What is personification?
Personification is a (visual) rhetorical stylistic device in which abstract things appear humanised. Emotions, virtues or vices, but also concrete things such as cities or rivers can be personified. The word “personification” is derived from the Latin persona (“mask”, “person”) and facere (“to make”) and has its equivalent in the Greek prosopopoiia (prosopon poiein). Personification thus has its origins in antiquity, where it was used in rhetoric, but the visual arts also used the communicative potential of personification and depicted it. In the Middle Ages, personification was used in a variety of ways in secular and sacred contexts.
Text and image construct the personification, taking into account the categories of body, attributes, characteristics and ability to act depending on the respective medium. Personifications draw on the entire spectrum possibilities for human interaction: they can show emotions, carry out activities, enter into friendly or familial relationships and interact with other figures or the audience.
About the exhibition
The digital exhibition “Personifications. Concepts, ideas and their medieval embodiments” is part of the interdisciplinary research project of the CRC 1391 ‘Different Aesthetics’ on the topic of “Acting Personifications as Figures of Aesthetic Reflection in Medieval Literature and Art”.
The exhibition was created in collaboration with students of German studies and art history as part of a seminar at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in the summer semester of 2021.
In 25 exhibits, the exhibition brings together personifications in medieval works of art and Middle High German literature, making it possible to look at differences but also similarities in personification in textual and image-based media. Thematic intersection between the exhibits arises from a similar use of personification as, for example, in the formulation of religious ideas, moral instruction efforts, instructions for action or claims to power. Six sections illustrate these intersections between the exhibits: Art and Science, Internal Entities, Cities and Countries, Material Goods, Transience and Fate, Love.
Notes
We would like to thank all lenders of the image data who kindly made the works available to us. The digital exhibition is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Project management: Sandra Linden and Daniela Wagner
Conception of the exhibition: Katharina Bauer and Julia Fischer
Contributors:
- Antonia-Luise Arntzen
- Martina Asci
- Jonas Brachmann
- Tim Brück
- Lisa Eberhardt
- Anne Eisenschmid
- Maike Gabriel
- Vera Gruber Ibañez
- Anna Hänle
- Laura Huber
- Judith Hüwelmeier
- Fawzia Kayed
- Linnéa Kluge
- Sarah Knecht
- Lilly Kovacs
- Siyao Li
- Nina Laura Luz
- Oliver Przemus
- Jasmin Schels
- Melina Schmidt
- Irina Selzer
- Hanna Veiler
- Christiane Vulpius
- Lisa Weinberger
- Vanessa Weisgerber
- Kim Wüsteney-Arbabi