The Shipwreck Image and Situation as Paradigm
George P. Landow, Professor of English
and Art History, Brown University
[From Chapter One, "Images, Situations, and Structures," Images of Crisis: Literary Iconology, 1750 to the Present, Boston and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, pp. 18-21. WWW version by Marisa Castagno, University of Turin, Italy, 1997.]
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the Christian conception of a journey of life and the post-Christian
one of shipwreck function much in the manner of what Thomas S. Kuhn calls
scientific paradigms. [The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd edn (1970) Chicago.] Like these paradigms,
they impose a sense of order upon the formlessness and sheer multiplicity of
existence in this world. Furthermore, like such paradigms, such images or
metaphors have major cultural values for those who accept them, since they
become the "ordinary" or dominant way of considering reality. They also
become, of course, a chief means of communicating that way of considering
reality. A scientific paradigm has the important function of sealing
off certain areas of dispute and thus allowing scientists to go about their
main endeavor, which, says Kuhn, is solving problems of a particular sort.
Both the journey of life and the shipwreck again work in the same way, for
by proffering a ready-made interpretation of the human condition, they
effectively seal off areas of dispute to permit other kinds of thought and
action to flourish.
If both the Christian conception of the journey of life and the modern
vision of shipwreck function so efficiently and satisfyingly, one wonders
how one could have developed from the other. In particular, since Christian
uses of the shipwreck take it to be test, education, or punishment, one
wonders how the modern intonation of the ancient topos could have acquired
this very different structure and significance. Erwin Panofsky's
explanation of how medieval artists developed new types, motifs, and images
from classical ones provides us with a valuable clue. According to him,
As a rule such re-interpretations were facilitated or even
suggested by a certain iconsographical affinity, for instance when the
figure of Orpheus was employed for the representation of David, or when the
type of Hercules dragging
Cerberus out of Hades was used to depict Christ pulling Adam out of Limbo.
But there are cases in which the relationship
between the classical prototype and its Christian adaptation is a purely
compositional one. ["Introductory". Studies in iconology:
Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. (1962) New York: 19.]
In other words, when a certain visual structure created for a certain
purpose fulfills requirements for another application, medieval artists
adapted it to their own ends. Sometimes obvious intellectual or symbolic
affinities prompted such transference of visual patterns from one
application to another, but in other instances the presence of an available
image was enough to prompt such adaptation. Such a process has much in
common with Darwinian conceptions of biological adaptation and natural
selection, for in each case a structure (physical or visual) develops, and
once developed proves to have a function. Since it thus has a function, it
becomes reproduced and hence more prevalent. Of course, whereas biological
structures evolve through genetic variation, these artistic and
intellectual ones first develop for one purpose or within one context which
then disappears. None the less, considered from the vantage-point of the
application of an existing structure and not its genesis, the processes are
strikingly similar.
Returning to the question of how one paradigm or cultural code could have
evolved into another, we can now suggest a mechanism. As St. Augustine's
eloquent presentation of the Christian vision of the life journey makes
clear, this paradigm always allows for the
possibility that the voyager will fail. The human being traveling back to
his heavenly home can become so enthralled by the pleasures of the
journey that he may lose sight of his eventual goal. Moreover, as the
stories of Jonah and the Deluge, as well as countless later hymns, also
make clear, God can punish man with shipwreck and death by water. These
failed voyages and shipwrecks, unlike what I have termed the post-Christian
ones, are presented from a divine perspective -- from the vantage-point,
that is, of a present God . In fact, however terrifying earlier shipwreck
images may have been, they always come assimilated to the basic structure
of the divinely sponsored, continuous, meaningful pilgrimage to God. None the less, like many other situations and structures originally formulated
within a religious context, such as the Pisgah sight, this one of shipwreck
possessed an entire range of potentially ironic or ultimately subversive
features. As long as this situation was only associated
closely with the journey-of-life topos, none of these features could
develop, but once the shipwreck moved out of the shadow of the previously
dominant structure, authors and artists began to make use of those elements
of it that are diametrically opposed to the original paradigm. Thus, a
structure first arises within a particular context, and from the
vantage-point of those who no longer accept that context it appears empty
and ready to be filled with new ideas and feelings, or else unemployed and
ready to be used in some new way. Such a mechanism not only permits the
student of iconsology and culture to observe the gradual changes that lead
eventually to radical departures from a point of origin or oppositions to
it, it also has the crucial virtue of necessarily avoiding any sort of
teleology or
smuggled-in hindsight that would turn history into a prerecorded tale known
only to the critic.
Last modified 28 December 2004