You Point, I figure it out...

Since English is not my first language, I decided to create this blog in order to get my friends' comments and views on my academic essays, because this will, I believe, help me improve both my writing style and my argumentative skills. You do not have to write a long comment or feedback. You can refer to a weak point in my essay, and I will try to figure it out. I know your time is precious but nothing more joyful than intellectual interaction because it enables us to discover the unknown in ourselves and in the world accordingly. Remember that this world was only an idea in someone's mind which indicates the power that ideas could have! So, help my ideas be good in order for them to survive!

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Symbolic Significance of Bagpipes in Dutch Paintings



Symbolic Significance of Bagpipes in Dutch Paintings:

Hendrick Ter Brugghen’s Remarkable Bagpipe Player in Profile as an Example

December 16, 2010


Many scholars interpreted Ter Brugghen’s paintings of musicians as a moral commentary on both the craft of music making and people’s immersion in short-lived pleasures and lusts. Providing evidence for that argument was not hard for those scholars, considering the ever-growing trend in Brugghen’s time of depicting musicians associated with seductive women and/or excessive drinking. In addition, the “ buffoonery or good natured mockery”, which Linda Bauer refers to as a characteristic of Caravaggio’s and his followers’ paintings including Ter Brugghen’s , does imply a somewhat moral message in their view[1]. Moreover, those scholars based a big part of their evidence on the emerging trend of depicting the seven or cardinal sins and the consequences of one living only for his earthly delights as an implicitly didactic way to show people what not to do, instead of telling them what to do. Jheronimus Bosch’s paintings depicting carnal sins where he always has a skeleton bagpiper representing both evil and death is the best embodiment of that trend in Flemish art in the late fifteenth century[2]. Another source of scholar’s argument that the music profession was quite problematic and controversial is the history of music in the Renaissance. The literature of musical history confirms that strict Calvinist churches prohibited the use of musical instruments[3] , and the fact that Bach didn’t write any “church canatatas for Calvinist Cothen” is the best evidence for that[4]. Briefly, those scholars tried to say that Dutch paintings of musicians in Ter Brugghen’s time were not as secular as they appeared. They thought those paintings could not surpass the religious didactic realm, but they actually were stuck in the attitude of using art to serve religion instead of making art for art’s sake.

The perspective from which those scholars look at Ter Brugghen’s paintings of musicians is very tempting to embrace because their evidence is well supported. Nevertheless, I will undertake a broader perspective to look at those paintings considering Linda Bauer’s suggestion that Ter Brugghen’s paintings “can be related to a text”[5]. I will argue that Ter Brugghen was not only providing a moral commentary through those paintings. Instead, he was depicting a bagpipe whose image was meant to allude to its soothing sound and to function as a social healer. This function of the bagpipe as a social healer is found in literature, in pastoral poetry in particular, throughout history.

Not only that painting in the seventeenth-century was a medium through which artists expressed text and/or poetry, but also many poems were illustrated with drawings and paintings. Therefore, I will explore Brugghen’s paintings of musicians in light of this association of musical instruments with text and poetry. Considering the fact that some scholars suggest that paintings of musical instruments represented their tones and/or their melodies, I will inspect the great connection between sight and sound, and the relationship between musical instruments and their representations in visual arts. This will help me figure out to what degree sight was used to represent sound and if that was one of Brugghen’s objectives. I argue that as our senses cannot be separated in perceiving our experiences and as we cannot exclude one when we perceive through another, we cannot attribute Ter Brugghen’s paintings of musicians to one categorical objective: the didactic objective so-to-speak. Yet, I argue that Ter Brugghen’s Bagpiper in Profile evokes a poetic perception of humanity’s means of expression, the bagpipe in this case, and the bagpipe’s ability to soothe the human pain.

Considering Hendrick Ter Brugghen’s Bagpipe Player in Profile (figure. 1), currently in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, it is an embodiment of the trend of depicting bagpipes and bagpipers in seventeenth century Dutch art[6] . Ter Brugghen’s depiction of the bagpiper is an example of an artistic trend that is rooted in literature, and is altered with the alteration of literary forms and attitudes through ages. My ultimate goal is to understand the symbolic significance of bagpipes and/or bagpipers through the eyes of the seventeenth century Dutch audience. In order to understand Ter Brugghen’s Bagpiper in its social context and its historical background, tracing back the motif of bagpipes and bagpipers in paintings, poetry and manuscripts is the path I will undergo. I will look at the literature of the Dutch Renaissance life and culture, with great emphasis on its music making (including lyrics and poems), musical instruments, musical trends and musicians as well. This will extend to include the history of bagpipes, how they started, how they were used, who played them, where they were played, and the social classification of bagpipers through time.

Shedding light on both the artistic and historical aspect of the painting can be the milestone of looking at it from the point of view of the seventeenth century Dutch viewer. For accessing an artistic piece from an insider’s perspective within its historical framework is greatly helpful in connecting it to other forms of art and other cultural manifestations. Looking at Ter Brugghen’s Bagpiper in its historical context will broaden our perspective and will make it easier to examine its poetic origin and its artistic associations in order to articulate its symbolic significance. The motif of bagpipes and bagpipers in paintings reflected on the same motif in literature, in general, and in pastoral poetry specifically. Understanding Ter Brugghen’s Bagpiper in that sense, we will see the great bond of the image of the bagpipe and its sound, which had a social soothing function in the Dutch art which was borrowed from pastoral poetry in the first place.

Depicting bagpipes and bagpipers in the seventeenth century visual arts was part of a broader trend in Dutch art: depicting musicians along with their musical instruments. Depicting musicians in paintings was a widespread trend in Dutch art in the seventeenth century. This trend was due to the great improvement of instrumental music and instrument production in addition to the great increase of printed works on musical theory[7]. Moreover, the separation of instrumental music and church music in the seventeenth century contributed to its liberation and professionalism which made it more realistic than visionary[8]. Consequently, artists were more interested in portraying “facts” instead of “visions”[9].

In the fifteenth century, the greatly praised Flemish composers moved to Italy, which caused Italy to dominate the musical world and become the “musical power” of Western Europe[10]. This musical excellence and superiority inspired Italian painters to depict musicians with their musical instruments. Since Hendrick Ter Brugghen took a trip to Italy in 1616 and stayed there for a few years, he picked up this trend from Italian painters, especially Caravaggio, whose artistic style had a great impact on Ter Brugghen’s works. According to Slatkes and Franits, Ter Brugghen shared a workshop with Dirk van Baburen in Utrecht (1621-1627) who did “introduce, modernize and establish the trend of representing musicians, flute, lute, and bagpipe players”[11]. Moreover, Ter Brugghen’s early teacher, Abraham Bloemaret, who was in a way or another “the father of the seventeenth-century Utrecht School of painting”, depicted musicians and even a bagpiper in his paintings[12].

This depiction of musicians was logical due to the fact that Dutch artists in the seventeenth century didn’t only work for religious and/ or noble families[13]. Instead, they worked for “city magistrates, boards of governors, shooting clubs, and, above all for the wealthy merchants”[14]. Thus, Dutch artists realized that meeting the needs of the newly-wealthy was the way to popularize their works. As a result, they represented scenes from the everyday “bourgeois or military life”, people who owned artistic works for the decoration of their “parlour”[15]. All of these factors played a significant role in Ter Brugghen’s embracing this artistic approach.

Even though scholars tried to find the root of this trend in the history of visual art and the history of music, they do not seem to pay sufficient attention to the root of it in literature, despite the fact that there was a great connection between visual arts and poetry[16]. We can see this connection in illustrations of manuscripts in the middle ages[17]. In fact, poetry played the role of the inspirer to most creative works at the time to the degree that all forms of art was seen in light of poetry , e.g. “the making or posis of a statue is , not mere manual labor but itself poetry”[18]. This applies to all forms of art since the Greek equivalence of the word art, “facere”, is originally taken from the verb from which the word “poetry” derived[19]. Not only that art had been called “the poetry of art "[20] , but also literary text or poetry, was the primary focus of musicians according to which they adjusted their music by ; “following the sense of the words and thus moving the soul of the listener”[21]. In other words, music was the vehicle through which musicians attempted to serve words. The newly-born relationship between text and music is fully described by Zarlino, the illustrious theorist of Venice and a devoted disciple of Willaert. In 1558, he mentions Plato’s definition of music in his Istituzioni harmoniche (book IV, ch.32), which emphasizes the essentiality of text in music creation[22]. According to Plato, the text is the “principal element” while harmony and rhythm are “subservient “to it[23]. Briefly, Zarlino stresses the notion of expressing meanings and emotions of words through tones. This suggests that musical expression used to symbolize textual representation and /or refer to a textual interpretation. In fact, all cultural and artistic trends reflect on its literature from which they take their origin as will be discussed.

Even though scholars assert that Bagpipes appeared since Antiquity, they cannot determine in what year in particular. Nevertheless, Grove confirms in his Dictionary of Music and Musicians the assumption that the instrument appeared in the first century A.D[24]. Suetonius and Dio Chrysostom affirmed that it was when Nero himself used to play the instrument, which appears on a coin of him[25]. Having been used by emperors and nobility, the instrument did surpass that realm to the world of emperors’ men. Four centuries later and according to Procopius, it was used by “the imperial Roman army”[26]. Finding a bronze bagpiper beneath the old Roman castle at Richborough, Kent, in the eighteenth century contributes to the suggestion of the instrument being introduced into England by Roman soldiers[27]. The exclusive military role of the instrument did not last very long since it started to function as a social instrument as well. In fact, bagpipes had a significant position in both the religious and political worlds in the Middle Ages. They were used in church ceremonies and services and in royal courts as well[28]. In addition, in England in Western Europe, it was used as a folkloric instrument in weddings, dances, rustic festivals and funerals[29]. The wardrobe accounts of Edward II of England for the year 1307 document payment to ‘Janino Chevretter’ (John the Bagpiper)[30]. This shows the involvement of bagpipers in the social life and their connection to the royalty. In addition, in 1334, Edward III issued licenses to grant two bagpipers to visit minstrelsy schools abroad[31]. This confirms the significance of the bagpiper’s profession in the eyes of kings as well as the close association of music and poetry.

Exploring the literary contexts in which bagpipes were mentioned will help in understanding the symbolic significance of it in literature and its connection to the way it was expressed in visual art. In literature, bagpipes had a symbolic significance that Walter Clyde Curry refers to when talking about the bagpiper Miller in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales[32]. Curry thinks that Chaucer used the bagpipe motif in order to serve an artistic function; to symbolize two vices in particular; “gluttony and lustfulness”[33].

We find various depictions of bagpipers in manuscripts in different contexts. In some of those depictions appear in a religious context that illustrate psalms and religious books. For instance, in an illustration of psalm 97, there is a piper among other musicians at the court of King David[34]. We find another ‘crowned’ bagpiper in an illustration of ‘The Life of David’[35]. In other manuscripts, bagpipes appear as a ‘dance instrument’ within courtly scenes in addition to those in which soloist pipers appear[36].

Bagpipers in manuscripts appear in different ways, e.g. as dancing animals that follow other bagpipers and as angel bagpipers celebrating the Coronation of the Virgin whether in church architecture or in manuscripts[37] . the three contexts in which we find human bagpipers in manuscripts in the Middle Ages are ; “ the piper alone; playing for a woman or , occasionally , a man dancing; and a woman dancing or balancing on the shoulders of the piper” [38]. According to David Stephens, this diversity in depictions doesn’t generate any conclusions about the symbolic significance of bagpipers or bagpipes in that time[39]. Yet, it only confirms the popularity of bagpipes “throughout all levels of medieval society”[40].

The more the motif was depicted in literature, the more popular it became and the faster it was represented in paintings. Furthermore, we find at least one bagpiper in most of the representations of the ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’[41]. In his article “Wittenwiler’s Beeki and the Medieval Bagpipe”, G. Fenwick Jones suggests that bagpipes in medieval art were used as a “sexual symbol” that represented “the qualities of gluttony and lechery”[42]. In this context, Jones refers to paintings by Pieter Brueghel the elder that depict peasants with bagpipes, which he thinks is a symbol of their “gluttony, folly, avarice, lasciviousness”[43]. Block mentions the reason behind using bagpipes to symbolize those sins or vices. He attributes that to the physical shape of the instrument itself, its “obvious resemblance to the human stomach”[44]. On the other hand, Adriaane J. Barnouw attributes the symbolization of lechery in bagpipes to its resemblance to the “male organs of reproduction”[45]

Even though some scholars argue that bagpipes were associated with herdsmen and folk festivals, there are many historical examples that show otherwise. According to The Examination of Sir William of Thorpe in an English Garner by Edward Arber, bagpipers played a significant role in the religious world since they accompanied pilgrims in their pilgrimages. This was confirmed by the Lollard William Thorpe who described some of the pilgrimage practices in 1407;

Some other pilgrims will have with them bagpipes: so that every town that they come through, what with the noise of their singing, and with the sound of their piping and with the jangling of their Canterbury bells… they make more noise than if the King came there away, with all his clarions and many other minstrels. [46]

In addition to honoring pilgrims and celebrating their status in the cities through which they passed, bagpipers had another role to play in pilgrimages. This role was referred to in Archbishop Arundel’s reply to William Thorpe after he agreed that it was all right for pilgrims to bring singers and pipers:

When one of them that goeth barefoot striketh his toe upon a stone and hurteth him sore and maketh him to bleed; it is well done, that he or his fellow, begin then a song or else take out of his bosom a bagpipe for to drive away with such mirthm the hurt of his fellow. For with such solace, the travail and weariness of pilgrims is lightly and merrily brought forth.[47]

This soothing function of bagpipes emphasizes the significance and the nobility of the social role of music, singers and pipers in helping people forget their pain. The healing function of word and/or poetry is referred to in a famous episode of the Gerusalemme liberata. Erminia who gets lost in the woods while trying to escape the Christian patrol, calms down and her sorrows fade away when she finds herself in the land of shepherds: “All while he spoke, Erminia hung upon / the old man’s gentle words, intent and quiet. / His wise speech sank into her heart; her senses’ / turbulent waves were soothed a little by it”.[48]

Tasso’s text serves as an evidence for the “ healing agenda” of pastoral poetry [49]Federico Schneider focuses on pastoral poetry as a therapy for “love-melancholy” by displaying Guarani’s Pastor Fido (1589) and Monteverdi Fifth Book of Madrigals (1605) as examples of the “therapeutic urgencies of the pastoral” in the Renaissance[50]. Interestingly, the healing function of music is explicitly mentioned in pastoral poetry “since its methodical origins”, e.g. Pan, scorned by the beautiful nymph Syrinx, resorts to the oaten flute (the “zampogna”) to forget about his brokenhearted feelings[51]. Pastoral drama was used to integrate literary and musical expression

and Guarnini’s “literary interlocutor’s play” and Monteverdi’s as well, are perfect embodiment of this trend[52]. This “marriage” of music and poetry in pastoral drama signified the status of music in theatre and all forms of art accordingly[53]. In addition, it contributed to the appearance of a new function of both music and poetry; “the ultimate musico-poetic therapy” for the brokenhearted[54]

Since some scholars suggested that depiction of musical instruments was meant to represent the sense of hearing, I will explore some paintings that represent the senses in an allegorical manner in order to be able to decide if Brugghen’s depiction of his Bagpiper belongs to this category[55]. Representing the senses through paintings was very common during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries[56], and was accompanied with a new approach in allegory, “less abstract and more exemplary”[57]. According to Hans Kauffmann, this approach was typical among Utrecht painters and we can see it in Jan van Bylert’s The Five Senses, as well as in Ter Brugghen’s Allegory of Excess (Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum)[58] . They both depict a woman squeezing a bunch of grapes in her hand to illustrate the sense of taste exemplarily according to those scholars. For they try to interpret those paintings in light of the conflict between reason and temptation of pleasure, from a moral perspective, only to prove a didactic objective.

Considering the “Aristotelian tradition” that considers taste and touch as “irrational” animalistic senses that lead to gluttony and lust, we can see how some scholars interpreted the allegory of taste and touch in those paintings to be serving a moral objective[59]. Scholars argued that painters intentionally did not depict the allegory fully. Instead, they only depicted half of it, “the temptation to sensual indulgence”, in order to give their audience the opportunity to experience being tempted and be aware of the consequences of that temptation[60]. According to those scholars, this interaction and participation of the audience with the painting was a big part of accomplishing the moral objective of the painting that is manifested in their own temptation[61]. As Bauer puts it, “it is the viewer’s reason that is being challenged to cast aside”[62]. In other words, depiction of “excessive pursuit of pleasure” was interpreted as a means to communicate the notion of “moral corruption” of both the figure depicted and the viewer who actively interacts with the painting[63]. Scholars who embraced this view wanted to find meaning in those paintings to be able to understand the “moralizing concerns of a particularly articulate segment of Dutch society”[64]. They did that interpret those paintings by employing symbolic meanings from other works of art and literature in that time.

In order to discern if Ter Brugghen’s Bagpipers belongs to this category and/ or this interpretation, we should consider the posture of his Bagpiper and compare it with the posture of the figures in the paintings at stake. The figure in Ter Brugghen’s Allegory of Excess is directly facing the viewer and inviting him to taste the grapes as well as the figure in Jan van Bylert’s The Five Senses. This seductive intention can be applied to Caravaggio’s Bacchus since he offers the viewer a glass full of wine with directly looking at him[65]. In contrast, Ter Brugghen’s Bagpiper is giving the viewer his back because he is immersed in his own world. The self-immersed musician can be seen in other paintings by Ter Brugghen ( Figure.2) .The position of the figure changes the whole context of the painting since it changes the perspective of the viewer from an observer in Ter Brugghen’s Bagpipe Player , to a participant in Caravaggio’s Bacchus.

Some scholars took it too far in their interpretation of paintings that represent senses. They interpreted the lack of masculinity in some of Caravaggio’s paintings, e.g. Boy Peeling a Fruit, which is found in an English private collection according to Niclson, from a moral perspective[66]. Interestingly, they associated the “slackness or softening of traditionally masculine traits” with “incontinence”, not with homosexual tendencies or orientation[67]. However, Bauer sheds light on the root of this association in Aristotle’s philosophy ,which asserts that one who can’t resist the temptation of earthly pleasures should be described as feminine: “ If one gives way where people generally resist and are capable of resisting, he deserves to be called effeminate”[68]. Nevertheless, looking at the root of this notion in poetry, we find a portrayal of a figure that resembles those figures, “the Genius whom Spenser uses as Pleasure’s porter at the entrance to the Bower of Bliss”[69]. He is described in book two canto 12, stanzas 46 and 49:

His looser garment to the ground did fall.

And flew about his heels in wanton wize,

Not fit for speedy pace, or manly exercize.[70]

The portrayal of Spenser’s Genius recalls the loose garment of Ter Brugghen’s Bagpiper and his pipe’s drones resting on his naked shoulder. Despite the sensuality of the bagpiper, his thick masculine beard and moustache do negate the allegory of effeminacy suggested by Spenser and Aristotle. Moreover, the seriousness of the Bagpiper’s eye expression suggests that he is truly playing the instrument. In addition, the fact that his fingers are on the pipe’s holes and that his lips are tightly blowing it to control the airwave makes it impossible to think that he is pretending to play. In contrast, we see other musicians in other paintings where they hold wine glasses and/ or flirting with some women with total ignorance to the musical instruments they have in those paintings [71].All of these components contribute to the probability of the suggestion that Ter Brugghen’s Bagpiper does not fit in the category of figures associated with effeminacy because of their moral corruption.

Some scholars such as Svetlana Alpers rejects the moral interpretation of Dutch genre paintings and offers an “epistemological” manner to incorporate in the interpretation of those paintings[72]. Alpers denies the existence of any “didactic and narrative functions” in those paintings. Salomon in Jacob Duck and the Gentrification of Dutch Genre Painting supports this view and questions the authenticity of the moralizing intentions and wonders if it was created by art historians of the second half of the seventeenth century[73]. This raises the problem of “historical evaluation” and what degree works of art reflect the society in which it was produced[74].

Despite the difficulty in proving the intention of Dutch painters in the seventeenth century, I should refer to the significance of what Giovanni Bellori wrote in 1664, “Common people refer everything they see to everyday visual experience. They praise things painted naturally, being used to such things...”[75] This statement indicates the desire of the seventeenth century Dutch audience to integrate all forms of art. Thus, we see the incorporation of music with pastoral poetry and drama in addition to the allegorical connection between visual representation of musical instruments and their social function.

Attempting to reconcile the various depictions of bagpipes and bagpipers by only looking at different visual representations of it, it’s almost impossible to draw a reliable conclusion related to its symbolic significance. However, looking at different cultural manifestations and artistic trends related to Ter Brugghen’s Bagpipe Player, it’s hard to ignore the interrelation between the motif of the bagpipe and its reflections in literature and poetry. In a time where Dutch painters tried to build a “world of knowledge through vision”, it’s hard not to incorporate other artistic trends and literary tradition when interpreting a painting depicting a musician[76]. Therefore, I conclude that Hendrick Ter Brugghen’s Bagpipe Player alludes to pastoral poetry which suggests the healing function of bagpipers.


Illustrations

Figure1 Hendrick Ter Brugghen, Bagpipe Player In Profile, 1624, Washington


Dc, National Gallery Of Art.


Source: National Gallery of Art,” http://www.nga.gov/press/2009/ter_brugghen.shtm.


Bibliography

Baker, David. “The Pastoral: First and Last Things.” Southern Review42 (Autumn 2006): 779 -787.

Barolsky, Paul. “As in Ovid, So in Renaissance Art.” Renaissance Quarterly 51 (Summer 1998), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2901573.

Bauer, Linda. “Moral Choice in Some Paintings by Caravaggio and His Followers.” The Art Bulletin LXXIII (September 1991), http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045812.

Benedict, Nicolson. Hendrick Terbrugghen. London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Co. Ltd., 1958.

Block, Edward. “Chaucer’s Millers and Their Bagpipes.” Medieval Academy of America 29 (April 1954), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2849332.

Cannon, R.D. . “Bagpipes in English Works of Art.” The Galpin Society Journal 42 (August 1989), http://www.jstor.org/stable/842621.

Finlay, Ian. “Musical Instruments in 17th-Century Dutch Paintings.” The Galpin Society Journal 6 (July 1953), http://www.jstor.org/stable/841717.

Galpin, Francis. A Text Book of European Musical Instruments: Their Origin, History, and Character. Westport: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1976.

Gardner, Helen. Art through the Ages. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, INC., 1959.

Judson, Richard. Gerrit van Honthorst: A Discussion of His Position in Dutch Art. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959.

Leppert, Richard. “Music, Representation, and Social Order in Early-Modern Europe.” Cultural Critique 12 (Spring 1989), http://www.jstor.org/stable/1354321.

Libin, Laurence. “Musical Instruments in the Metropolitan Museum.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 35 (Winter 1977-1978): 2-48.

Liedtke, Walter, Emily March Walter and Ellyn Childs Allison, eds. Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art I. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007.

Lowinsky, Edward. “Music in the Culture of the Renaissance.” Journal of the History of Ideas 15 (October 1954), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2707674.

Montagu, Jeremy. The World of Medieval & Renaissance Musical Instruments. New York: The Overlook Press, 1976.

Nicolson, Benedict. Hendrick Ter Brugghen. London: Lund Humphries, 1958.

Salomon, Nanette. Jacob Duck and the Gentrification of Dutch Genre Painting. Walter Liedtke Beukenlaan: DAVACO Publishers, 1998.

Schneider, Federico. “Pastoral Therapies for the Heartbroken in Guarini’s Pastor Fido and Monteverdi’s Book V.” Quaderni d’italianistica XXIX (June 2008): 73-104.

Sider, Sandra. Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2005.

Slatkes, Leonard J., and Wayne Franits. Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen 1588-1629 Catalogue Raisonne: Philadelphia: John Benjamins North America, 2007.

Stephens, David. “History at the Margins. Bagpipers in Medieval Manuscripts” History Today 39 (July 1989): 42-48.

Sullivan, Margaret. “Bruegel’s Proverbs: Art and Audience in the Northern Renaissance.” The Art Bulletin 73 (September 1991): 431-466.

Tilleard, James. “History of Musical Instruments.” The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular 6 (December 1854), http://www.jstor.org/stable/3370907.

Wells, Robin Headlam. “Number Symbolism in the Renaissance Lute Rose.” Early Music 9 (January 1981): 32-42.

Winternitz, Emanuel. “Bagpipes and Hurdy-Gurdies in Their Social Setting.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 2 (Summer 1943), http://www.jstor.org/stable/3257042.

[1] Linda Bauer, “Moral Choice in Some Paintings by Caravaggio and His Followers,” The Art Bulletin LXXIII no.3 (September 1991), http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045812.

[2] Look at Bosch’s paintings: The Haywain, The Garden of Delights, The Temptation of Saint Anthony and The Marriage at Cana.( to be edited)

[3] Sandra Sider, Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2005), 160.

[4] Ian F. Finlay, “ Musical Instruments in 17th-Century Dutch Paintings,” The Galpin Society Journal 6 ( July, 1953), http://www.jstor.org/stable/841717

[5]

[6] Hendrick Ter Brugghen, Bagpipe Player In Profile, 1624, Washington Dc, National Gallery Of Art.

[7] Sider, Life in Renaissance, 160.

[8] Ian F. Finlay, “ Musical Instruments in 17th-Century Dutch Paintings,” The Galpin Society Journal 6 ( July, 1953), http://www.jstor.org/stable/841717

[9] Finaly, “Musical Instruments in 17th-Century.”

[10] Sider, Life in Renaissance, 160.

[11] Leonard J. Slatkes, and Wayne Franits, Paintings of Hendrick ter Brugghen 1588-1629 Catalogue Raisonne (Philadelphia: John Benjamins North America, 2007), 35.

[12] Richard Judson, Gerrit van Honthorst: A Discussion of His Position in Dutch Art (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959), 2.

[13] Finlay, “Musical Instruments in 17th-Century.”

[14] Ibid, 52.

[15] Ibid, 52.

[16] Sider, Life in Renaissance, 130.

[17] Look at David Stephens’ “History at the Margins. Bagpipers in Medieval Manuscripts” History Today 39 (July 1989): 42-48.

[18] Paul Barolsky , “As in Ovid, So in Renaissance Art,” Renaissance Quarterly 51 no.2 (Summer 1998), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2901573

[19] Barolsky, “As in Ovid.”

[20] Ibid, 464.

[21] Sider, Life in Renaissance, 160.

[22] Lowinsky, Edward, “Music in the Culture of the Renaissance,” Journal of the History of Ideas 15 (October 1954), http://www.jstor.org/stable/2707674.

[23] Ibid, 536-537.

[24] As quoted in Edward A. Block, “ Chaucer's Millers and Their Bagpipes,” Medieval Academy of America 29 no.2 ( April , 1954) , http://www.jstor.org/stable/2849332

[25] Ibid, 239.

[26] Ibid, 239.

[27] Block, “Chaucer’s Millers.”

[28] Ibid, 239.

[29] Ibid 239.

[30] David Stephens, “History at the Margins. Bagpipers in Medieval Manuscripts,” History Today 39 (July, 1989): 47.

[31] Ibid, 47.

[32] Ibid, 241.

[33] Ibid, 241.

[34] Stephens, “History at the Margins,”48.

[35] Ibid, 48.

[36] Ibid, 48.

[37] Ibid, 42.

[38] Ibid, 48.

[39] Ibid, 48.

[40] Ibid, 42.

[41] Steen, J., The Adoration of the Shepherds. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. As quoted in Ian F. Finlay, “ Musical Instruments in 17th-Century Dutch Paintings,” The Galpin Society Journal 6 ( July, 1953), http://www.jstor.org/stable/841717

[42] Block, “Chaucer’s Millers.”

[43] Ibid, 241.

[44] Block, “Chaucer’s Millers.”

[45] The Fantasy of Pieter Brueghel (New York, 1947), p. 18 and the plate on p.19. As quoted in Block, “Chaucer’s Millers.”

[46] The Examination of Sir William of Thorpe in English Garnered. Edward Arber ( New York,n.d.), VI, 140-141. As quoted in Block, “Chaucer’s Millers.”

[47] The Examination of Sir William of Thorpe in An English Garner, ed. Edward Arber (New York, n.d.), VI, 140-141. As quoted in Block, “Chaucer’s Millers.”

[48] Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, trans.Anthony Esolen as quoted in Federico Schneider, “Pastoral Therapies for the Heartbroken in Guarini’s Pastor Fido and Monteverdi’s Book V,” Quaderni d’italianistica XXIX (June 2008): 73.

[49] Schneider,” Pastoral Therapies,” 74.

[50] Ibid, 73.

[51] Gerbino, Orpheus in Arcadia, 12-68. As quoted in Schneider,” Pastoral Therapies,” 74.

[52] Schneider,” Pastoral Therapies,” 98.

[53] Schneider,” Pastoral Therapies,” 98.

[54] Schneider,” Pastoral Therapies,” 74.

[55] Blankert and Slatkes (as in n.1), 204, cat.no.42; the other senses are represented by actions that embody them. Sight by holding a magnifying lens and mirror. Smell by sniffing s rose. Hearing by playing a lute, and Touch by feeling with his left hand a cut on his right wrist. As quoted in Bauer, “Moral Choice.”

[56] Bauer, “Moral Choice.”.

[57] Ibid, 392.

[58] (Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum). As quoted in Bauer, Moral Choice.”

[59] Nicomachean Ethics 7.7.1150b, but also 7.1.1145a. As quoted in Bauer, “Moral Choice.”

[60] Bauer, “Moral Choice.”

[61] Ibid, 396.

[62] Ibid, 367.

[63] Ibid, 397.

[64] Nanette Salomon, Jacob Duck and the Gentrification of Dutch Genre Painting. (Walter Liedtke. Beukenlaan: DAVACO Publishers, 1998), 21.

[65] Bauer, “Moral Choice.”

[66] B. Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, Oxford, 1979, 34. As quoted in Bauer, “Moral Choice.”

[67] Ibid, 397.

[68] Bauer, “Moral Choice.”

[69] Ibid, 397.

[70] Bk. 2, canto12, stanzas 46 and 49. As quoted in Bauer. , 397.

[71] Look at Hendrick Terbrugghena Laughing Bravo With A Bass Viol And A Glass, 1625, London, UK, Royal Collection, Windsor Castle.

[72] Salomon, Jacob Duck, 21.

[73] Ibid, 22.

[74] Ibid, 23.

[75] Bellori quoted from BARASCH 1985, P.317. As quoted in Salomon, Jacob Duck, 24.

[76] Salomon, Jacob Duck, 21.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Dennett and the "True Story" of the Self




April18th, 2010


Dennett and the "True Story" of the Self

Because of its interrelation with the issue of survival and human responsibility, the concept of personal identity or the self has always concerned philosophers throughout history. Daniel Dennett, an American philosopher who specialized in the philosophy of mind, introduced a narrative theory of the self, which is the topic of this paper. To pinpoint the strengths and the weaknesses of Dennett's theory and evaluate it efficiently, it is important to look at other views of earlier philosophers regarding personal identity. I will start with Descartes’ simplified view of the immateriality of the self, and will end with Hume’s bundle theory of the self, in order to make sense of Dennett’s account of the self as a narrative center of gravity. Explaining Dennett’s motivation in introducing his theory and shedding light on its details will enable me evaluate Dennett’s theory as represented in his article “Why Everyone Is a Novelist” (Dennett). Displaying the advantages of Dennett's theory enforces the urgency of displaying the objections that critics raised against it. To assess the theory accurately, I will consider how Dennett could respond to those criticisms before taking a final position towards his theory.

While constructing the foundation of true and false and the criterion of certain truth, Descartes drifts away to talk about his existence and what his self consists of; “whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (COGITO ERGO SUM), was so certain” (Descartes Part IV, par.1). Descartes thinks of the self as an immaterial substance that thinks. Asserting its immateriality, he confirms both its independence of any material substance, including the human body, and its indivisibility. According to him, the existence of the self does not require the existence of any external substance distinct of it, “I concluded that I was a thing or substance, whose whole essence or nature was only to think, and which, to exist, has no need of space or of any material thing or body “ (Descartes Part IV, Par.2). Clearly, Descartes explains his views of the self by using the first person pronoun as if the “I” in his text is supposed to mean everyone or as if he was a representative of all human beings. It follows that he equates the Self to the soul and the mind or any immaterial substance.

Unlike Descartes, David Hume seems to associate the Self with perceptions, which he finds inseparable from the very nature of the self. Hume proposes that the self is intangible and is indefinable since he cannot catch what he calls his self without catching a perception. In other words, he cannot be conscious of his self without capturing a consciousness of some kind of perception. Thus, Hume asserts that humans are “nothing but a bundle or collections of different perceptions” (Hume 193). Accordingly, Hume denies the existence of what we call personal identity. In fact, he even thinks philosopher’s attempts to prove the existence of personal identity is a failure, because he believes our concept of personal identity to be imaginary. Hume specifically mentions Berkeley when referring to the fictional dimension of the concept of personal identity, “There are some philosophers (e.g. Berkeley) who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence, and are certain of its identity and simplicity” (Hume 192). Actually, Hume not only thinks that the attempts of those philosophers to prove the existence, continuity and simplicity of personal identity are a matter of imagination, but he concludes that our consciousness of the existence of the self is an imaginary matter as well.

The fictional dimension of Hume's view of the self is illustrated in his analogy of the human mind as a theatre where “perceptions make their appearances, pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations” (Hume 193). Hume thinks of human perceptions as different characters or different masks that characters put on in a theatrical performance. For Hume, those masks or characters resemble human perceptions because they are unable to reflect the real identity of people who are wearing them; similar to the way different perceptions themselves do not represent the mind’s identity. Actors may identify with the characters the roles of whom they are playing, but no matter to what degree actors identify with them they are not those characters. Similarly, the varying perceptions that one experiences constantly might seem to constitute the true Self. However, those perceptions in fact are the masks that self puts on to maintain the unity and the consistence of its own identity. While characters and perceptions cannot escape this endless„multiplicity, the identity of both, the theatre and the self, always stays the same, “it persists, while the actors come and go” (Hume 194).

According to Hume, what enables people to keep track of the succession of their perceptions is memory. Thus, he considers memory the source of personal identity. Hume finds in the existence of memory the only explanation of the emergence of a sense of continuity in the succession of perceptions in one’s mind. Storing perceptions with the aid of memory is what helps us “extend the same chain of causes, and consequently the identity of our persons beyond our memory, and we can comprehend times, and circumstances, and actions, which we have entirely forgot but suppose in general to have existed “(Hume 200). In other words, the existence of memory is what enables us relate causes to effects and create a mental conception of everything in our world according to our comprehension of the perceptions sorted in our memory. Consequently, our conceptions of the world, including the self, are not factual, since they rely on recalling our perceptions of them from memory. Rather, Hume asserts the fictional aspect of personal identity and states; “The identity that we ascribe to persons is fictitious” (Hume 198). He denies the association of personal identity with “a soul or a substance that our identity consists in” (Hume 192).

Daniel Dennett embraced Hume’s fictional view of personal identity but attempted to develop a narrative theory of the self. Like Hume, Dennett does not believe that the self is real, but rather fictional. He adds that a self is just like the center of gravity of an object in physics; we assume that it resides in the center of an object but actually; it is only conceptual but not corporeal or factual. J. David Velleman in his journal article The Self as Narrator assesses Dennett’s theory and the conclusion he reaches regarding the true story of our lives. Velleman clarifies the reason of Dennett’s ascribing this theoretical aspect to the self, to “understand, and predict, and make sense of the behavior of some very complicated things” (Velleman 2). Velleman sees this reason as the function and the advantage of Dennett’s concept of the self as a “non-existent author of a merely fictional autobiography” (Velleman 2). In fact, the ability to understand human behavior enables us to predict that behavior. Moreover, predicting human behavior indicates knowledge of its causes and effects, and that knowledge in itself is a means to control human behavior or at least to direct it.

Dennett expands on this point and affirms that human storytelling is similar to the spider’s web spinning or the beaver’s dam building, since we approach narration as “our fundamental tactic of self-protection, self-control, and self-definition” (Velleman 2). Storytelling can lead to self-protection, because understanding human behavior provides one with awareness of its strengths and weaknesses, which enables one to avoid both physical and emotional or psychological pain. Moreover, storytelling enables man to achieve self-control, because the ability to predict human behavior is what helps in controlling it. In addition, storytelling helps him to express his attitudes and characteristics, the thing that makes him more able to both, understand and define himself, to himself and to others.

We can explain Dennett’s theory of personal identity in light of his concept of the Intentional Stance. The Intentional Stance is a theory that describes the behavior of any kind of being according to mental assumptions and properties. Dennett thinks that we establish this stance on the supposition of the rationality of the being or the thing we are thinking of. After that, we try to attribute some beliefs and then some desires to that same thing or being, before predicting its behavior according to our prediction of its goals and in light of its desires. On the foundation of this theory, Dennett explains the evolution of human consciousness, and argues that it is all a matter of “explanatory strategy” (Zawidzki 36). Accordingly, we can conclude that the objective of that process of mental attribution or explanatory stance is to comprehend the behavior of things and beings in our world. Therefore, Dennett describes our world as “mindless”, and thus he attempts to figure out how our narratives of “purposes, reasons, selves and consciousness emerge” from such an environment (Dennett 78). In addition, Dennett attempts to layout the constraints of constructing such narratives in order to “lampoon them as „just-so stories” (Dennett 78). Viewing our narratives as stories can give us a sense of power insofar that we, as the authors of those stories, can control the direction of our stories and make them correspond to our goals and desires.

This very notion can be applied to Dennett’s view of the self, since Dennett does not specify any kind of characteristics to be attributed to the beings whose behavior we are trying to comprehend. Perhaps we assume the rationality of our self, attribute beliefs and desires to it, invent goals for it and predict its behavior, in order to unify the different components of what we think our self is and to make sense of its actions. In fact, Dennett suggests applying intentionality to people as well as axes, meaning objects in general. He asserts that we presuppose the, axehood of an axe even though we do not assume that it is imbued with spiritual axehood. (Zawidzki 34-37). Dennett believes that the real nature of both, people and thoughts is no different from the nature of axes, and thus should be understood the same way.

To describe how the self is not real, Dennett explains the self by applying it to scientific and literary analogies. The literary analogy Dennett refers to is, what may be called a self-character, which has a unified narrative and is employed to make sense of our experiences and our behaviors. He expands on this fictional self to claim that we act in our lives according to what is required for being that specific character or self. While creating this character, Dennett believes we undertake a special kind of thinking he calls “verbal thought” (Dennett 472), which Jerome Burner also refers to as “the narrative mode” of thinking. (McCarthy 10). He argues that much of our conscious thinking is “a variety of a particularly efficient and private talking to oneself” (Dennett 472). In fact, Dennett describes people as “confabulators” who are telling and retelling the story of their own lives (Dennett 471). Trying to self-protect themselves from conveying by mistake undesired information to others, people developed this behavior of talking to oneself or “vocalization” to a “habit of subvocalization” (Dennett 472). As a result, this “subvocalization” is represented in the human consciousness in a form of narrative or “verbal thought” (Dennett 472).

Like a novelist who cannot separate himself from his characters, Dennett thinks that we are all novelists; unable to separate ourselves from the self-character we create. In addition, trying to make everything happens fits with that character’s coherency; he argues that we do create a convenient narrative context for our self-character. The outcome of this process is a story of our lives, “We try to make all of our material cohere into a single good story. And that story is our autobiography” (Dennett 473). If our lives are series of endless stories including the creation of our own fictitious selves, how can we know what the true story is, if there is any? Does it matter if our life story is true or false, since it is only a story after all? Dennett’s answer to this question is that “there is no true story” because he thinks that even attempting to figure out the true story in itself is a mere error, “If we wanted to settle what the true story was, we’d be falling into error” (Dennett 471). To be able to assess Dennett’s conclusion, we should look at critics’ views of his theory. Some critics have objections to Dennett’s narrative theory and accordingly, to his conclusion regarding the self. One of the biggest and most common objections that those critics raised is the limitedness and restrictiveness of Dennett's narrative view of the self.

Critics such as Joan McCarthy and Tadeusz Zawidzki think that the narrowness of Dennett’s account of the self emerges from the association of linguistic ability with the self, that gives, according to those critics, priority to a kind of ability that not all people possess. McCarthy argues that according to Dennett’s theory, people who do not have the appropriate linguistic capacity cannot express or/and identify with their selfhood, and thus cannot comprehend their world accurately. In her opinion, Dennett limits self-interpretation and self-comprehension to verbalization, “private talking to oneself” (Dennett 472), which she thinks, is improbable. Zawidzki, on the other hand, emphasizes the lack of self-identification and self-comprehension that the language-deprived experience. Zawidzki claims that Dennett does not give an assertive answer regarding the degree of consciousness for the language-deprived and the non-human animal (Zawidzki 97). Nevertheless, Zawidzki is inclined to think that Dennett at least credits those creatures with a minimal degree of consciousness, without underestimating the privileges speaking humans do have. Zawidzki illustrates that by quoting Dennett in his Consciousness Explained; “ one does not do deaf-mutes a favour by imagining that in the absence of language they enjoy all the mental delights we hearing human beings enjoy” (Zawidzki 98). Clearly, those critics claim the inconsistency and invalidity of Dennett’s account of the self, because it cannot be applied to people with poor linguistic abilities and/or to people with hearing and speaking disorders.

On the other side of the coin, other critics have a different interpretation of Dennett’s account, which serves as a response to McCarthy’s and Zawidzki’s objections particularly regarding the role of language in the conception of the self. Joan McCarthy in her book; Dennett and Ricoeur on the Narrative Self, presents the view of a leading, as she claims, neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, who in his The Feeling of What Happens distinguishes between two types of a self; a non-verbal self and a verbal or “autobiographical self” (McCarthy 80). Damasio thinks of the narrative aspect of the self in a broader sense, since his account includes the notion of a “non-verbal story teller” (McCarthy 80). Therefore, in light of this view, the narrative theory of the self generally and the occurrence of self-comprehension specifically, do not require the usage of language or verbalization. Damasio’s inclusive view of the narrative self suggests a “wordless” kind of storytelling, which is more like “registering what happens in the form of brain maps” (McCarthy 81). Similarly, Dennett in his Consciousness Explained clarifies that “Metaphors are the tools of thought” (McCarthy 73) implying that metaphors are incorporated in all kinds of thinking and can be in all kind of forms; verbal, non-verbal, visual, audible, etc. Accordingly, creating narratives is different from verbalizing or reporting narratives, which indicates that storytelling existed prior to language (McCarthy 81). Moreover, Damasio scientifically supports the independence of self-narration from language by asserting that while the left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for language; both the right and the left hemispheres are responsible for storytelling (McCarthy 81). Thus, the interpretation of Dennett's evaluation of the relationship of verbalization with selfhood varies from a critic to another. Unlike critics who view verbalization as a required companion of the self, Damasio does not consider language and the so-called verbal thought to be a required condition for the existence of a self (McCarthy 83). Given the previous facts, we can conclude that we can distinguish between two kinds of narrations; verbal and non-verbal self-narration which both serve the narrative mode of thinking we employ to make sense of our world.

Damasio's view supports Velleman’s interpretation of the role of speech or verbalization in the determination of human behavior. Velleman affirms that the utterance of our self-narrations can lead us to act according to our narrations, in order to maintain correspondence between our narrations and our life. In addition, he refers to the importance of the casual role of the uttering of our narrations in the corresponding outcome of our behavior. However, Velleman redefines the role of those utterances and makes them indicate a kind of self-commitment that “feeds back into your behavior” (Velleman 12). In other words, sometimes reporting what you are going to do makes you do it, and other times reporting what you are not going to do prevents you from doing it.

In reporting your future action, what motivates you is to maintain correspondence between your narrations and your actions, just like a novelist who should maintain correspondence between his narrations and the actions of his characters. Consequently, it is not a matter of uttering narrations, but rather it is a matter of commitment to conform our behaviors to our narrations whether we utter a verbal commitment or we do not.

Whether Dennett’s account of the narrative aspect of the self is dependent on language as verbalization or as self-explanation and/or non-verbal narration, does not answer the question if the true story of our life matters when it is just a story. In other words, Dennett’s fictional view of the self does not logically indicate the truthfulness or the falseness of one’s narratives. Nevertheless, characters in some novel, even though they are unreal in the sense that they do not exist outside of their fictional world, do exist as real fictional characters and we can predict and evaluate their behavior as well.

Moreover, one can evaluate the accuracy of their narratives by reviewing the incidents of their lives as depicted in the novel and be able to decide if they are true. If a novelist decides that one of his characters does something or says something, it means that whatever he does or says is true. The fact that they are fictional characters has nothing to do with the truthfulness of their actions and accordingly, the truthfulness of the novelist’s narration and/or his identity. The novelist is the one who decides what his characters will do and thus he is the one who knows and determines what the true narration is. If the self is like a novelist, it follows that it can create various narrations, can decide what narration it prefers and can determine which narration is true. Accordingly, a self is both the creator of the narratives and the controller and the decision maker of the preferable version of those narrations in order to achieve narrative coherence. Hence, I support Velleman's objection to Dennett’s account of the self as fictive and false. Velleman claims that the fact that self is fictitious can mean that it is true as well.

My only disagreement with Dennett's claim that attempting to figure out the “true story of our life is a mistake; is that the rapid and constant changeability of the narratives of our life, not the falseness of its narratives, makes it hard to determine the “true story of our life, yet not impossible” (Dennett 471). Like a river, whose water changes constantly, we still think of it as the same river because of the unity of its components, which causes its continuity. A self, even though it has different narrations, counts as the same when it maintains its narrative coherence. Moreover, with fictional entities such as characters, one should follow the logic of the world of fiction, i.e. the accuracy of the incidents within a novel, to be able to evaluate the correspondence of their narrations to their actions. In that sense, figuring out the true story of our self and our life can be possible.

Nevertheless, whether Dennett was concerned with proving the truthfulness or the falseness of our narratives, his main objective was to pinpoint the advantages of the narrative mode of thinking that we fall into, in helping us predict our behavior and control it in order to make our life easier. His depiction of the self in light of his narrative theory does not mean to give credit or priority to one narrative, even his own, regarding the conception of the self over another narrative. Dennett attempts to explain how the narrative technique develops and works in the human mind by observing its effect on the human behavior and without deciding about validity of one’s narrations. Knowing that the creation of our self-narration corresponds to the creation of characters in a novel can help us view our life in an objective approach, which can contribute to widening the perspectives of our life. Furthermore, focusing on the narrative aspect of the self, we will be able to reshape our selves by changing the context of our narration and /or by recreating a new narration for our lives.


Works Cited

Dennett, Daniel C. "Why Everyone Is a Novelist." Selves Part VIII. London: The

Times Literary Supplements, 1988. 466-474.

Descartes, Rene'. Discourse on Method. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett

Publishing Company, 1998 Translated by Donald A. Cress.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature Introduced by Michael P.Levine.

New York: The Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading, 2005.

McCarthy, Joan. Dennett and Ricoeur on the Narrative Self. Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2007.

Velleman, J. David. "Narrator, The Self As." Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan Fall 1999: 1-23.

Zawidzki, Tadeusz. Dennett. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007.