| Abstrakt: |
Speculum animæ: A Probe into the Cultural History of the Catoptric Imagination This paper focuses on the issue of the development of the metaphor of mirrors in introspective judgements in European culture. In early antiquity mirrors were iron plates with a high degree of sheen, but, unlike glass mirrors, they were quite unclear and imperfect. That is why mirrors played a somewhat different role as metaphors, for example, in the apostle Paul's speech about the speculum, by which humans can know God and his signs in the world. After the 3rd century AD glass mirrors were made more often, and the idea of moral mirrors gradually became a typical feature of European ethical thought. A gaze oriented toward the mirror was seen as a means to self-knowing, but also to self-admiration and self-accusation as in the case of the myth about Narcissus and Wilde's story of Dorian Gray. Mirrors also played a different role in various medieval drawings of Prudentia, who is often seen holding a convex mirror in her hands as a symbol of circumspection. There are many ways in which mirrors have served as tools for moral judgements in European culture, and even if today they have lost much of their symbolic force, they still remain a cultural step in introspective thinking of current age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
