Icon vocabulary

[Alexander Boguslawski]

Dear Melissa and others interested in the topic:
There is a book by Constantine Cavarnos, Orthodox Christian Terminology,
published by the Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies,
Belmont, Ma in 1994.  Even though I do not agree with everything
Cavarnos suggests, he is at least consistent.  An excellent source to
follow would be the English translation of Uspensky and Lossky's The
Meaning of Icons. For the more adventurous, The Painter's Manual of
Dionysius of Fourna, translated by Paul Hetherington (Oakwood
Publications 1996) and An Iconographer's Patternbook: The Stroganov
Tradition, translated and edited by Fr. Christopher P. Kelley (Oakwood
Publications 1999) should solve most problems with translating titles of
icons into English.
This is particularly important, because Russian publishers very often
employ English translators who have absolutely no idea how to translate
topic-specific titles and names and who produce, I am sorry to say,
monstrosities of translation.  Perhaps your student, using the books
mentioned above, will be able to avoid such mistakes.

Alexander Boguslawski
Rollins College

>>> mfrazier at MAIL.SLC.EDU 03/09/05 11:06 AM >>>

Dear Colleagues,

I have a question from a student of mine currently studying in
Yaroslavl,
and I was hoping that one of you might have an answer for him, maybe
especially something he can access on-line.  Please send any suggestions
to
me at mfrazier at slc.edu.

Thank you,

Melissa Frazier

My student's question:
Melissa, I was wondering if you could help me out with something. I
probably mentioned that I've started working at the Yaroslavl' Museum of
Icons, doing translations of the opisaniya of the various exhibits, and
I
was hoping that you'd be able to point me toward some kind of resource
to
help with terminology and the like. For the most part it's been fairly
simple, but I'm sure that some of the terms have standard English
equivalents particular to the study of Icon Art. So, if there were
someone
or, something that you could recommend in connexion with this, it would
help a great deal.

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