Publication details
Liminality : Space and Imagination
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In art history, this notion, further developed by Victor Turner, has been employed in a different manner: by expanding it to the space of a painting, or the margins of manuscripts.2 Below I would like to return to discuss it in its first meaning, which van Gennep attributed to it – that is, as a zone within a physical space, a place between internal and external space.3 More concretely, I would like to thus refer to spaces which, in the Christian world, since Late Antiquity, are defined as narthexes, atria, or porticos. I would however like to question two aspects briefly: first of all, reflecting on the function of such spaces over the centuries, I would like to focus on their potential initiatory and apotropaic function. Secondly, I would like to reflect on the function of liminal spaces in the experience of pilgrims between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. |