Textual and Visual Representations of Power and Justice in Medieval France

Textual and Visual Representations of Power and Justice in Medieval France
Author: Rosalind Brown-Grant
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351895451

Thoroughly 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.

Inscribing Knowledge in the Medieval Book

Inscribing Knowledge in the Medieval Book
Author: Rosalind Brown-Grant
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2020-01-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 150151332X

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, 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, philosophy and music, 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.

Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts

Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts
Author: Kathryn M. Rudy
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2023-04-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1800649622

The Medieval book, both religious and secular, was regarded as a most precious item. The traces of its use through touching and handling during different rituals such as oath-taking, is the subject of Kathryn Rudy’s research in Touching Parchment. Rudy presents numerous and fascinating case studies that relate to the evidence of use and damage through touching and or kissing. She also puts each study within a category of different ways of handling books, mainly liturgical, legal or choral practice, and in turn connects each practice to the horizontal or vertical behavioural patterns of users within a public or private environment. With her keen eye for observation in being able to identify various characteristics of inadvertent and targeted ware, the author adds a new dimension to the Medieval book. She gives the reader the opportunity to reflect on the social, anthropological and historical value of the use of the book by sharpening our senses to the way users handled books in different situations. Rudy has amassed an incredible amount of material for this research and the way in which she presents each manuscript conveys an approach that scholars on Medieval history and book materiality should keep in mind when carrying out their own research. What perhaps is most striking in her articulate text, is how she expresses that the touching of books was not without emotion, and the accumulated effects of these emotions are worthy of preservation, study and further reflection.

Anne de Graville and Women's Literary Networks in Early Modern France

Anne de Graville and Women's Literary Networks in Early Modern France
Author: Elizabeth L'Estrange
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2023-04-11
Genre:
ISBN: 1843846861

First detailed reconstruction of Anne de Graville's library, establishing her as one of the most well-read and erudite poets of the period. In the 1520s, the French noblewoman Anne de Graville composed two poetic works, based on older, canonical, male-authored texts: Giovanni Boccaccio's Teseida and Alain Chartier's Belle dame sans mercy. The first, the Beau roman, she offered to Claude, queen of France and wife of Francis I, and the second, the Rondeaux, to the king's mother, Louise of Savoy. With the pro-feminine spin of her rewritings, Anne developed the legacy of another woman writer from 100 years earlier, Christine de Pizan, by entering the on-going debate known as the querelle des femmes. Like Christine, Anne sought to redress the negative view of women found in much contemporary popular literature and to offer role models for both men and women at the contemporary court. This book is the first detailed reconstruction and interpretation of Anne's library and her collecting practice, showing how they relate to her own writings and her literary milieu. It also teases out her links to other women writers of the time interested in the querelle, such as Catherine d'Amboise and Margaret of Navarre. Paying close attention to literary, manuscript, and artistic sources, it establishes Anne's reputation as one of the most erudite poets of the period, and one keenly attuned to the position of women in society as well as to the political sensitivities of the French court.

In the Skin of a Beast

In the Skin of a Beast
Author: Peggy McCracken
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2017-05-17
Genre: Crafts & Hobbies
ISBN: 022645892X

In medieval literature, when humans and animals meet—whether as friends or foes—issues of mastery and submission are often at stake. In the Skin of a Beast shows how the concept of sovereignty comes to the fore in such narratives, reflecting larger concerns about relations of authority and dominion at play in both human-animal and human-human interactions. Peggy McCracken discusses a range of literary texts and images from medieval France, including romances in which animal skins appear in symbolic displays of power, fictional explorations of the wolf’s desire for human domestication, and tales of women and snakes converging in a representation of territorial claims and noble status. These works reveal that the qualities traditionally used to define sovereignty—lineage and gender among them—are in fact mobile and contingent. In medieval literary texts, as McCracken demonstrates, human dominion over animals is a disputed model for sovereign relations among people: it justifies exploitation even as it mandates protection and care, and it depends on reiterations of human-animal difference that paradoxically expose the tenuous nature of human exceptionalism.

Visualizing Justice in Burgundian Prose Romance

Visualizing Justice in Burgundian Prose Romance
Author: Rosalind Brown-Grant
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2020
Genre: French fiction
ISBN: 9782503586335

This is the first monograph devoted to manuscripts illuminated by the mid-fifteenth-century artist known as the Wavrin Master, so-called after his chief patron, Jean de Wavrin, chronicler and councillor at the court of Philip the Good of Burgundy. Specializing in the production of pseudo-historical prose romances featuring the putative ancestors of actual Burgundian families, the artist was an attentive interpreter of these texts which were designed to commemorate the chivalric feats of past heroes and to foster their emulation by noble readers of the day. Integral to these heroes' deeds is the notion of justice, their worth being measured by their ability to remedy criminal acts such as adultery, murder, rape, and usurpation. In a corpus of 10 paper manuscripts containing the texts of 15 romances and over 650 watercolour miniatures, the stylised, expressive images of the Wavrin Master bring out with particular clarity the lessons in justice which these works offered their contemporary audience, many of whom, from the Burgundian dukes downwards, would have been responsible for upholding the law in their territories. Chapters are devoted to issues such as the nature of just war and how it is linked to good rulership; what forms of legal redress the heroines of these tales are able to obtain with or without the help of a male champion; and what responses are available in law to a spouse betrayed by an adulterous partner. The book will be of interest to scholars of medieval art, literature, legal and cultural history, and gender studies.

Medieval Justice

Medieval Justice
Author: Hunt Janin
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2009-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786445025

A primer on medieval justice, this book focuses on France, Germany and England and covers the thousand years between the transformation of the Roman world in Western Europe, which took place around the 4th and 5th centuries, and the European Renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries. It highlights key elements in the intricate, overlapping legal systems of the Middle Ages and describes a wide range of contemporary laws and cases. A discussion of the modern legacies of medieval law is included, as are a brief overview of the Inquisition, the 27 articles of Joan of Arc and useful commentary on many other topics. Illustrations range from the earliest known depictions of English courts and illuminations of torture to pictures of important sites, events, and instruments of punishment in medieval law.

The Subject Medieval/Modern

The Subject Medieval/Modern
Author: Peter Haidu
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2004
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 080474744X

This work presents a thorough historicist account of the development of subjectivity in the medieval period, as traced in medieval literature and historical documentation.

War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France

War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France
Author: Christopher Allmand
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2000-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1781386900

The essays in this volume portray the public life of late medieval France as that country established its position as a leader of western European society in the early modern world. A central theme is the contribution made by contemporary writers, chroniclers and commentators, such as Jean Froissart, William Worcester and Philippe de Commynes, to our understanding of the past. Who were they? What picture of their times did they present? Were their works intended to influence their contemporaries and what success did they enjoy? Other contributions deal with the exercise of political power, the relationship between the court and those in authority in far-flung reaches of the kingdom, and the role and status of the death penalty as deterrent, punishment and means of achieving justice.

The Art of Law

The Art of Law
Author: Stefan Huygebaert
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2018-09-27
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3319907875

The contributions to this volume were written by historians, legal historians and art historians, each using his or her own methods and sources, but all concentrating on topics from the broad subject of historical legal iconography. How have the concepts of law and justice been represented in (public) art from the Late Middle Ages onwards? Justices and rulers had their courtrooms, but also churches, decorated with inspiring images. At first, the religious influence was enormous, but starting with the Early Modern Era, new symbols and allegories began appearing. Throughout history, art has been used to legitimise the act of judging, but artists have also satirised the law and the lawyers; architects and artisans have engaged in juridical and judicial projects and, in some criminal cases, convicts have even been sentenced to produce works of art. The book illustrates and contextualises the various interactions between law and justice on the one hand, and their artistic representations in paintings, statues, drawings, tapestries, prints and books on the other.