In his early dialogue ‘On order’ (De ordine) Augustine dramatises a discussion of theodicy in which the Manichaean solution is clearly rejected, even though the debate ends in aporia. It is argued in ...this paper that the dialogue’s dramatic setting at the villa in Cassiciacum is strongly reminiscent of Manichaean imagery and the stock motifs of the Manichaean mythological system. It is proposed in the dialogue itself, that the scenic elements (Augustine’s ill health, night and darkness, the dawning day, dirt and ugliness, fighting cocks) have the character of signs which illustrate the significance of the not-beautiful and the negative in the divine order. The dialogue setting thus presents an ontological scale that leads from the levels of reduced being up to the highest being, linking night or darkness to light or day, dirt to purity, sickness to health, defeat to victory, the ugly to the beautiful. The dialogue setting becomes a semiotic system in which even the ontologically deficient forms of phenomenon always also refer to something at the highest level, namely the omnipotent divine creator. The scenic design of De ordine can thus be read as an extension of the Manichaean system of codes, and hence as a message also addressed to a Manichaean readership.
The series Philologus. Supplemente / Philologus. Supplementary Volumes publishes monographs and edited volumes pertaining to all aspects of the study of ancient literature and its reception, with a ...special focus on interdisciplinary approaches, combining Classics with Literary and Cultural Studies.
Cityscaping Therese Fuhrer, Felix Mundt, Jan Stenger / Therese Fuhrer, Felix Mundt, Jan Stenger
2015
eBook
The term 'cityscaping' is here introduced to characterise the creative process through which the image of the city is created and represented in various media– text, film and artefacts. It thus turns ...attention away from built urban spaces and onto mental images of cities. One focus is on the question of which literary, visual and acoustic means prompt their recipients' spatial imagination; another is to inquire into the semantics and functions that are ascribed to the image of a city as constructed in various media. The examples of ancient texts and works of art, and modern literature and films, are used to elucidate the artistic potential of images of the city and the techniques by which they are semanticised. With its interdisciplinary approach, the volume for the first time makes clear how strongly mental images of urban space, both ancient and modern, have been shaped by the techniques of their representation in media.
Décadence Marco Formisano, Therese Fuhrer
2014, Letnik:
140
eBook
No scholar today would describe late antiquity as an age of "decline and fall", as Gibbon did; instead, to use Marrou's term, it is seen as an "other antiquity", which deserves to be investigated on ...its own terms. Yet the idea of a decadent period, accompanied by a fascination for the image of antiquity on the wane, continues to live in scholarly minds, as is suggested, after all, by the recurring insistence on the point that late antiquity was not a period of decline. This collection of papers engages in a productive way with the fascination exerted by the concept of an era in decline and a literary and artistic fin-de-siècle atmosphere, evoked in the very title 'Décadence'. Whether this fascination is seen as a question of the history of reception or as an ongoing phenomenon, it rarely emerges to the surface of scholarly discussions. This volume invites us to reconsider these questions by making decadent late antiquity a paradigm of interpretation in connection with a conscious and sophisticated re-use of the history of reception.
Wife, Mother, Philosopher THERESE FUHRER
Maternal Conceptions in Classical Literature and Philosophy,
01/2020
Book Chapter
Odprti dostop
As mother of the bishop of Hippo and as a literary character in the Confessions, Monnica¹ at an early date became a personality known to a wide public:² in 1945 in Ostia, the site of her death and ...her first burial place, a fragment was found of the grave inscription set up there either during Augustine’s lifetime or a few years after his death.³ Monnica has been a saint of the Catholic Church since the twelfth century and hence the subject of countless book illustrations, paintings, and frescoes or stained glass in Christian sacred buildings. Her sarcophagus, in which relics
Abstract
The present study aims to ask whether Augustine utilised elements of Manichaean theology to give an account of and profile to the Nicene Christian doctrinal system. In the Confessions ...Augustine links his narrative of the encounter with the Manichaeans, right from the start, to an epistemologically grounded critique of their idea of God (conf. 3.10f.). Whereas the pagan myths can be assigned the function of referring to non-fictional and thus 'true' spheres of meaning, the motifs of Manichaean myth are empty forms (phantasmata) without any reference to reality, which they are supposed to explain. The paper argues that this anti-Manichaean critique of myth is the starting-point for a theory of knowledge of God which opposes the biblical imago dei to the Manichaean phantasmata and can thus be understood as having been conceptualised in opposition to Mani's doctrine of God.
In his early dialogue 'On order' (De ordine) Augustine dramatises a discussion of theodicy in which the Manichaean solution is clearly rejected, even though the debate ends in aporia. It is argued in ...this paper that the dialogue's dramatic setting at the villa in Cassiciacum is strongly reminiscent of Manichaean imagery and the stock motifs of the Manichaean mythological system. It is proposed in the dialogue itself, that the scenic elements (Augustine's ill health, night and darkness, the dawning day, dirt and ugliness, fighting cocks) have the character of signs which illustrate the significance of the not-beautiful and the negative in the divine order. The dialogue setting thus presents an ontological scale that leads from the levels of reduced being up to the highest being, linking night or darkness to light or day, dirt to purity, sickness to health, defeat to victory, the ugly to the beautiful. The dialogue setting becomes a semiotic system in which even the ontologically deficient forms of phenomenon always also refer to something at the highest level, namely the omnipotent divine creator. The scenic design of De ordine can thus be read as an extension of the Manichaean system of codes, and hence as a message also addressed to a Manichaean readership.
The multidisciplinary contributions to this collection of papers look at Rome as the cultural and Milan as the political capital in the 4th and 5th centuries. In the literature of the time both ...cities were perceived as spaces in which the political and clerical power struggles, and the political and cultural changes which were so important for the Latin West took place. The cities are thereby understood as "stages" upon which the world theatre of the politics of power, culture and the church was produced. The reconstruction of both "stage settings" is based on texts, inscriptions and archaeological remains.; Therese Fuhrer, Freie Universität Berlin.
Die Reihe Topoi. Berliner Studien der Alten Welt versammelt Beiträge aus allen altertumswissenschaftlichen Disziplinen, von der Ur- und Frühgeschichte über die Klassische Archäologie bis zur antiken ...Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie. Einen Schwerpunkt bilden Monographien und Sammelbände, in denen die Forschungsergebnisse des Exzellenzclusters Topoi vorgestellt werden. Weitere Schwerpunkte sind in Planung.
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