| Reading Images and Texts: Medieval Images and Texts as Forms of Communication. Papers from the Third Utrecht Symposium on Medieval Literacy, Utr Contributor(s): Hageman, Marielle (Editor), Mostert, Marco (Editor) |
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ISBN: 2503514375 ISBN-13: 9782503514376 Publisher: Brepols Publishers OUR PRICE: $108.30 Product Type: Hardcover Language: Latin Published: November 2005 Annotation: How did people know what they knew, and learn what they learned? As Derek Pearsall's introduction makes clear this is the primary focus of this collection of essays published in celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of the foundation of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York. The learning materials included range from grammar books to mystery plays, and from court records to monastic chronicles, as well as liturgical and devotional texts. But the essays are not only concerned with texts alone, but with the broader and often fluid social environments in which learning took place. Many of the papers therefore question the validity of some distinctions habitually used in the discussion of medieval culture, such as the opposition between orality and literacy, between Latin and the vernacular or between secular and religious. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Archaeology - History | Europe - Medieval |
| Dewey: 809.933 |
| Series: Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy |
| Physical Information: 1.51" H x 6.52" W x 9.68" (2.56 lbs) 563 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - Medieval (500-1453) |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In recent years the relations between images and texts have benefitted from an increase in scholarly attention. In medieval studies, art historians, historians, codicologists, philologists and others have applied their methods to the study of illuminated manuscripts and other works of art. These studies have shifted from a concern about the contents of the messages contained in the artefacts (e.g. in iconography) to an interest in the ways in which they were communicated to their intended audiences. The perception of texts and images, their reception by contemporaries and by later generations have become topics in their own right. The analysis of individual manuscripts and works of art remains the basis for any consideration of their transmission and uses. Yet the time has come for an evaluation of the results of recent work on medieval communication. The interactions between non-verbal and verbal forms of communication, more in particular the relations between visual symbols other than writing and the recording of speech in writing, are important for the evaluation of both images and texts. According to some, medieval images may be 'read'. According to others, the perception of images is fundamentally different from that of texts. Do images have a morphology (colours, lines, planes), a syntax and semantics of their own? In other words: do both texts and images have a 'grammar'? Is it useful to speak of 'visual literacy'? Can texts be considered as images? How are texts and images perceived? Do they communicate different kinds of messages? Can an image's message be put into words? In which social contexts does medieval man prefer the visual to the textual? What about the interplay of texts and images (e.g. in rituals and ceremonies)? Do we observe an evolution in the perception of images due to the development of a literate mentality? These are some of the questions discussed in the contributions to this volume. |