Resumen de "Locus horroris": las palabras y el concepto
- español
Las fuentes medievales llamaban a veces locus horroris al tipo de paisaje generalmente designado como eremus o tierra yerma, expresi6n que era una variante de la clásica locus horridus. EI éxito de locus horroris en la Edad Media se debió a su uso bíblico, de donde conservó muy marcado el componente de horror. Para comprender el lugar que ocupa el locus horroris en la cosmovisión medieval, es útil recurrir a la terminología formularia de los documentos medievales, que permite establecer la red de conexiones existente entre los diversos elementos que se perciben en el entorno. Las fuentes medievales distinguen entre el locus populatus y el locus cultus, que no son propiamente contrarios, sino complementarios. Ambos se oponen a eremus y, a fortiori, al locus horroris pero también hay un espacio de intersecci6n entre eremus y populatus, que son los pascua uel pratis, es decir, los pastos y praderas. Por otro lado, algunos eremi estaban cercanos a las zonas pobladas y se usaban para conseguir madera o caza, como el mons "monte bajo" o la silua "bosque". La división resultante del paisaje es analizada de acuerdo con el modelo de espacio agrícola de Von Thünen y la topología semiótica cultural de Lotman, que permiten concebir el locus horroris como resultado tanto de las condiciones materiales de la cultura como de la conceptualización social resultante de proyectar en el paisaje la dicotomía natural / cultural. De esta manera, el locus horroris puede ser caracterizado, no tanto por sus rasgos formales o descriptivos (pues puede ser representado por una selva, una estepa, una montaña elevada o un desierto), como por su función: es el lugar no cultivado, aislado y deshumanizado en el que viven en libertad las fuerzas naturales ind6mitas (como el viento, la lluvia torrencial o las fieras). Por todas estas razones, este tipo de paisaje puede inspirar miedo, como indica su nombre.
- English
Medieval sources call sometimes locus horroris or "the place of horror" the kind of landscape more widely known as eremus or waste land. A variant of that expression found in Classical Latin texts is locus horridus or "horrid place", which has been used in modern scholarship to refer to a natural scenery characterized by their terrific or pathetic features, depending on whether the emphasis is put on the sublime or the terrifying. Nevertheless, in its original context, locus horridus designated in fact a place more inhospitable than horrible. As for locus horroris, its success in Medieval Latin was due to its biblical use and, according to it, the expression retained a more marked component of horror, even if this emotion was not induced by the same elements that are linked to this kind of landscape from Romanticism onwards. In order to understand the place of the locus horroris in the medieval worldview, one can resort to medieval documents, whose often formulaic phraseology makes possible to establish the net of connections among the different elements which were perceived in the environment. The medieval sources distinguished between the locus populatus or "populated place" and the locus cultus or "cultivated place", which were not properly opposed, but complementary. Both were opposed to the eremus and, a fortiori, to the locus horroris, but there was a space of intersection between eremus and populatus, which were the pascua uel pratis, that is, the pastures and meadows. On the other hand, some eremi were still near to the populated places and used to felling wood or hunting, like the mons or "woodland" and the silua or "forest". The farther from the town a place was, the more indomitable and inhabitable was it considered, and has more chances to be identified with a locus horroris proper. The resultant division of the landscape is analysed according to Von Thünen's model of agricultural land and to Lotman's semiotic topology. This allows to understand the locus horroris as a result of both material culture conditions and social conceptualization via the natural / cultural dichotomy projected on landscape. Thus, the locus horroris can be characterized not so much through its formal or descriptive traits (since it can be represented as a wild forest, a steppe, a high mountain, or a desert), but thanks to its function, as the uncultivated, isolated and dehumanized place where the untamed natural forces (like wind, hard rain or beasts) are free. For all those reasons, this kind of landscape was able to inspire fear, as its own name shows.
