The Projected Heart: Ekphrasis, Material Imagination, and the Shield of Achilles
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11210%2F22%3A10450252" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11210/22:10450252 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
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DOI - Digital Object Identifier
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Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
The Projected Heart: Ekphrasis, Material Imagination, and the Shield of Achilles
Original language description
The paper revisits Homer's description of the making of the shield of Achilles in light of the recent discussions on the relation between ekphrasis and materiality. In order to bring out the ecphrastic shield's animated "thingness" rather than a simply visualized "objecthood", I focus on Homer's obvious cardiocentrism and his understanding of imagination as embodied power whose inner working is contiguous with the forging of metals that compose the shield. It is Hephaestus' "visionary diaphragm" that projects forth the images, and it is this projection that the audience is supposed to emulate with the imagination of their own. At the same time, this emulation cannot erase the subtle yet persistent tension between the vivid evocation of details in particular scenes on the shield, and a striking lack of determination when it comes to the overall arrangement of these scenes and even to the shield's physical shape. This lack is not due to an omission: reinforcing the performative rather than descriptive nature of the shield, it makes us alert to the fact that the shield, insofar as it originally connects to our imagination, cannot be consistently understood as "the cosmic icon": this is because we cannot coherently imagine one thing as enclosing all smaller things including ourselves as both its parts and its beholders. The second part of the study develops this focus on the shield's implied agency by turning to its fate in both the Iliad and later poetry, especially the Hellenistic epigrams. This turn confirms is that, regardless of the poetic genre, the shield of Achilles lives its neither natural nor simply artificial life on the ontologically ambiguous threshold of imaginary object and material thing.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
C - Chapter in a specialist book
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology
Result continuities
Project
<a href="/en/project/EF16_019%2F0000734" target="_blank" >EF16_019/0000734: Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World</a><br>
Continuities
P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)
Others
Publication year
2022
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Book/collection name
Things in Poems: From the Shield of Achilles to Hyperobjects
ISBN
978-80-246-4939-9
Number of pages of the result
18
Pages from-to
17-34
Number of pages of the book
340
Publisher name
Nakladatelství Karolinum
Place of publication
Praha
UT code for WoS chapter
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