Before the Preludes. Some Semiotic Observations on Vision, Meditation and the “Fifth Space” in the early Jesuit Spiritual Illustrated Literature

Catellani, Andrea [UCL]

In the literary tradition inspired by S. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises images are normally placed before the meditative preludes, and have a certain number of functions in relation to the whole spiritual exercise, or to the whole reading of a catechetic lesson. This article will try to make a few observations on how images are organized in order to carry out these functions. I will study in particular the organization of space, some basic textual models (map and flux) and the strategies by which the observer might be involved (this involvement is included in what Victor Stoichita calls the phatic function of image). Semiotics tries to find what can be called a grammar of images, or at least some rules that guide meaning production inside images: this is exactly the object of this paper. I will notably consider some works published mainly in the Southern Low Countries, chiefly in Antwerp.