wood
General Editor Jas Elsner
Visual Conversations In Art And Archaeology
Table of Contents
Introduction
1: Reconstructions: Mithras in Rome
2: Patrons and Viewers: Dura-Europos
3: Settings: Bourg-Saint-Andéol
4: Identifications: Mihr in Sasanian Iran
5: Interpretations: Miiro in Kushan Bactria
6: Syncretisms: Apollo-Mithras in Commagene
Conclusions
Epilogue - Quetzalcoatl and Mithra
Over the course of the volume, specialists in the material culture of these diverse regions explore appearances of the name Mithra from six distinct locations in antiquity. In a subversion of the usual historical process, the authors begin not from an assessment of texts, but by placing images of Mithra at the heart of their analysis. Careful consideration of each example's own context, situating it in the broader scheme of religious traditions and on-going cultural interactions, is key to this discussion. Such an approach opens up a host of potential comparisons and interpretations that are often side-lined in historical accounts.
What Images of Mithra offers is a fresh approach to the ways in which gods were labelled and depicted in the ancient world. Through an emphasis on material culture, a more nuanced understanding of the processes of religious formation is proposed in what is but the first part of the Visual Conversations series.
Cover
Images of Mithra
Philippa Adrych, Robert Bracey, Dominic Dalglish, Stefanie Lenk, and Rachel Wood
General Editor Jas Elsner
Visual Conversations In Art And Archaeology
Table of Contents
Introduction
1: Reconstructions: Mithras in Rome
2: Patrons and Viewers: Dura-Europos
3: Settings: Bourg-Saint-Andéol
4: Identifications: Mihr in Sasanian Iran
5: Interpretations: Miiro in Kushan Bactria
6: Syncretisms: Apollo-Mithras in Commagene
Conclusions
Epilogue - Quetzalcoatl and Mithra
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The introduction to this volume addresses three main issues. First, it provides a critical a reassessment of the discipline of late antique studies, going back to its very foundations and revealing its historical, cultural and political... more
The introduction to this volume addresses three main issues. First, it provides a critical a reassessment of the discipline of late antique studies, going back to its very foundations and revealing its historical, cultural and political biases. Secondly, it presents and discusses the aesthetic/poetic paradigm of late antique literature and art proposed by the editors, thus setting forth the conceptual frame underlying the whole volume. To this end, notions like metaliterary twist, hybridization, poetics of the uncommon, culture of spolia, appropriationism, era of interpretation, cumulative aesthetics, poetics of the fragment/detail, etc. are briefly explained and discussed with the aid a number of representative examples. Last but not least, it explores the intriguing topicality of late antique culture in its problematic relationship to postmodern world. As usual in these pieces, the introduction also presents and justifies the volume’s aim and structure, as well as the main topics discussed by the different contributors.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Aesthetics, Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Early Christianity, Poetics, and 11 morePostmodernism, Late Antiquity, History of Scholarship, Classical Reception Studies, Late Antique Literature, Late Antique Art and Archaeology, Religious History, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Cultural change, Alois Riegl, and Western Civilization
The aesthetic changes in late Roman literature speak to the foundations of modern Western culture. The dawn of a modern way of being in the world, one that most Europeans and Americans would recognize as closely ancestral to their own, is... more
The aesthetic changes in late Roman literature speak to the foundations of modern Western culture. The dawn of a modern way of being in the world, one that most Europeans and Americans would recognize as closely ancestral to their own, is to be found not in the distant antiquity of Greece nor in the golden age of a Roman empire that spanned the Mediterranean, but more fundamentally in the original and problematic fusion of Greco-Roman culture with a new and unexpected foreign element—the arrival of Christianity as an exclusive state religion. For a host of reasons, traditionalist scholarship has failed to give a full and positive account of the formal, aesthetic and religious transformations of ancient poetics in Late Antiquity. This book attempts to capture the excitement and vibrancy of the living ancient tradition reinventing itself in a new context in the hands of a series of great Latin writers mainly from the fourth and fifth centuries AD. A series of the most distinguished expert voices in later Latin poetry as well as some of the most exciting new scholars have been specially commissioned to write new papers for this volume.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Aesthetics, Latin Literature, Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, Neoplatonism and late antique philosophy, and 28 morePoetics, Intertextuality, Late Antiquity, Augustine of Hippo, Allegory, Claudian, Late Antique Literature, Late Antique Art and Archaeology, Boethius, Patristics and Late Antiquity, Ausonius, Venantius Fortunatus, Sidonius Apollinaris, Claudius Claudianus, Rutilius Namatianus, Visual Poetry, Fulgentius, Prudentius, Panegyric, Centos, Ennodius, Metaliteracy, Late Antique Poetry (Ausonius, Panegyrici Latini, Ausone, Ennode de Pavie, Optatian, and Claudius Rutilius Namatianus
We are pleased to announce the International Colloquium Statues in Roman Religion, held by Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro- UNIRIO, Brazil, and Newcastle University, UK, with the support of the British Academy (Newton... more
We are pleased to announce the International Colloquium Statues in Roman Religion, held by Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro- UNIRIO, Brazil, and Newcastle University, UK, with the support of the British Academy (Newton Advanced International Fellowship programme).
The Colloquium will take place at the Auditorium of the Museu Histórico Nacional, MHN, Praça Marechal Câmara, s/n, Centro, Rio (http://mhn.museus.gov.br/). All welcome!
The Colloquium will take place at the Auditorium of the Museu Histórico Nacional, MHN, Praça Marechal Câmara, s/n, Centro, Rio (http://mhn.museus.gov.br/). All welcome!