“The Reformation of Images and Some Jacobean Writers on Art” by Karl Josef Holten

CITATION: Holten, Karl Josef. “The Reformation of Images and Some Jacobean Writers on Art.” Functions of Literature: Essays Presented to Erwin Wolff on His Sixtieth Birthday. Ed. Ulrich Broich. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1984. Print.
Understanding

• Question: How did Jacobean art writing bridge the needs of a culture and the development of a culture's institutions of knowledge (funktiongeshichte)?
• Answer: After the royal iconography of the Elizabethan era, Jacobean writers of art defended aristocratic art using Italo-philic/-phobic discourses and Tertullian's writings on church art.
• Method: Functionalism. As stated above, funktiongeschichte seeks to explain literary genre as a bridge between the needs of a culture and the developments of a culture's philosophy and institutions of knowledge. Erwin Wolff and Rudiger Ahrens think this is what Sidney developed in his apology.
• Assumptions: Obviously, the entire functionalist agenda relies on two atomistic poles of "the needs of a culture" and "a culture's philosophy." I expect that New Historicism struck functionalism like a ton of bricks.
• Sententiae: "To have a story painted, for memory's sake, we hold it not to be unlawful." (146)

Overstanding

• Assessment: An unusual essay from a field of research unfamiliar to me. It presents an opportunity for perspective to me, a person who values formal approaches to literature, to reconsider my formalist assumptions and their relevance in the aftermath of New Historicism.
• Synthesis: At least another contributor, Rudiger Ahrens, indicated that functionalism has a novel reading of Sidney's Defense. That is, Sidney bridged early modernity England's needs for poetry with the humanistic developments of the Renaissance.
• Application: I can't say I find much use in functionalism, but the article introduced me to several interesting details, such as a story about Elizabeth's crucifix disappearing from her chapter at intervals, or Peacham's defense of aristocratic drawing based on Tertullian.