Marie Okáčová: Text as an Image and Image of Text – from (Late) Antiquity to Modernity

We cordially invite you to the final lecture of the StředověC JinaX series this semester, where Marie Okáčová will guide us through the fascinating world of relationships between text and image.

Join us on 18 December at 7:00 PM to explore remarkable examples of their perfect symbiosis – from experiments in ancient Greece through the literary “crosswords” of Late Antiquity and Christian mosaics to modern calligrams.

We will meet, as usual, in the Hans Belting Library on the ground floor of buildings K and L at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University.
Text and image — two major media of human communication — have interacted almost since their very beginnings. Sometimes they competed or even openly challenged each other, at other times they worked in complete synergy. Together, we will explore various examples of their perfectly symbiotic relationship — and not only within visual poetry. From its origins in ancient Greece, we will move to the technically sophisticated literary “crosswords” of Late Antiquity, which even Emperor Constantine could not resist, and through Christian-themed verse mosaics we will arrive at modern calligrams. We will reflect on what this creative practice reveals about the principles of linguistic and visual communication, and what challenges it poses for its viewer-reader — let alone for translators.

The entire lecture will also be available online on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/@center_recent

We look forward to seeing you there!

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This lecture is part of the project Contexts of the Humanities of energeia o.p.s.