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The article analyses one of Japanese calligraphy’s (shodō 書道) particularities: the notion of “emptiness”, “nothingness”. This concept can be observed in different layers of the art: from the white of the paper, to the movement of the brush after it has been lifted from the paper to the interpretative process. In this way, there are instances of “emptiness” during several stages of creation and understanding of a calligraphic work. In order to illustrate this, our article will analyse two shodō 書道 works, pinpointing the use of “emptiness”, or “nothingness”, and the effect they create for the calligraphic work as a whole. We conclude that in order to grasp the transcendent meaning, one must take into account all elements present within a calligraphic work, including the instances of “emptiness”.

This paper proposes a novel source for –or at least influence on– the iconography of the Moon trump in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, which preserves the design from the Tarot de Marseille. In fact, the Moon template appears to date back to the earliest days of the Tarot. The proposed source or prototype is a Greco-Roman talismanic design against the Evil Eye known as the “all-suffering eye”, which frequently occupies the reverse face of Byzantine copper/ bronze “Holy Rider” amulets. The paper identifies compositional elements that correspond in the Evil Eye and Moon card designs, presents reasons why the moon and the Evil Eye might have been thought of as cognates, and considers other likely inputs into the Moon card’s visual program.

Chinese philosophy understood through the key philosophical terms has been made familiar to Western readers by first “Christianizing” it, and then by “Orientalizing” it. Many of new translations of these canonical texts are uncritically perpetuating the same formula for rendering key philosophical terms proffered in the earlier efforts at cultural translation. Those who are working with the Master of Confucianism in China reconsider the Confucian values and attempt to interpret Confucianism in Chinese philosophical context. This paper employs the qualia structure (Pustejovsky 1991) to verify the validation of three important Confucian concepts, rén (仁), lǐ(礼) and dé (德), of the total 92 Confucian conceptual terms from The Analects (Lúnyǚ,《论语》) and Tao-Te Ching (Dàodéjīng,《道德经》) as the case studies. The qualia structure investigates the semantic information of the core characters in both source and target text which can effectively clarify the correspondence in Chinese-English translation in that the equivalent semantic information can be regarded as the equivalent translation. Furthermore, through this research, misunderstandings can be avoided and foreigners will find it easy to understand Chinese culture.

Audiovisual translation and, more specifically, accessibility, have a fundamental role in the multicultural world we live in. Due to cultural and social diversity, there are groups of people who depend on media accessibility services in order to consume audiovisual products because of their physical impairments, one of these services being audio description for the blind and visually impaired people (AD). The aim of this paper is to provide an approach to how humour and cultural aspects travel in audiovisual comedies, and their influence on how audio described scripts are produced in different countries. For this purpose, we will carry out a corpus analysis comparing the Spanish and the American AD versions of the original comedy film Campeones (Javier Fesser 2018) and its remake Champions (Bobby Farrelly 2023). The main findings of this descriptive study suggest that the AD practice of humorous audiovisual texts in a multicultural context is indeed a complex issue that could be addressed by Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1986), as suggested by Martínez Sierra (2009), although further research is needed.

This paper aims to emphasize the importance of interpretation in the translation process, the implications deriving from it, as well as their effect on the reader and the way they affect his or her reception and cultural use of the text. This subject matter will be examined through one of Italo Calvino’s best-known works, more specifically The Invisible Cities (translated by William Weaver). This is a work that can be ascribed to one of the branches of travel literature, namely the imaginary voyage, and that can be read as a sort of philosophical vademecum. Precisely because of its nature, it can undoubtedly be considered a text characterised by a structure, a style and a language that make it susceptible to different interpretations.In the translation analysis of this work, the focus will be on how translation can sometimes move away from the so called intentio operis that is, from interpretation in semiotic terms, from what the work wants to communicate on the level of signification, expressing it through its intrinsic textual coherence (Eco, 1990). Specifically, through the examination of certain stylistic, grammatical and lexical choices made by the translator, some portions of the text will be highlighted in which the construction of the meaning differs from that of the source language, thus distorting the textual cooperation whose protagonist is the reader (Eco, 1979).

Gold glass bottoms generally found in Roman catacombs, are some of late antiquity’s most enigmatic objects. Originally conceived as vessels, once they were broken, their bases were reemployed to be embedded in the mortar sealing of the slabs of certain loculi. Drawing on the different hypotheses on the origins of the bowls or glasses these bottoms were obtained from, and reflecting on the reasons for and ways of using these glass bottoms to decorate loculi, this paper aims to reassess the position of gold glass in the culture of late antiquity by questioning its pertinence or link to "popular" culture.

Muu dancers are one of the most common elements in the funerary processions represented in the private Theban tombs of the New Kingdom, especially in the 18th dynasty. This paper aims to analyse the main characteristics of the representation of these male individuals that appear only on private tombs located in different necropolises. It will also try to understand the ritual meaning of these dancers through the attested images, an enigmatic procedure that has been interpreted in different ways by several authors. In addition, the distribution of these scenes both inside and outside the Theban necropolis will be analysed to understand the diffusion of this type of representations during the Egyptian New Kingdom. Thus, firstly I will make a description of the funerary processions painted or engraved on the walls of the private tombs. Secondly, I will describe the muu dancers following Brunner-Traut’s classification and include the representations attested, comparing them to analyse the common features of these male dancers.

The paper investigates how Christians of different denominations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth described the Tatars and the Turks in the legends related to the miraculous image/icons of Virgin Mary. It includes both the use of topoi of Tatars devastating the icons during Tatar incursions in the 13-16 centuries, general vision of the Turks and Tatars by the 17 and 18-centuries’ authors, and presentation of them as military enemies in the setting of wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as well as reflection of these plots in the visual art. The research is based on the analysis of legends and miracles dating back to the 17-18th century and available visual material. It was shown that Christians of three main denominations –Orthodox, Catholics, Greek Catholics– represented the Turks and the Tatars in a similar way and the representation corresponded to the representation of other military enemies independently of religious believes.

After the expeditions of wealthy merchants and Franciscan missionaries during the 14th century, the Chinese empire under Ming rule did not engage profusely with the European world, and vice versa. This period of artistic and intellectual silence and detachment was broken in the late 16th century when the Jesuit missionaries reconnected two worlds –Europe and China– reactivating previous medieval commercial, artistic, and intellectual routes. Silk –the product par excellence commercialized along the routes connecting China and Europe– was then accompanied by other precious products, including Chinese ceramics reaching various European courts and European paintings that reached the Ming court in Beijing. This paper addresses the complex and challenging popularization of Roman Catholicism through objects and images during the early modern era. In particular, it focuses on the diffusion of devotional images and objects used by Roman Catholic missionaries and the religious practices related to them.

The paper deals with one famous plot on Ukrainian rushnyks. This is about a scene of beating a man by his wife and the appropriate inscription to it “A woman was beating a man taking him by the forelock”. Notwithstanding the fact that nowadays it is mostly perceived as a humorous scene, the meaning of it may vary up to the sacred one. Is it connected with the fact that Ukrainian rushnyks had been regarded as things of particular significance? The author traces the roots of this embroidered plot in popular culture, showing changing of senses according to the context. Oral culture (folk humorous and dancing songs, narratives, sayings), lubok literature and fictions, Ethnographical features of Ukrainian married men and women are taken into consideration. Also, the issue of renewing the old jokes is considered. When the comic scene became irrelevant or not enough humorous, embroideresses combined it with other scenes to make it more ridiculous. The author concludes that absolutely all folk meanings of one and the same plot have right to exist.

This paper deciphers the badly damaged and barely discernible wall paintings of Saydet el Rih in Enfeh (Lebanon) using graphic surveys. This procedure consists of copying all traces of the paintings and recording their chromatic values and stratigraphy, in order to understand and visualise the creative process behind them, both stylistically and iconographically.

This paper analyses the military use of holy relics, images, and other Christian apotropaic devices in the Roman-Persian wars. I examine a wide range of literary evidence from the 4th to the 7th century exploring where, why, and how different Christian objects were used in military contexts. Moreover, I consider different factors, as the local religious practices or the rivalry between the Christian Roman Empire and Zoroastrian Persia. I argue that the earliest military uses of relics and holy images happened in the context of the Roman-Persian conflict and frontier region, and that, during the 4th-7th centuries, these uses were much more common there than anywhere else. Also, that some local practices of this region could have been adopted by military officers and the Imperial elite. I propose that three factors could explain this: First, the intensity of the cult of relics and images in Syria and the Near East. Second, the growing identification of the Roman Empire as a Christian power between the 4th and 7th centuries. Finally, the Roman-Persian conflict and the climate of religious confrontation that grew over the course of the Byzantine-Sassanian wars.