Maria Cohut

SIMULACRUM:

• an image or representation of someone or something

• an unsatisfactory imitation or substitute

The Oxford Dictionaries Online

CONCEPTUAL TRIANGLE:

Artificial likeness

Orig

inal

figu

reDouble of likeness

Roman de la RoseRoman de la RoseBodleian Library, OxfordBodleian Library, OxfordFrench, 15French, 15thth century century

Pygmalion and the Image(Galatea)

Medieval theorists […] understood wonder (admiratio) ascognitive, non-appropriative, perspectival, and particular.Not merely a physiological response, wonder was a recognitionof the singularity and significance of the thing encountered.

[W]onder is induced by the beautiful, the horrible, and theskillfully made, by the bizarre and rare, by that which challengesor suddenly illuminates our expectations, by the range ofdifference, even the order and regularity, found in the world. […][M]arveling and astonishment as reactions seem to be triggered[…] by […] events or phenomena in which ontological and moralboundaries are crossed, confused, or erased.

Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonder (pp 3, 21)

[T]he effect of the uncanny can easily be achieved when oneundertakes to reinterpret some kind of lifeless thing as part of anorganic creature, especially in anthropomorphic terms, in a poeticor fantastic way.

The unpleasant impression is well known that readily arises inmany people when they visit collections of wax figures, panopticons and panoramas. In semi-darkness it is often especially difficult todistinguish a life-size wax or similar figure from a human person.

Ernst Jentsh, On the Psychology of the Uncanny (pp 224, 222)

Sandro Botticelli,Sandro Botticelli,Madonna with ChildMadonna with Child

(detail)(detail)

This for two years had been theObject of his increasing wonder andadoration.

Oh! If such a Creature existed,and existed but for me! Were Ipermitted to [...] press with my lipsthe treasures of that snowy bosom!Gracious God, should I then resistthe temptation?

M.G. Lewis, The Monk (pp 40, 41)

[E]ven in its carnal beginnings courtly love had this in commonwith Mariolatry, that both Mary and the Lady were focal pointsof men's aspirations and desires.

Julia Kristeva, Stabat Mater (pp 140)

What was [Ambrosio’s] amazement at beholding the exactresemblance of his admired Madona [sic] [in Matilda]? The sameexquisite proportion of features, the same profusion of golden hair,the same rosy lips, heavenly eyes, and majesty of countenanceadorned Matilda.

M.G. Lewis, The Monk (pp 81)

It is only when Matilda discards submission that she, as the doubleof the Madonna portrait, no longer satisfies.

When Matilda transgresses the boundary of ideal, femininebehaviour and becomes masterful, she no longer doubles theMadonna portrait and consequently no longer mirrors Ambrosio’sDesires.

Angela Wright, Disruptions of the Idealized Woman (pp 47)

Deliberately, Lewis compares [Antonia] to a statue, not of the Virginnor of a saint but of the pagan goddess of love.

Kate Ferguson Ellis, The Contested Castle (pp 133)

By dying, a beautiful Woman serves as the motive for the creationof an art work and as its object of representation. As a deanimatedbody, she can also become an art object or be compared with one.

Elisabeth Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body (pp 71)

Clemente Susini, Clemente Susini, Anatomical VenusAnatomical Venus (wax, human hair, pearls, rosewood) (wax, human hair, pearls, rosewood)ca 1790, Florence ca 1790, Florence

A Virgin? Oh, dear me, no! I’d soon haverecognized it if it had been a Virgin. It’s anidol, […] you can tell from the look of her.She looks at you with those big white eyesof hers… it’s as if she was staring at you.You can’t look her in the eyes.

So we dug and dug, and gradually thisblack hand appears, like a dead man’shand reaching up out of the ground.

Prosper Mérimée, The Venus of Ille (pp 134, 133)

Both femininity and death inspire the fear of an ultimateloss of control, of a disruption of boundaries between self andOther, of a dissolution of an ordered and hierarchical world.

Elisabeth Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body (pp 182)

[T]here are two Venuses under my roof. One I found inthe ground like a truffle; the other, descended from theskies, has just shared out her girdle among us.

My son, choose [...] the one whom you prefer. […] TheRoman Venus is black, the Catalan Venus is white. TheRoman is cold, the Catalan enflames everything thatapproaches her.

Prosper Mérimée, The Venus of Ille (pp 153)