The dangerous act of seeing the role of the gaze in Maurice Sceve's 1544 "Delie".
- Author/Creator:
- Barnett, Jenny Davis
- Publication/Creation:
- Thesis Ph.D. Emory University 2010
- Resource Type:
- Book
More Details
Additional/Related Title Information
- Full Title:
- The dangerous act of seeing the role of the gaze in Maurice Sceve's 1544 "Delie".
Related Names
- Additional Author/Creators:
- Emory University. Department of French
Subjects/Genre
- Genre:
- Academic theses
Description/Summary
- Summary:
- Most often criticized as difficult and obscure, Maurice Sceve's 1544 Delie objet de plus haulte vertu (a book of 50 woodcut images and 449 dizains) portrays seeing as a dangerous act. As the visual experience controls and shapes Sceve's work, the act of seeing constructs images of terror, aggression and suffering. While some scholars have noted this aspect of vision in Sceve's poetry, what I argue for by contrast is that representations of the deadly gaze are present throughout the entire work, namely, both in the text and in the woodcut images.
My dissertation focuses upon the following largely unexamined features of Sceve's opus: first, the role of the gaze in the signifying relationship between the image and textual motto in the woodcuts and in the structural relation between the image, motto and commentary dizains; second, the influential literary and visual arts in Sceve's era, thus providing a new interpretative strategy for the modern day reader by supplying information gleaned from art history, literary theory, close reading of text/image and hermeneutical analysis.
My interdisciplinary approach offers an analysis and articulation of the complex derivation of emblems and books of imprese (such as Delie, from medieval legend and bestiary lore, Graeco-Roman mythology and the Renaissance interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics) and provides a key for understanding how Sceve reinterprets myth and legend primarily through the figures of the unicorn, basilisk, Hathor-Medusa and Narcissus, in order to show that the act of seeing is always pervaded by fear, deception and death. Scenes of sight and mirrored reflection in the woodcut images tell us more about the gaze than the "literary images" in the text alone. Sceve suggests, I argue, in the interplay between word and image that seeing the self, seeing the other and seeing the other within is not only dangerous but also fatal.
My dissertation, then, offers an alternative template for future studies in emblematic literature, opens up Sceve's work to a larger audience and provides a much needed entry point into Delie. - Language:
- English
- Physical Type/Description:
- 1 online resource (209 pages) ; cm
- General Note:
- Source of abstract: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 71-12, Section: A, page: 4405.
Advisor: Kevin Corrigan. - Local Note:
- ProQuest digital dissertation copies of Emory dissertations may be downloaded free of charge by Emory faculty, students, and staff unless the author has chosen to embargo the work.
Additional Identifiers
- Catalog ID (MMSID):
- 990017589920302486
- ISBN:
- 9781124234045
Tools
- Cite
- Export as RIS
-
Direct Link
Direct Link
Direct Link URL
- Staff View