How do visual images function and what is their status relative to pictures made of words? Such questions began to be asked at the Reformation. Whereas Catholics had long embraced visual depictions of God, his angels, and saints, Protestants argued that images were potentially idolatrous, that they tempted the fallen mind to worship a man-made artefact instead of the invisible Creator who was beyond representation. In Zurich, Geneva, and London statues were taken down and pictures were whitewashed over, acts of Bildersturm or iconoclasm that have resonances today as statues are being interrogated and toppled. This seminar will explore how early modern English poets such as Aemilia Lanyer, John Donne, George Herbert, and John Milton engaged with the fraught relationship between the image and the word as the visual and political landscape changed in the course of the 17th century.
- Enseignant·e: Antoinina Bevan Zlatar