Art and Orientation

Here Elizabeth Fowler proposes a number of tools for the analysis of art’s orientation towards use, an aspect of made objects (including those made of words) that interpreting critics have ignored as we’ve worked to specify reference. She theorizes a distinction between propositional space and ductile space, and shows how poems by Geoffrey Chaucer (The Parliament of Fowls) and Seamus Heaney (“Lightenings xiii”, “Clearances 8,” and ”The Wishing Tree”) share their orientation towards use with conventions of the built environment. She discusses especially the features of the station, a configuration that is central to the walled garden (hortus conclusus) and temple complex so prevalent in cultures around the globe. Together with the poems, the essay treats gates, holy wells and trees, and the sacred pilgrimage site at Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly, Ireland in order to demonstrate in each case how art invites and guides its users through its ritual experience -- whether it is “doing the station” or “reading.” When we describe art’s “user-interface” well, we have accounted for how it orients its users in time, space, and social life—an orientation we may regard as the acquisition of habitus.