The Public Domain Review

This is just an automatic copy of Public Domain Review blog.

Signs and Wonders: Celestial Phenomena in 16th-Century Germany

Thursday 11 April 2024 at 17:19

From the mid-sixteenth century, broadsheets depicting wondrous, celestial events circulated widely across the Holy Roman Empire against the backdrop of Reformation.

Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/celestial-phenomena-16th-century-germany


Distortions and Grimaces: Jean de Bosschère’s Weird Islands (1921)

Tuesday 9 April 2024 at 17:25

A fantasia of travellers and archipelago dwellers, illustrated in a chimerical fashion by the author.

Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/weird-islands


Windows Onto History: The Defenestrations of Prague (1419–1997)

Wednesday 3 April 2024 at 16:26

Throwing people out of windows (or defenestrating them, as the Latin has it) is an act imbued with longstanding political significance in Prague. From the Hussite revolt in the late Middle Ages through the Thirty Years’ War to modern instances of “autodefenestration”, Thom Sliwowski finds a national shibboleth imbued with ritual efficacy.

Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/windows-onto-history


[Door creaks open. Footsteps]: Fredric Jameson’s Seminar on Aesthetic Theory

Tuesday 2 April 2024 at 17:42

By meticulously translating his recordings of Jameson’s seminars into the theatrical idiom of the stage script, ​​Octavian Esanu asks, playfully and tenderly, if we can see pedagogy as performance? Teaching and learning, about art — as a work of art?

Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/mimesis-expression-construction


Edith Wharton’s Italian Villas and their Gardens (1904)

Tuesday 2 April 2024 at 17:42

A guide to Italian landscape architecture by Edith Wharton, written to accompany colourful images of villas by Maxfield Parrish.

Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/edith-wharton-italian-villas


Grotesqueries at Gethsemane: Marcus Gheeraerts’ Passio Verbigenae (ca. 1580)

Wednesday 27 March 2024 at 22:46

A Passion series in which ornamental motifs invade the Christ’s narrative.

Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/passio-verbigenae


A Family Tree: Hippolyte Hodeau’s Trench Art (ca. 1917)

Tuesday 26 March 2024 at 15:44

A form of WWI trench art in which soldiers carved names and images into leaves.

Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/hippolyte-hodeau-trench-art


Little Boney: James Gillray and Napoleon’s Fragile Masculinity

Thursday 21 March 2024 at 14:06

Of all the caricatures of Napoleon Bonaparte, representations of the French emperor as a miniscule megalomaniac continue to haunt the historical imagination to an unparalleled degree. Peter W. Walker searches for the origins of “Little Boney” in the early 19th-century caricatures of James Gillray, the English illustrator who took Napoleon down a peg by diminishing his reputation and scale to the point of absurdity.

Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/little-boney


Tom Seidmann-Freud’s Book of Hare Stories (1924)

Wednesday 20 March 2024 at 16:38

An uncanny collection of folk tales written and illustrated by Sigmund Freud’s niece.

Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/tom-seidmann-freud-hare-tales


Tom Seidmann-Freud’s Book of Hare Stories (1924)

Wednesday 20 March 2024 at 16:38

An uncanny collection of folk tales written by Sigmund Freud’s niece.

Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/rabbit-tales