Hyle, Materia, Sylva, Subject Matter, Prime Matter, Woods
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Sarah Powrie
Organizer Affiliation
St. Thomas More College
Presider Name
Sara Ritchey
Presider Affiliation
Univ. of Louisiana-Lafayette
Paper Title 1
"Hyle sive Materia": Rupert of Deutz on Matter, the Elements, and Chaos
Presenter 1 Name
Wanda Zemler-Cizewski
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Marquette Univ.
Paper Title 2
"Tractates in Stone": On the Origin of Matter
Presenter 2 Name
Nurit Golan
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Tel Aviv Univ.
Paper Title 3
"A Natura ad Vivum Effigiatum": The Artistic Agency of Nature in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Presenter 3 Name
Rebecca Zorach
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. of Chicago
Paper Title 4
Sylvan Images: Augustine's Rhetoric of Unformed Potential
Presenter 4 Name
Sarah Powrie
Start Date
15-5-2015 3:30 PM
Session Location
Bernhard 159
Description
The panel proposes to generate an interdisciplinary conversation about philosophical and poetic expressions of "matter" in late ancient and medieval contexts. The confluence of literary and scientific conceptions of materiality have animated early modern scholarship for some time, with studies such as Stephen Fallon's Milton Among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England, Jonathan Gil Harris's Untimely Matter in the Age of Shakespeare, and Jonathan Goldberg's The Seeds of Things. This panel seeks to stimulate conversations among specialists in literature, philosophy, art history, and the history of science, so as to explore fields of meaning generated by the historically influential keywords: "materia" and "sylva"
"Materia" and "Sylva" (Latin variants of the Greek "hyle," meaning "primary substance") are invoked to categorize the indescribable material preceding created form. Calcidius's description of "sylva" and "materia" in his Commentary on Plato's Timaeus played a seminal role in the medieval interpretation of Genesis and twelfth-century natural philosophy, as medieval commentators used Calcidius's terms to interpret the confused mass of darkness featured in the first verse of Genesis. "Materia" and "sylva" also refer to woods or timber, describing an uncharted geographic site or latent natural resource that might be harvested and transformed for human use. For instance, Virgil's account of early agriculture in the Georgics describes the sylvan wilderness as transformed into productive land with fruit-bearing crops. Such "sylvan" expressions contain ecocritical implications, signaling an instrumentalizing regard of the natural world. Finally both "sylva" and "materia" are rhetorical/ compositional terms, with "materia" referring to the subject of a text, and "sylva" signifying fragments of verse that the poet intends to refine and perfect. In the hands of medieval writers, the metaphysical, physical and poetic nuances of "sylva" and "materia"become conflated and elastic, as literary authors self-referentially describe the unformed "sylva" of their nascent poetic intuitions, as allegorized Natures explain their physical and literary "materia," as Genesis commentators compare the divine work of transforming matter to the carpenter's craft of shaping wood. Augustine, Bernardus Silvestris, Peter Abelard, Jean de Meun, and Dante all experiment with these various intonations of "materia" and "sylva." This panel aims to extend the discussion of sylvan materia so as to explore these philosophical and poetic expressions.
submitted by Sarah Powrie, St. Thomas More College
Hyle, Materia, Sylva, Subject Matter, Prime Matter, Woods
Bernhard 159
The panel proposes to generate an interdisciplinary conversation about philosophical and poetic expressions of "matter" in late ancient and medieval contexts. The confluence of literary and scientific conceptions of materiality have animated early modern scholarship for some time, with studies such as Stephen Fallon's Milton Among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England, Jonathan Gil Harris's Untimely Matter in the Age of Shakespeare, and Jonathan Goldberg's The Seeds of Things. This panel seeks to stimulate conversations among specialists in literature, philosophy, art history, and the history of science, so as to explore fields of meaning generated by the historically influential keywords: "materia" and "sylva"
"Materia" and "Sylva" (Latin variants of the Greek "hyle," meaning "primary substance") are invoked to categorize the indescribable material preceding created form. Calcidius's description of "sylva" and "materia" in his Commentary on Plato's Timaeus played a seminal role in the medieval interpretation of Genesis and twelfth-century natural philosophy, as medieval commentators used Calcidius's terms to interpret the confused mass of darkness featured in the first verse of Genesis. "Materia" and "sylva" also refer to woods or timber, describing an uncharted geographic site or latent natural resource that might be harvested and transformed for human use. For instance, Virgil's account of early agriculture in the Georgics describes the sylvan wilderness as transformed into productive land with fruit-bearing crops. Such "sylvan" expressions contain ecocritical implications, signaling an instrumentalizing regard of the natural world. Finally both "sylva" and "materia" are rhetorical/ compositional terms, with "materia" referring to the subject of a text, and "sylva" signifying fragments of verse that the poet intends to refine and perfect. In the hands of medieval writers, the metaphysical, physical and poetic nuances of "sylva" and "materia"become conflated and elastic, as literary authors self-referentially describe the unformed "sylva" of their nascent poetic intuitions, as allegorized Natures explain their physical and literary "materia," as Genesis commentators compare the divine work of transforming matter to the carpenter's craft of shaping wood. Augustine, Bernardus Silvestris, Peter Abelard, Jean de Meun, and Dante all experiment with these various intonations of "materia" and "sylva." This panel aims to extend the discussion of sylvan materia so as to explore these philosophical and poetic expressions.
submitted by Sarah Powrie, St. Thomas More College