Research

The moral meaning of Renaissance art

Researchers in the Department of Art History and Theory have been awarded over £200,000 by the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) for a study on the moral nature of Renaissance images.

The award, granted to Professor Thomas Puttfarken and Dr Kate Dunton, brings the total amount of AHRB funding currently held in the Department to over £1.7 million.

The project, entitled The Moral Nature of the Image in the Renaissance, will involve investigating how people viewed paintings during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During that period, opportunities to view paintings were rare and the way people looked at art, and what it meant to them, is likely to have differed from how twenty-first century audiences look at art.

The aim of the project is to investigate the likelihood that artists used art to convey moral lessons and that those looking at paintings expected to learn something about how they should conduct their lives.

Professor Puttfarken explained further: 'In the medieval world, paintings primarily depicted religious scenes and they are accepted as having had various layers of meanings: they were historical, allegorical, and they also sent out messages about how people should behave. There is an assumption that during the Renaissance, when the use of naturalism increased dramatically, this all changed.

'However, Caravaggio, one of the greatest naturalists of the time, was still painting religious themes and was certainly deliberately using them to convey moral lessons, as were many other artists of the time. And those viewing paintings still expected to be morally uplifted by art.'

The project will conclude in 2008 with the publication of a book by the grant holders. There will also be two conferences associated with the study: one at the end of the first year for British researchers and a second in 2008 for an international audience.

Novel research wins prestigious award

A historian from the University has won a prestigious award from the British Academy to research the making of the English novel.

Professor James Raven will take up his two-year Research Readership in October, allowing him to study the social and commercial history of novels in England.

The British Academy awarded just 15 Research Readerships, from 99 applications.

Professor Raven's aim is to produce an accessible single-volume book, covering the business of manufacturing and marketing English novels from their emergence in the early eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, when they faced competition from other forms of popular culture, such as film, theatre and wireless.

He has devoted much of his academic career, spent previously at Oxford and Cambridge universities, researching book history.

His previous research has included a bibliography of some 3,000 novels written and published between 1770 and 1830, of which around 300 have been completely lost.

'Many of the authors were female scribblers, hoping to write a bestseller and make their fortune', he said. 'Most of them ended their days in poverty. The beneficiaries were not the writers, but the rich and powerful booksellers and circulating librarians.'

Professor Raven has read many of these early novels. 'The literary quality of most of them is awful,' he said. Early works include instructional guides to polite behaviour, and sentimental novels.

Many late eighteenth century novels involve rather tedious exchanges of letters, he added, while this period also saw the emergence of gothic horror novels.

Professor Raven's research will involve trawling through correspondence files of publishers, booksellers and library managers, and the letters and memoirs of readers and reviewers.

It will study the tensions between the book business and literary devaluation, the eighteenth century version of the 'dumbing down' debate. During this period, an outcry developed blaming these novels for social subversion and 'turning young women's heads'.

Bookshelf

Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art
Matthias Röhrig Assunção
Routledge Sport in the Global Society Series

In his new book, Dr Matthias Röhrig Assunção of the Department of History explores the origins of Capoeira, a once unknown martial art now taught in Brazilian schools and practised around the world.

As its popularity has increased, so have conflicts about the meaning and purpose of Capoeira. Some advocates are seeking Olympic recognition for what they see as an international sport but to traditionalists, it is part of their heritage, a weapon they once used against injustice and repression.

Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art explores the martial art as a field of confrontation where the different struggles that divide Brazilian society are played out. It is the first scholarly account of Capoeira's history and development.

Also in the printed February edition of Wyvern:

• New life discovered in deep sea
• The consequences of early childbearing