Arjuna Hits the Target, attributed to Daswant and Kesho, from the Jaipur Razmnama, Mughal India, sixteenth century. The poised archer and elevated target give material form to the discipline of narrowed sight that governs Arjuna’s education. Public domain. What must…
Pirro Ligorio, Diana and Apollo Slaughtering the Children of Niobe, c. 1550. Red chalk, squared with black chalk and indented for transfer, on two joined sheets of laid paper. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Jeffrey E. Horvitz, 2008.117.3.…
Photo of Osip Mandelstam made by the NKVD after his arrest. How does Osip Mandelstam make compression carry distance, so that a line stores force like a drawn bow before releasing its charge into image? Beside the Russian text I…
William Tell, Toko, Palnatoki, Harald Bluetooth, Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, Danish legend, medieval folklore, archery, tyranny, kingship, political myth, fatherhood, obedience, justice, myth transmission, Scandinavian history, Norse literature, Jómsvíkinga saga, heroic legend, apple shot, moral authority, medieval Denmark, folklore studies,…
Festival of the Archers, Master of Frankfurt, 1493. The painting depicts an Antwerp archery company gathered in civic fellowship, offering a contemporary visual parallel for the communal culture in which martial skill, reputation, status, and public recognition became visible through…
Chasse au cerf Bibliothèque nationale de France What, precisely, died near Senlis in May 987: Louis V through a hunting fall, or Carolingian kingship through a killing arranged to clear Hugh Capet’s road to the crown? Beneath that question I…
What epistemic value belongs to an arrow that reaches the centre through defective technique? Beneath the apparent modesty of that question lies a problem running from cognitive psychology’s study of judgment through attribution theory’s account of causal assignment into decision…
‘That record shows those who come after how far a human being can go through effort.’¹ Hoshino Kanzaemon speaks these words to Wasa Daihachirō when the younger archer buckles beneath the inherited burden of Sanjūsangendō, while the sentence gives Mikio…
