The Colour of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination

ISBN-13: 9780415180740 / Angielski / Miękka / 1998 / 248 str.

Constance Classen

Opis

This text looks at the symbolism of the senses which animated the cosmos before the modern scientific view of the world came to dominate, revealing the gender politics behind such sensory constructs as the male gaze and the female touch and tracing the development of a hierarchy of the senses from medieval cosmology to the advent of computer graphics. The book is divided into three parts cosmology, gender and aesthetics - and uses a wide variety of examples, from the sensuous religious visions of the middle ages to 19th-century art movements.

Recenzje

'With the blend of erudition and elegance we have now come to expect, Constance Classen's The Colour of Angels does much to restore the history of the senses to its proper importance.' - Roy Porter, Wellcome Institute

'It is a solid and imaginative contribution to both the history of the senses as well as to feminist scholarship from the middle ages up to the rise of modernism.' - Henry Luce, The University of Chicago

Spis treści

Introduction PART I Cosmology 1 On the color of angels: the sensory cosmologies of St. Hildegard, Boehme, and Fourier 2 The breath of God: sacred histories of scent PART II Gender 3 The scented womb and the seminal eye: embodying gender codes through the senses 4 Pens and needles: writing, women’s work, and feminine sensibilities PART III Aesthetics 5 Symbolist harmonies, Futurist colors, Surrealist recipes: crossing sensory borders in the arts 6 A feel for the world: lessons in aesthetics from the blind

O autorze

Constance Classen is a cultural historian whose previous publications include Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures and Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (with David Howes and Anthony Synnott).