MSTU4016-08/Discuss 8

From Studyplace

October 22
Interrogating the Past V: The Art and Architecture of Iconographic Literacy

Discussion Question

Discussion leader: TBA

Required Readings

• Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, anon. trans., (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004), Book V, pp. 159-182 [ Read]
• Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966), Chapters 1 and 4, pp. 1-26, 82-104. Read

Supplemental Reading

[edit] Yeats

• Summarize the classical and medival understanding of memory, and the art of artificial memory.
• Compare and contrast mnemotechnics to communication media (such as oral traditions, hand-written manuscripts, iconography and architecture, and digital media).
  • Are classical organizational structures of memory similar to digital memory structures?
• Do you agree with Yates that medieval iconography is an outgrowth of mnemotechnics? Why or why not?
• Compare Dante's use of imagery in the underworld, to that of Virgil
• How are Platonic ideas present in medieval iconography? Trace their route through historic events, and communications practices.
• Note Yeats's treatment of primary sources. What are the affordances and limitations of medieval manusrcripts as a communications media can you infer?
• How can an understanding of mnemotechnic and the power of iconography influence instructional practices in classrooms today?
• What is your opinion of the effectiveness of imagery in learning materials?

[edit] Hugo

• What does Hugo mean by these statements:
  • "The book will kill the building"
  • "The Press will Kill the Church"
  • "Printing will kill archticture."
• Is architecture a communication media? What are its affordances?
• Compare architcture to epic poetry.
• Do you agree with Hugo's thesis, that architecture is the main form of pre-print communication? Why or why not? What about print's impact on the primacy of architecture?
• Compare Hugo's consideration of gothic architecture to Yate's notions of medival imagery.
• Consider this passage:

It is the ant-hill of intellects. It is the hive where all wit and imagination, those golden bees, store up their honey. The structure has a thousand stories. Here and there, opening on its staircases, we see the dark caves of learning intersecting one another within it. All over its surface art has woven its arabesques, its rose-windows, and its lace-work, to captivate the eye. There each individual work, fanciful and unique as it may seem, has its place and its purpose. Harmony results from the union of all.

• • What other readings from this course does this passage remind you of?
  • How are the two texts' theses different or similar?
  • Has anything "killed prtining"?
• Can architecture, as Hugo describes it, be an instructional tool in todays classroom?
• What is the pedagogical impact of school architecture and printed educational materials?
• If "printing [has killed] architecture" then, what is do we make of contemporary architecture like this:

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