Mosaics Of Meaning

This volume examines, in English, the role of emblems in the Portuguese-speaking world, their distinctive qualities and their links with the wider European tradition. Luis Gomes brings together studies ranging over a wide corpus of material, in both Portugal and Brazil, from manuscripts to printed books to the famous azulejos."

A collection of essays written by librarians, teachers, and other professionals who deal with young people on a daily basis. The essays cover a diverse range of subjects including: the arts, humor, coming of age and historical novels, science fiction, sexuality and health textbooks, incest, gender bias in physical education, and the relevance of virtual reality and the Internet.

This book examines the powerful role of popular culture in the daily online literacy practices of young people. Whether as subject matter, discourse, or through rhetorical patterns, popular culture dominates both the form and the content of online reading and writing. In order to understand not only how but why online technologies have changed literacy and popular culture practices, this book looks at online participatory popular culture from MySpace and Facebook pages to fan forums to fan fiction. Interviews and observations reveal the skills and practices students develop, as they sit multitasking at their computers, across popular culture genres and electronic media. For educators, the book provides significant insights into popular culture literacy practices, thus illuminating how students are making meaning and performing identity every day as they read and write online.

Number Mosaics has little in common with most other books of recreational mathematics. Though it contains much for the reader to marvel at and wonder about, it is far from being just another book of mind bending puzzles. It is more in the nature of a story of discovery and adventure in hitherto unexplored regions of the fascinating universe of numbers and patterns. As the story unfolds, the reader is drawn into it and soon becomes a member of the exploring party.The problems which feature in the book are intriguing in themselves, but the focus is not so much on obtaining the right answers as on the numerous and ingenious ways of arriving at the solutions.The approach adopted is similar to that often used in the past by old masters like Fermat, Euler and Gauss, to name a few. The critical examination of raw data initially invokes a response in the form of a conjecture which is then refined and tested in wider and wider fields.The book abounds with illustrative examples and illuminating diagrams, and throughout it the search for universals continues like a powerful undercurrent, as master keys are forged which work under all manner of changing conditions for solving a variety of problems, often without the need for calculations. This is a book which lovers of number lore will surely relish.

This volume consists of 15 articles published between 1991 and 2018. It falls into three sections, reflecting different areas of Liz James’s interests. The first section deals with light and colour and mosaics: four articles considering light and colour in mosaics and the making of mosaics, as well as the question of what it means to define mosaics as ‘Byzantine’ are reprinted. The second brings together four pieces on empresses: their relationships with female personifications and the Mother of God; their roles in founding and refounding buildings; and their employment as ciphers by some authors. Finally, seven papers cover a range of topics: what monumental images of saints in churches might have been for; what the differences between relics and icons might have been; how captions to images can be misleading; why touch was an important sense; how words can sometimes ‘just’ be decorative rather than for reading; why the materiality of objects makes a difference. There is also a brief section of additional notes and comments which add to, update and reflect on each piece now in 2024. Mosaics, Empresses and Other Things in Byzantium will be of interest to scholars and students alike interested in material culture, the depiction of regal women, and the use of relics and icons in the Byzantine Empire.

"John Gage's Color and Meaning is full of ideas. . .He is one of the best writers on art now alive."--A. S. Byatt, Booker Prize winner

The mosaics of Ravenna are rated among the world's most important art works. Their quality and blaze of colour have intrigued believers and visitors since their making between the fifth and the seventh century. This book investigates the issue of the meaning of this imagery, its peculiarities, and the messages conveyed to the viewers through the centuries. It explores the function of the mosaics in the different buildings, and their interpretations in the relevant liturgical context by people living in late Antiquity. Several comparative examples integrate the mosaics in the frame of late Roman art. Written fluently on the basis of current state of research, the volume thus provides valuable new insight in one of the most fascinating sets of images of early Christian times. The mosaics were last subject to extensive investigation 40 years ago. Delve into the magnificence and variety of these mosaics, the colour photographs of which were made expressly for this book. They show the mosaics at close range and allow visual experiences that are impossible on site.

The first major study in English of the art of mosaics in antiquity.