Aesthetic Studies - Page 4

A Medieval Woman Dares to Stand Up: Marie de France’s Criticism of the King and the Court

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Albrecht Classen

University of Arizona, USA. ORCID: 0000-0002-3878-319X. Email:  aclassen@arizona.edu

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.01

 Abstract:

While medievalists have long recognized Marie de France’s extraordinary literary abilities, we have not yet fully identified the extent to which she stood up as a social critic who attacked many social ills within her society, not holding back in her sharp attacks both against the figure of the king and against the powerful nobles of her time. Only if we combine her lais and her fables in our analysis, can we gain a full understanding of the far-reaching discourse about the danger of abuse of power at the hand of the mighty and rich in the high Middle Ages. Although we tend to identify that past era as deeply remote from us, as repressive, simple-minded, and submissive, Marie’s strong criticism of the abuses by the high-ranking contemporaries sheds important light on a world that was not really that far away from us in many different ways, with many intellectuals already extensively aware about social injustice and the danger of tyranny.

Keywords: Marie de France, court criticism, criticism of the king, lais, fables

Haptic Perception Meets Interface Aesthetics: Cultural Representations of Touchscreen Technology in the Aftermath of the iPhone 2007

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Katheryn Wright

Associate Professor, Core Division, Champlain College, USA

ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6485-9549. Email: kwright@champlain.edu

Volume IX, Number 3, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n3.02

Received August 10, 2017; Revised September 12, 2017; Accepted September 15, 2017; Published September 20,  2017.

Abstract

The touchscreen is something other than a boundary between real and illusory worlds, or what Anne Friedberg (2009) calls a “virtual window” (p. 96). The aesthetics of that ‘something else’ is not determined by the technology itself, but by its use in a myriad of cultural practices including how it is represented as a commodity and an experience. This article examines the representation of touchscreen technology following the release of the iPhone in 2007, comparing a Nine Inch Nails rock concert and Blackberry commercial from 2008 with Bjork’s album/app Biophilia and an American Express advertisement from 2011. Comparing these media experiences reveals a representational shift that occurs between the introduction of the touchscreen and the cultural integration of this technology just three years later. A focus on breaking through the frame of the screen shifts into screen interfaces as the building blocks for the virtual construction of “hybrid space” (De Souza e Silva, 2006).

 Keywords: screen, touch, interface, haptic, body

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