Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, V. 2 (Book Review)

published or submitted for publicatio

Constructing Saint Louis in John the Good's Grandes Chroniques de France (Royal MS. 16 G. VI)

In the 1330s a new, revised, densely illuminated copy of the Grandes Chroniques de France was made for the John, the dauphin of France who would be crowned King John the Good in 1350. Containing a twice-revised text and over 400 one- and two-column wide illuminations, the chronicle breaks from prior and subsequent royal traditions of illustration. This article argues that the visual and textual expansions were designed to elide the chronicle with a contemporary copy of Vincent of Beauvais's Miroir historial also made for John. Because the manuscripts share format, mise-en-page, artists, secondary decoration and distinctive editing practice, their similarities would encourage readers to use the miroir and chroniques as an ambitious four volume world history that offered John interlaced genealogical frames for interpreting history and a particularly powerful model in Saint Louis

L’imagerie politique dans les manuscrits supervisés par Laurent de Premierfait

Laurent de Premierfait, secrétaire et clerc de Louis de Bourbon, Jean de Berry et Louis de Guyenne, était un humaniste et traducteur renommé, dont les traductions étaient dotées de cycles visuels, conçus comme guide à l’interprétation du texte. Cet article prend en considération l’interprétation visuelle suggérée par les images de la destruction de Jérusalem de la version française de Laurent du De casibus virorum illustrium de Boccace, intitulée Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, terminée en 1409-1410. L’analyse de la mise en page des images et de leurs textes, et leur mise en relation avec la représentation littéraire et visuelle contemporaine de la destruction de Jérusalem suggèrent que les enluminures du manuscrit pris en considération – le Des cas – avaient été conçues de manière à encourager Jean de Berry à les contempler à la fois comme illustration de l’histoire du passé et comme commentaire sur les événements contemporains pendant la guerre civile française.Laurent de Premierfait, secretary and clerk to Louis of Bourbon, John of Berry and Louis of Guienne, was a noted humanist and translator whose translations were densely illuminated with images designed to guide interpretation of the text. This article considers the visual interpretation fostered by images of the destruction of Jerusalem in Laurent’s revised translation of Boccaccio, Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes in 1409–1410. Examining the mise en page of the images and their texts in relation to contemporary literary and visual representations of Jerusalem’s destruction, it suggests that the illuminations in the Des cas were designed to encourage John of Berry to contemplate them both as illustrations of past history and as commentaries on contemporary events like the French civil war

Advising France through the Example of England: Visual Narrative in the Livre de la prinse et mort du roy Richart (Harl. MS. 1319)

Some time between November 1401 and March 1402 Jean Creton wrote an eyewitness account of King Richard II’s deposition in 1399. Around 1405 Duke John of Berry, the uncle of the French King Charles VI, was given the only richly illuminated copy of the text to survive. This article examines the visual narrative of Harl. MS. 1319 both as it interacts with Creton’s text and as it resonated with members of the highly visually cultured French courtly audience. After analysing the textual structure of Creton’s unusual combination of verse and prose, this article suggests that the images were planned both to reinforce its eyewitness character and to place special emphasis on the absence of legitimate kingship in England after Richard’s deposition. At a moment in the early fifteenth century when the French king was ineffectual and civil unrest was brewing, Richard’s downfall offered a powerful example to the French aristocracy

Digging into “Digging into Data”

Communication and Collaboration: Digging into Digging into Data. Digital Humanities Seminar, University of Kansas—Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities & Hall Center for the Humanities, May 7, 2013: http://idrh.ku.edu Anne D. Hedeman is at the University of Kansas in History of Art. Heather Tennison is at the University of Illinois.We discuss the challenges, compromises, and successes of our segment of the collaboration between Michigan State, the University of Illinois, and Sheffield University (UK) in Digging into Image Data to Answer Authorship-Related Questions (DID-ARQ), 2009-2011

Textual and visual representations of power and justice in Medieval France: manuscripts and early printed books

International audienceThoroughly interdisciplinary in approach, this volume examines how concepts such as the exercising of power, the distribution of justice, and transgression against the law were treated in both textual and pictorial terms in works produced and circulated in medieval French manuscripts and early printed books. Analysing texts ranging from romances, political allegories, chivalric biographies, and catalogues of famous men and women, through saints’ lives, mystery plays and Books of Hours, to works of Roman, canon and customary law, these studies offer new insights into the diverse ways in which the language and imagery of politics and justice permeated French culture, particularly in the later Middle Ages. Organized around three closely related themes - the prince as a just ruler, the figure of the judge, and the role of the queen in relation to matters of justice - the issues addressed in these studies, such as what constitutes a just war, what treatment should be meted out to prisoners, what personal qualities are needed for the role of lawgiver, and what limits are placed on women’s participation in judicial processes, are ones that are still the subject of debate today. What the contributors show above all is the degree of political engagement on the part of writers and artists responsible for cultural production in this period. With their textual strategies of exemplification, allegorization, and satirical deprecation, and their visual strategies of hierarchical ordering, spatial organization and symbolic allusion, these figures aimed to show that the pen and paintbrush could aspire to being as mighty as the sword wielded by Lady Justice herself

Introduction

La prefazione apre il volume Inscribing Knowledge in the Medieval Book. The Power of Paratexts, pubblicato dalle stesse autrici, e rivolto ad esaminare la funzione degli elementi paratestuali come rappresentanti di tentativi di codificazione dei testi appartenenti a varie discipline e tipologie di testi, e dei sistemi di relazione tra autori, scribi e fruitori di testi e manoscritti

Inscribing knowledge in the medieval book: the power of paratexts

This collection of essays examines how the paratextual apparatus of medieval manuscripts both inscribes and expresses power relations between the producers and consumers of knowledge in this important period of intellectual history. It seeks to define which paratextual features—annotations, commentaries, corrections, diagrams, glosses, images, prologues, rubrics, and titles—are common to manuscripts from different branches of medieval knowledge and how they function in any particular discipline. It reveals how these visual expressions of power that organize and compile thought on the written page are consciously applied, negotiated or resisted by authors, scribes, artists, patrons, and readers. This collection, which brings together scholars from the history of the book, law, science, medicine, literature, art, and philosophy, interrogates the role played by paratexts in establishing authority, constructing bodies of knowledge, promoting education, shaping reader response, and preserving or subverting tradition in medieval manuscript culture.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_smemc/1009/thumbnail.jp