Linear Perspective and the Renaissance Lyric

As recent art historical scholarship has demonstrated, the techniques of linear perspective displace narrative (the artwork's content) in favor of the relations between aesthetic objects (the artwork's form). In this regard, perspectival art performs a rhetorical transaction analogous to t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PMLA : Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 2019-03, Vol.134 (2), p.280-297
Main Author: Johnson, Kimberly
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetics
Narratives
Poetry
Renaissance period
Semantics
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
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Summary:As recent art historical scholarship has demonstrated, the techniques of linear perspective displace narrative (the artwork's content) in favor of the relations between aesthetic objects (the artwork's form). In this regard, perspectival art performs a rhetorical transaction analogous to that of its “sister art,” lyric poetry. The formal features and poetic strategies of lyric parallel the geometric effects of perspectival art: both practices differentiate the aesthetic surface from the transparentizing demands of narrative. Each art form stages the interaction of irreconcilable terms— content and form —and documents the dynamic and incommensurable relation between semantic meaning and meaninglessness. Lyric's dominance in the Renaissance, exemplified here by sonnets of Sidney and Shakespeare, reflects a wider cultural valorization of the experiential and materializing priorities of the aesthetic, an affirmation of objective, apprehensible elements whose significance is unyoked from the obligation to narrative.
ISSN:0030-8129
1938-1530
DOI:10.1632/pmla.2019.134.2.280