Julia Weber’s book demonstrates how Aristotle’s understanding of virtual forces as undetectable but nonetheless effective has shaped philosophical discourse up until the modern age. It traces developments from philosophical debate about the existence of virtual forces in antiquity and the Middle Ages to the emergence of virtual spaces in the early modern period, and the appearance of virtual worlds in 18th-century literature. In this way, it reveals the seldom traced continuities and shifts between ancient philosophical discussion of forces and contemporary virtual realities. Look Inside

Depictions of disaster in literature and art highlight a fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, natural disasters appear to challenge the symbolic order; at the same time, they have always been interpreted culturally. Poetry itself has contributed to the emergence of such interpretative patterns. However, it is not only capable of reflecting on its own interpretative action, but also of problematising and blocking that same process. Against this backdrop, Laura Isengard examines forces of nature as described in selected texts from German-language realism as a crisis-ridden “perceptual disorder”. The tension between realism and idealism is visualised using the example of narrated natural catastrophe. Innovative reassessment of German-language realism using the example of narrated natural catastrophesLinking literary, cultural and perception theories

Was the post-antique depiction of cast shadows really a Florentine innovation of the 1420s, as Giorgio Vasari and subsequent scholarship have led us to believe? In this study, Gerd Mathias Micheluzzi undertakes the first comprehensive examination of this question, combining art-historical inquiry with an interdisciplinary approach. Through detailed analyses of Early Christian mosaics, medieval knowledge traditions, and Italian illuminated manuscripts, wall and panel paintings from the 14th and early 15th centuries, he demonstrates that the cast shadow occupied a more substantial role in pre-Renaissance visual culture than has hitherto been acknowledged. His study uncovers a rich history of visual experimentation, in which developments were intertwined yet neither constant nor teleologically directed towards the imitation of nature.First systematic study of the cast shadow in Italian painting, literature, and natural philosophy of the Middle AgesRevises a long-standing topos in art history

Julia Weber’s book demonstrates how Aristotle’s understanding of virtual forces as undetectable but nonetheless effective has shaped philosophical discourse up until the modern age. It traces developments from philosophical debate about the existence of virtual forces in antiquity and the Middle Ages to the emergence of virtual spaces in the early modern period, and the appearance of virtual worlds in 18th-century literature. In this way, it reveals the seldom traced continuities and shifts between ancient philosophical discussion of forces and contemporary virtual realities. Look Inside

Depictions of disaster in literature and art highlight a fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, natural disasters appear to challenge the symbolic order; at the same time, they have always been interpreted culturally. Poetry itself has contributed to the emergence of such interpretative patterns. However, it is not only capable of reflecting on its own interpretative action, but also of problematising and blocking that same process. Against this backdrop, Laura Isengard examines forces of nature as described in selected texts from German-language realism as a crisis-ridden “perceptual disorder”. The tension between realism and idealism is visualised using the example of narrated natural catastrophe. Innovative reassessment of German-language realism using the example of narrated natural catastrophesLinking literary, cultural and perception theories

Was the post-antique depiction of cast shadows really a Florentine innovation of the 1420s, as Giorgio Vasari and subsequent scholarship have led us to believe? In this study, Gerd Mathias Micheluzzi undertakes the first comprehensive examination of this question, combining art-historical inquiry with an interdisciplinary approach. Through detailed analyses of Early Christian mosaics, medieval knowledge traditions, and Italian illuminated manuscripts, wall and panel paintings from the 14th and early 15th centuries, he demonstrates that the cast shadow occupied a more substantial role in pre-Renaissance visual culture than has hitherto been acknowledged. His study uncovers a rich history of visual experimentation, in which developments were intertwined yet neither constant nor teleologically directed towards the imitation of nature.First systematic study of the cast shadow in Italian painting, literature, and natural philosophy of the Middle AgesRevises a long-standing topos in art history