Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages

This multi-disciplinary collection of essays draws on various theoretical approaches to explore the highly visual nature of the Middle Ages and expose new facets of old texts and artefacts. The term 'visual culture' has been used in recent years to refer to modern media theory, film, modern art and other contemporary representational forms and functions. But this emphasis on visuality is not only a modern phenomenon. Discourses on visual processes pervade the works of medieval secular poets, theologians, and scholastics alike. The Middle Ages was a highly visual society in which images, objects, and performance played a dominant communicative and representational role in both secular and religious areas of society. The essays in this volume, which present various perspectives on medieval visual culture, provide a critical historical basis for the study of visuality and visual processes.

'Together, these essays give an excellent overview of the state of the art by sampling these scholars' main concerns. They furnish proof that work on the German Middle Ages has much to offer to cultural studies as a whole.' - Times Literary Supplement

'This collection of essays...ought to play an important part in bridge-building between European and Anglo-American scholarship in medieval literary studies.' - Medieval Studies

Auteur
KATHRYN STARKEY is Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, USA.

Contenu
Introduction: Visual Culture in the Middle Ages PART I: NEW VISIONS IN MEDIEVAL STUDIES Word and Image as a Research Field: Sound Methodologies or Just a Fashionable Trend?; N.H.Ott PART II: INTERMEDIALITY Writing Speech-Image: The Concurrence of Signs; J.Muller The Shield as a Poetic Screen: Early Blazon and the Visualisation of Medieval German Literature, 1150-1300; H.Wandhoff Intermediality in the Middle Ages: Representations of Writing in the Illustrated Epic; U.Ernst PART III: RETHINKING MANUSCRIPT CULTURE Images at the Interface: Orality, Literacy and the Pictoralization of the Roland Material; J.Rushing Visualizing Performance?: Of Music, Word and Manuscripts; V.Mertens PART IV: SPIRITUAL VISIONS The 'Handwritings of Humanity': Johannes Tauler on Hildegard of Bingern's Liber Scivias; J.F.Hamburger Scripture, Vision, Performance: Visionary Texts and Medieval Religious Drama; N.Largier PART V: WORD, IMAGE, AND TECHNOLOGY Logos and the Press: Christ in the Wine Press and the Development of Printing; H.Wenzel From God's Word to Emblem: Justifying the Printed Word; T.Cramer Contributor Notes