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Article published In:
Text and Context Revisited Within a Multimodal Framework
Edited by Yves Gambier and Olli Philippe Lautenbacher
[Babel 70:1/2] 2024
► pp. 211–233

Malleable meaning

Translating and recontextualizing The Garden of Earthly Delights from the Gallery of Nassau to the Centro Cultural de Belém

| University of Lisbon
This paper examines the process of recontextualization of Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (1505–1515) as a dance performance choreographed by Compagnie Marie Chouinard and presented at the Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB) in 2018. It shows how both source and target texts have been interpreted by scholars and the public in relation to the discursive framings offered by the physical space of their location and their historical contexts. While the first alleged locations of the painting have led the art historians Stefan Fischer (2016) and Hans Belting (2018) to relate it either to the traditional moral precepts of Christianity or to the new voyages of colonization, the location of Chouinard’s dance performance at the heart of the most visible inscription of Portuguese colonial past, the district of Belém, created a parallel friction with the moral interpretation offered by the CCB. In analyzing how the process of recontextualization can activate dissonant discursive frames, I propose recontextualization as the operation of exposing the source text’s ambiguities and foregrounding the malleability of meaning-material.
Keywords: The Garden of Earthly Delights , Marie Chouinard dance company, recontextualization, intermedial translation, contemporary dance
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. The Garden of Earthly Delights (1505–1515) and Le Jardin des Délices (2016): From painting to dance
  • 3.Spatial and discursive framings: The Garden of Earthly Delights at the Gallery of Nassau
  • 4.Spatial and discursive framings: Jérôme Bosch: Le Jardin des Délices at the CCB
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00379.mon
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