The Principle of Personification

Hardly any other imaging technique was more successful in the early modern period then the personification. Allegorical context, created to the large extent out of these embodiments, has dominated the arts, whereby on occasion, the extensive and increasingly more complex personification image programs began to fluctuate in ambivalence. Although the interest in this pivotal cultural technique arose as early as the end of the middle ages, the principle `personification' received new impulses from the `rediscovery' and union with mythological elements in the 14th and 15th centuries. All of Europe celebrated the return of the ancient gods, who by then detached from their original context, to the coeval viewer embodied primarily abstract characteristics and principles. The discrepancy between the `disembodied projection' of the middle ages and the corporeal figures of the gods discovered by the Renaissance for its own purposes has previously been described by Walter Benjamin. The success of the new form of representation can be attributed not least to this strained connection.

The goal of our research group is to apply the viewpoints of various disciplines to reveal the forms and functions of this pivotal cultural technique in its critical early stages lasting from the late middle ages to the 18th century, a period that must be considered fundamental for the reconstruction of the modern image conception.

I. Prinzip ‚Personifikation’. Visuelle Intelligenz und epistemische Tradition, 1300 – 1800

Dr. Cornelia Logemann, Nachwuchsgruppenleiterin

II. Unsittliche Frauen – Konzepte von Weiblichkeit in der Druckgraphik der Frühen Neuzeit

Nicole Sobriel M.A., Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
 

III. Quellen zur außereuropäischen Kunst in der Frühen Neuzeit

Susanne Thürigen M. A., Projektmitarbeiterin

IV. Erdteilallegorien und 'Bananenmädchen' - Zu Repräsentationen des 'Exotischen' am menschlichen Körper

Miriam Oesterreich M.A., (assoziiertes Mitglied)

V. Personifikation, Poetik und Geschlecht

Julia Rüthemann M.A., (assoziiertes Mitglied)

VI. Dämonen, Trickster und orixás: Koloniale und post-koloniale Mythopoeisis im brasilianischen Theater. Afrobrasilianische und indigene mythische Personifikationen und Allegorien

Dania Schüürmann M.A., Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin

VII. Allegorische Verkörperungen politischer Ordnung in Großbritannien und im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation

Michael Mohr, Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter