Program

15.00h: Wouter Capitain, Vossius Fellow

Musicology and the Human–Animal Divide

During the second half of the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory destabilized conventional notions of human exceptionalism. During the same period, musicology was institutionalized as an academic discipline within the humanities. In this presentation I argue that these two historical developments are closely related. At the moment when the natural sciences challenged the human–animal distinction, music became one domain through which to reclaim the fundamental difference between human culture and animal nature. Especially the notion of musical autonomy, advanced by Eduard Hanslick in the 1850s, proved well suited to redefine the human–animal boundary. By examining Darwin and Hanslick in juxtaposition, I suggest that, in light of emerging debates about evolutionary theory, musicology repositioned the cultured human in opposition to the animal world—an opposition that has shaped the discipline’s anthropocentric foundation ever since.

16.00h: José Leitão, Vossius Fellow

Astral magic trends in the early modern period

In general, and historical terms, the learned and literary aspects of magic practice can be divided into several categories, mostly emerging from the medieval period. Among these, astral magic can be defined as a set of techniques for the creation of talismans meant to focus the power and influence of a planet or star for a specific purpose. While immensely popular until the 15^th century, with the rise of the Renaissance, astral magic fell into the background of new magic conceptions and titles, however, this did not disappear, nor did it remain isolated from new early modern ideas.

Taking the unexpected discovery of handful of early modern astral magic texts in Spain as a starting point, this talk aims to sketch out the developments and new trends of astral magic in the early modern period; what new forms did this style of magic assume, how it reformulated itself in a new intellectual environment, and how it communicated with new developments in magic theory and practice.