Table of Contents (PDF)

The material published here greatly contributes to the knowledge of the scarcely preserved painted tombs in Israel and elsewhere. The wish to attain "life after death" is expressed in the visual representations depicted in these monuments. The question that always arises is that of whether various pictures are intended to represent the imagined actual dwelling place of the deceased in their afterlife, or whether they pertain to a mythical, idealized and unattainable place. It is plausible that the most desirable aspects and objects that had comprised ordinary life would be translated to the eternal abode. However, the author believes that the various represented elements and objects gained additional meanings, suggesting the deceased's hope or belief in an even better world. The widespread appearance of these motifs suggests, that it was the ancient written sources that might have provided the intellectual basis for the general concepts as well as the overall program of each individual tomb. Each tomb is here described and analysed separately, providing a comprehensive study of the respective motifs, and their association into a coherent iconographic program. In an attempt to establish the specific religious affiliation of the deceased and the accurate dating of the tombs, the ancient written sources are related to, and in addition to a comparative iconographic analysis of funerary monuments in different media - such as sarcophagi, mosaics and painted tombs - discovered around the Mediterranean basin and elsewhere in the late Antique and early Byzantine worlds. More than 250 illustrations in colour and several drawings illustrate the tombs in Israel and the comparative material.

תוכן עניינים (PDF)

Table of Contents (PDF)

The Marian portals in Augsburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Thann and Ulm, products of the Parler workshops, are among the most spectacular and innovative Gothic enterprises of the fourteenth century. Teeming with hundreds of sculptured figures set in elaborate narratives, they share a sim­ilar program, displaying the Life of the Virgin Mary and the stories of the Creation. Through a close examination of these visual narratives as a late medieval art of communication, and an exploration of their visual strate­gies, the author contextualizes their function within their cultural milieu.

Table of Contents (PDF)

Eli Rozik Ph. D. (b. 1932) is professor emeritus of theatre studies.
 

He was head of the Department of Theatre Studies and Dean of the Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University; specializes in theatre theory, particularly in non­verbal communication in performance analysis; and published numerous scientific articles in international leading journals, in Europe and the United States, and Metaphor in Theatre and Poetry (1981 - Hebrew), The Language of the Theatre (1991 - Hebrew & 1992 - English), Elements of Play Analysis (1992 - Hebrew), The Roots of Theatre - Rethinking Ritual and Other Theories of Origin (2002), and Generating Theatre Meaning - A Theory and Methodology of Performance Analysis (2008).
 

Prof. Rozik was the editor of the international journal Assaph - Studies in the Theatre, 1977-2000. To reach the website click here.

For the first time, this book suggests a comprehensive theory of nonverbal metaphor in the arts and an explanation for its vast appeal: its roots in preverbal imagistic thinking.
 

It challenges theories designed to solely explain verbal metaphor, while its main conjecture is that the study of nonverbal metaphor sheds light also on verbal metaphor.
 

Nonverbal metaphor is a phenomenon parallel to and no less widespread than verbal metaphor.
 

Its primeval roots in preverbal imagistic thinking are reflected in residual preverbal phenomena, such as dreaming, day dreaming and children imaginative play.
 

Metaphor thus reflects an alternative mode of thinking, which language had to integrate under a special convention.
 

This book suggests a definition of iconicity on imagistic grounds, alternative to the traditional semiotic one, and focuses on and explores the omnipresence of metaphor in the arts, with particular emphasis on theatre.

Illustration: etching by Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos.