080086 SE Seminar: "The Blazing World" (2020S)

The relationship between text and image is the lowest common denominator based on four novels of which three hold a utopian or rather dystopian dimension. The text-image-ratio is specific in each case.

„The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World“ by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, dated 1666/1668 is the first utopian novel written by a woman: A female protagonist visits a world which is connected to ours via the North Pole. Beings of all kind (bird-men, worm-men etc.) and different color live peacefully together. Questions of visual originals (mappae mundi, TO maps, graphic reproduction, illustrated treatises, as well as world maps from the time of M. Cavendish) which might have been serving as suggestions of the imaginated world.

The 1908 novel „The other side“ by Alfred Kubin is dedicated to similar issues like in the artist‘s works of fine art which bridge from symbolism to surrealism. The male protagonist travels together with his wife to a dystopian, finally perished dream empire.

Siri Hustvedt’s 2015 novel „The Blazing World“ portrays in an apparently realistic way the late career of a New York based female artist who plants three group of works to three young artists – with their consent. Hustvedt follows the antique tradition of „ecphrasis“ therefore the question arises of factually existing role models in the contemporary art which might have inspired the imaginated work groups in the novel.

The 2019 novel „Kryonium. Experiments of memory“ by painter and media artist Matthias Zimmermann entices into a magical world which is shpaed by the aesthetic of computer games. Like in the Kubin novel the question here is about the relation of both medias in the oeuvre of the author.

Bespoken questions will be developed together within the first units in March, worked out in small groups (4–5 participants), and presented as team with PPT presentations. The term paper is to be written individually.

Methods: Iconography, iconology, stylistic analysis, transdisciplinary approach (e.g. narratology).

Condition: excellent knowledge of English is required.

Aims: Advancement of visual imagination ratio as analysis base. Ability to develop and answer transdisciplinary hypothesis