Workshop 30

30.
Gender and Figure in the Arts of the Renaissance

Organizers:

Andrea Pearson, Art History, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Stephen Whitworth, English, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Todd Borgerding, Musicology, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh

Description:

What implications do figural hierarchies have for art history, literature, and music? What questions arise when we consider the figure from these disciplinary perspectives? How can we draw lines of intersection through figure from one discipline to the text? As the workshop description implies, we believe that one way to do so is to consider figural hierarchies.

The workshop will open with ten minutes of introductions all around, during which participants will identify their fields of study and their interest in 'figure'. We encourage participants to bring sources materials that can be quickly introduced to the group.

We will then move to a ten-minute overview of the sources listed above, led by the appropriate organizers. The large group will then break into smaller groups focused around these sources, during which we will consider the following issues.

For art history, we will explore gendered hierarchies in devotion by comparing images of a Burgundian princess and prince at prayer. How can we address the settings that frame the figures in each work when they invoke the heated issue of public/private? What are the advantages and limitations of comparative readings?
For literature, George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie raises the Renaissance idea that 'woman' is unruly 'foundation' or 'raw material' that needs to have order conferred upon it. How did Puttenham believe the female figure should be fabricated? Who is more important than whom and how are these hierarchies conveyed? What types of bodies are seductive? Which bodies should couple with which? In what circumstances? Henry Peacham's The Garden of Eloquence extends this discussion via its discussion of varieties of figure.
For music, the Italian madrigal was the most important location for the exhibition of eroticised bodies, bodies whose gender often was (re)defined through musical figure. Jacque Arcadelt's Il bianco i dolce cigno contemplates deaths, both figurative and literal, in a way that facilitates an 'aural reading'. How does the composer's system of musical metaphor and mimesis regender the subjects of the poem? Does it relocate the site of sexual pleasure? How does it reposition modern music vis-à-vis its classical sources? Arcadelt's piece will be presented to workshop participants either through a recording.

The last thirty minutes of the workshop will bring together the three areas of scholarship in a conversation that focuses upon the larger questions listed above. This period of non-structured, trans-disciplinary dialogue will give everyone the opportunity to ask questions, seek advice, and discover points of contact that launch relationships and encourage collaboration between the fields. In the true spirit of a workshop, we will encourage participants to raise questions at any point along the way.

Preliminary List of Readings and Images:

Art history: Master of Mary of Burgundy (?), A Burgundian Prince at Prayer and A Burgundian Princess at Prayer, from a book of moral and religious treatises, probably 1468-77. Brussels, Bibliothèque Royal, Ms. 9272-76, fols. 55 and 182.
Literature: George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (Menston: Scholar Press Limited, 1971), pp. 114-15, 119, and Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence (Menston: Schoalr Press Limited, 1971), unpaginated, approximately 4 pages.
Music: Jacque Arcadelt's madrigal, Il bianco i dolce cigno (1538), arguably one of the most well-known musical works in Renaissance Europe, as well as the most famously erotic. To be played as a recording.