Category Archives: Humanities and Social Sciences

Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures

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This post was contributed by Linda Grant, a Birkbeck PhD student working on the Renaissance reception of Latin love elegy, and jointly supervised in English and Classics by Professors Sue Wiseman and Catharine Edwards.

On Thursday May 232013 as part of Arts Week, Birkbeck was delighted to host a lecture by Leonard Barkan, Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton, on the ‘deliciously ambiguous’ relationship between words and pictures, poetry and painting. Leonard, with typical verve, energy, humour and keen insight drew on his recent book, Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures (Princeton University Press, 2012), but also took the opportunity to explore some of the questions that, as he put it, weren’t in the book but should have been.

The concept and literary practice of ecphrasis, the textual description of a visual work of art, has a long history going back at least as far as Homer’s description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad. But what happens when an art object is created out of words within a literary text, or when a painting turns on the mimetic representation of written language? Moving with enviable ease between classical antiquity and the European Renaissance, Leonard offered rich and perceptive analyses of some key cultural moments when poetry and image come together: Ovid’s Metamorphoses which insistently probes the relationship between name and physical form; Caravaggio’s 1602 painting St Matthew and the Angel with its central focus on the physical writing of the gospel; Desdemona’s vividly-described handkerchief in Othello.

Erudite and yet wonderfully relaxed and generous, Leonard gave us a stimulating talk which prompted many questions and much discussion afterwards.

Caravaggio_MatthewAndTheAngel_byMikeyAngels

Caravaggio – Matthew and the Angel

Shakespeare and the Senses

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This post was contributed  by Jessica Barrett, a student on Birkbeck’s MA Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance.

On Tuesday evening Birkbeck arts students attended a successful presentation on Shakespeare and the Senses with Mr Simon Smith, Dr Gillian Woods and Dr Derek Dunne as part of the 2013 Birkbeck Arts Week.

The evening began with Simon Smith’s talk on sound within and without of the theatre. Attendees listened to clips of music from the early modern era. One clip, called The City Cries by Richard Dering, gave examples of the street noises one might hear of people selling their wares at the markets in Elizabethan London. Also, Mr. Smith called attention to the measurement of sound by comparing the decibels of applause, a human shout and moderate surf, all noises that would have surrounded the Elizabethan playhouses. Lastly, Smith highlighted a 1596 petition to the Privy Council by 31 Blackfriars’ residents, which prevented Shakespeare’s theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, from moving into the city because of fear of noise pollution. Smith’s lecture was an interesting exploration into the sounds of early Modern England, adding a three-dimensional quality to what life surrounding the playhouses might have been like, as well as reminding us that sound is one sense that can happen to you without you actively or purposely taking part.

Dr Woods followed with an insightful look at George Hakewill’s The Vanitie of the Eye, focusing on how sight was considered the most dangerous of all senses to many Elizabethans (especially anti-theatricalists). Sight was compared with types of sin alluding to how, like sin, theatre spectators can become trapped or fixated on what they are gazing upon. Woods exemplified her points by focusing on The Winter’s Tale and its plot of deception. Leontes thinks he sees his wife, Hermione flirting with his good friend Polixenes, which leads to Hermione’s arrest, and trial. Woods ended her talk by deconstructing the last scene, where Hermione’s statue comes to life, a moment of idolatrous wonder from her daughter, Perdita, and a transformation, which confuses audience members’ seeing it for the first time.

Dr Dunne closed the night’s talks with a discussion on sound deprivation in relation to Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and the judicial system of Rome. The play’s many instances of deafness, dumbness, and blindness were seen as a loss of metaphor for a judicial system that does not listen. Dunne goes further in his analogy by examining how tears are a result of the blindness and dumbness and are instrumental in obscuring meaning creating ambivalence in the thoughts of the characters.

Those who attended the talks were keen to ask questions at the end and further explore the final scene in The Winter’s Tale as well as commenting on sensory overload in Shakespearean films which contrasted nicely with the presenters’ topics.

Handel’s Cross

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This post was contributed by Dr Fintan Walsh, lecturer in theatre and performance studies in Birkbeck’s Department of Enghlish and Humanities.

Thursday night saw a production of Handel’s Cross take place in the recently launched G10 performance space in Birkbeck’s School of Arts. Directed and performed by Birkbeck lecturer Andrew McKinnon, and written and also performed by Martin Lewton (his partner in Theatre North), Handel’s Cross stages one man’s recurring sexual fantasy involving the 18th-century composer.

The performance begins with Lewton removing his clothes and being bound to a St. Andrew’s cross by McKinnon. He directly addresses the audience, sharing a story which takes us back to 1751, on the night of the premier of the then 66-year-old Handel’s cantata ‘The Choice of Hercules.’  The leading role is performed by renowned 22-year-old castrato Gaetano Guadagni.

Few details are known about Handel’s personal and especially sexual life.  Historians tend to agree that he was over-weight and even greedy, as mocked in Joseph Goupy’s caricature that features a grotesque pig’s snout (see right). Lewton takes the ambiguity surrounding Handel’s imitate life, and the notion (based on his rousing music) that he must have been a passionate man, to imagine a relationship between Guadagni and the composer, and to imagine himself as a subject of his brutish desires.

As Lewton speaks from the cross, acting as a kind of Handel substitute, McKinnon steps in at various points to attach nipple clamps, spray his chest with hot wax, and whip his body. With Handel’s music intermittently flooding the space, the S&M scenario combines with historical fantasy to powerfully suggest a link between artistic pain, Christian suffering, and homoerotic desire.

‘What are the attractions of fantasy in a world where bodies are bombarded and oppressed?’ Lewton asks towards the end of his 45-minute performance. It’s not a question he answers, but it’s one that lingers after his dismount.

The Art of Writing; Or the Science of Writing

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This post was contributed by Clare Brown, a student on Birkbeck’s MA History of Art. Clare also blogs at Renaissance Utterances.

‘Stop it with all the damn metaphors’
Kirk to ‘Bones’ McCoy in irritated exasperation 
Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)

Science writing has held a peculiar interest for me this week, given my Trekkie credentials. I’ve seen the new Star Trek movie twice and have contemplated buying the original ‘Wrath of Khan’ to compare the change in writing and production styles. However for the purposes of these notes, the quote above is the perfect introduction to the Birkbeck Science and Writing Symposium, 21 May 2013.

A rare group of people – two poets, a playwright, an astronomer, a science/history/cultural academic, two actors and a cartoonist – were brought together not just to discuss the way they communicate their ideas but to actually demonstrate and showcase their skills. I’m not going to simply narrate what each person said but try to highlight themes. What I must say is, so often at academic symposia the emphasis is on the presentation of paper after paper with little or no presenter animation. No matter how interesting the topic, my eyes glaze over eventually but not here, not this time, we were off; starting with the Big Bang. Before I come on to the themes, I want to dwell a little on the poets and their poetry.

Anyone who has written poetry is aware of the painstaking care that goes into the selection of words, creation of sentences and the presentation of it on paper. Simon Barraclough is instantly ‘get-able’ with his ability to have words fall out of his subconscious. He is currently working on various projects; the first is penning a contribution to a collection of poems inspired by Light Show, the recent Hayward gallery exhibition, as well as his own Sun inspired collection. He entertained with his series of From Big Bang To Heat Death, my favourite being this one, because of the perfect combination of religion, science and cultural reference:

Our fusion
Which art in heaven
Stelliferous
From evil 

However Rosie Sheppard is a different kind of poet. With her scientific background and a fascination with DNA she uses the everyday, such as food, as a way of conveying the complex patterns and processes of nature and science. Earlier I was rereading one of the poems she recited and her astonishing images conjured by words and situations are tightly structured in a way that is suggestive of the double helix. But only because she told me it was there. Which is like telling a person who likes flowers purely for their scent that behind all the pretty smell is a complicated list of chemicals and chemical reactions. Interesting but without the specialised knowledge, some of the clever stuff goes over my head.

The themes which predominated were roughly these:

  • Science fiction is the absolute favourite way of linking writing and science. From wildly speculative space travel to the sci-fi closer to home, as demonstrated by Nick Payne with ‘Constellation’, the enduring popularity of the incorporation of science into fiction will continue. Science provides a way into a story, writers can play with it, laugh at it, imagine all possibilities and explore what would otherwise be difficult topics. As Nick said, the cosmologists he spoke to rubbished his multiverse theory but he has none-the-less produced a wondrous ‘what if’ play about death.
  • Rise in popular science and the use of accurate and clear summaries of contentious science to inform the public. Darryl Cunningham, cartoonist/graphic novelist has used the power of the image to blast bad science such as the MMR Scandal.
  • Scientists spend a lot of time writing, whether it is grant applications, reports or articles, communicating with the public, so a number of different styles are required. The Public Astronomer Marek Kukula emphasised the importance of getting precisely the right words, which was then immediately echoed by the poets. Another interesting linguistic point Marek made was the importance of foreign scientists working in English, for example, returning to home institutions and having to create new words in their own language to explain new concepts.
  • A continuing collaboration between the writers of art and science. The more theoretical and exploratory areas of science are perhaps more aligned to the arts; financially speaking they may not have a direct payoff but it’s culturally vital to have that inspiration and ‘blue sky’ understanding of our infinitely complex world. Scientists are working on imagining unimaginably abstract ideas, multiverses, esoteric maths, string theory, god particles, black holes. Some writers use art to explain science and this scientific language in turn enriches art. Science provides new metaphors. As Laura Salisbury stated, this is a hybrid language, a juxtaposition of communications ‘abraiding’ with one another.
  • An undeveloped theme was science as a new faith. For the majority of us, we live in a world in which we have to trust because we don’t understand the science behind every-day objects. Laura Salisbury in her cool articulate way outlined the importance of cultural assumptions, drawing on the ideas of French sociologist of science anthropologist Bruno Latour. Interestingly he said that we only become truly modern when we separate the rational from the irrational/superstitious. Scientists and their theories are often found to be wrong and the conservative religious right suggest this is a flaw. But all theories and ideas are incomplete and the enquiring mind is happy to uncover layers of truth.
  • Unrealistic expectation in medical science was also touched upon with examples of illness and resuscitation on television discussed. Marek says that there is no problem with fiction bending  scientific rules but when you’re on a real operating table you want it right. This takes us back to the way that hard science is communicated and the style that the doctor, scientists selects when disseminating methods, procedures etc. No art or metaphor required there.
  • There is a perception that science is dull because of the way it is taught in school and this raised some interesting points. Nick in his role as everyman said he had no clue what he was getting into with cosmology and multiverses but he spoke with people who did know. It was suggested that scientists are like dancers – they have learnt the basics and practiced and practiced – they use their knowledge, analytic thinking, and experience to put on their performance. School children are still learning; exercising at the barre, not yet ready to perform and what they need is ‘cool science’ to inspire.

The evening generated plenty of interesting discussion, each one easily a separate essay topic. There was a final note of caution from Laura on the dangers of metaphor, not just as a Star Trek character devise, but that it may cause a blurring in the precision of scientific language. But despite this, the most important feeling to take away was the acknowledgement that science and art are actually of equal importance; certainly the language of each, informs and enriches the other.