Ladder of Shadows

by Sobin, Gustaf

• ISBN13: 9780520253346
• ISBN10: 0520253345
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-01-05
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Bits of late Roman coinage, the mutilated torso of a marble Venus, blue debris from an early medieval glassworks, and the powder rasped from the reputed tomb of Mary Magdalene--these tantalizing mementos of human history found scattered throughout the landscape of southeastern France are the points of departure for this lyrical narrative. A companion volume to Gustaf Sobin's acclaimedLuminous Debris, Ladder of Shadowspicks up where the former left off: with late antiquity, covering a period from roughly the third to the thirteenth century. Here Sobin offers brilliant readings of late Roman and early Christian ruins in his adopted region of Provence, shifting through iconographic, architectural, and sacramental vestiges to shed light on nothing less than the existential itself.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Apt: Reading an Antique City as Palimpsest	p. 5
Desolate Treasure	p. 15
Crypto-Christianity: The Sarcophagi of Arles, I	p. 20
Terra Sigillata	p. 29
Relics: Membra Martyrum as Living Current	p. 35
Venus Disfigured	p. 44
The Blossoming of Numbers: The Baptistery at Riez	p. 52
The Deletion of Shadow: The Sarcophagi of Arles, II	p. 59
City of God	p. 65
Laying the Dragon Low	p. 76
The Dark Ages: A History of Omissions	p. 85
The Blue Tears of Sainte-Marthe	p. 92
The Blind Arcade: Reflections on a Carolingian Sarcophagus	p. 99
Celestial Paradigms	p. 107
Vaulting the Nave	p. 113
The Dome: Architecture as Antecedent	p. 120
Classical Roots, Evangelical Branches	p. 126
Vanished Scaffolds and the Structures Thereof	p. 136
Incastellamento: Perching the Village, I	p. 143
Incastellamento: Perching the Village, II (The Circulades of Languedoc)	p. 153
Faja Oscura	p. 163
Psalmodi	p. 169
The Fifth Element: From Manna to Exaction	p. 175
Mary Magdalene the Odoriferous	p. 184
The Death of Genesis	p. 196
Notes	p. 211
Index	p. 225
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