Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines scriptural authority and its textual and visual instruments, asking how words and images interacted to represent and by representing to constitute authority, both sacred and secular, in Northern Europe between 1400 and 1700. Like texts, images partook of rhetorical forms and hermeneutic functions – typological, paraphrastic, parabolic, among others – based largely in illustrative traditions of biblical commentary. If the specific relation between biblical texts and images exemplified the range of possible relations between texts and images more generally, it also operated in tandem with other discursive paradigms – scribal, humanistic, antiquarian, historical, and literary, to name but a few – for the connection, complementary or otherwise, between verbal and visual media. The Authority of the Word discusses the ways in which the mutual form and function, manner and meaning of texts and images were conceived and deployed in early modern Europe. Contributors include James Clifton, John R. Decker, Maarten Delbeke, Wim François, Jan L. de Jong, Catherine Levesque, Andrew Morrall, Birgit Ulrike Münch, Carolyn Muessig, Bart Ramakers, Kathryn Rudy, Els Stronks, Achim Timmermann, Anita Traninger, Peter van der Coelen, Geert Warnar, and Michel Weemans.
Trade Review"The value of this volume goes beyond a traditional method’s careful limning of an academic specialization. Method and tradition aside, the papers all scrutinize a very significant period in the history of visual production and consumption in Europe [..] many of these [essays] make a point of socially locating their subject matter and giving the reader a concrete sense of the material relationship of text and image to the surrounding world." – David Morgan, Duke University, in: Renaissance Quarterly 65/3 (Fall 2012), p. 897 "One of the edges of current scholarship interrogates the constructed boundary between words and images. This collection of twenty essays […] is a lovely sampling of the state of the question." – Lee Palmer Wandel, University of Wisconsin-Madison, in: HNA Review of Books
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Notes on the Editors Notes on the Contributors List of Illustrations Introduction: Scriptural Authority in Word and Image WALTER S. MELION, CELESTE BRUSATI AND KARL ENENKEL I. VERBUM VISIBLE: THE AUTHORITY OF THE VISIBLE WORD The Dominican, the Duke and the Book. The Authority of the Written Word in Dirc van Delft’s Tafel vanden kersten gelove GEERT WARNAR Producing Texts for Prints: Artists, Poets and Publishers PETER VAN DER COELEN Embodying Hermeneutics: Rabelais and the Pythagorean Symbola ANITA TRANINGER Nature Discerned: Providence and Perspective in Gilles van Coninxloo’s Sylva CATHERINE LEVESQUE II. THE AUTHORITY OF VISUAL PARATEXTS The Author’s Portrait as Reader’s Guidance: The Case of Francis Petrarch KARL A.E. ENENKEL Solomon Writing and Resting: Tradition, Words and Images in the 1548 Dutch “Louvain Bible” WIM FRANÇOIS III. READING SCRIPTURE THROUGH IMAGES Eloquent Presence: Verbal and Visual Discourse in the Ghent Plays of 1539 BART RAMAKERS The Earthly Paradise: Herri met de Bles’s Visual Exegesis of Genesis 1-3 MICHEL WEEMANS Representations of Adam and Eve in Late Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Embroidery ANDREW MORRALL IV. VERBAL AND VISUAL INSTRUMENTS OF DEVOTIONAL AUTHORITY “Practical Devotion”: Apotropaism and the Protection of the Soul JOHN R. DECKER Highways to Heaven (and Hell): Wayside Crosses and the Making of Late Medieval Landscape ACHIM TIMMERMANN Images, Rubrics and Indulgences on the Eve of the Reformation KATHRYN M. RUDY The Stigmata Debate in Theology and Art in the Late Middle Ages CAROLYN MUESSIG Towards a Transconfessional Dialogue on Pre-Modern Theological Texts and Images: Some Adnotationes on Nadal, Lipsius and Rubens BIRGIT ULRIKE MÜNCH Responding to Tomb Monuments: Meditations and Irritations of Aernout van Buchel in Rome (1587 – 1588) JAN L. DE JONG Miracle Books and Religious Architecture in the Southern Netherlands. The Case of Our Lady of Hanswijk in Mechelen MAARTEN DELBEKE V. PICTORIAL ARTIFICE AND THE WORD Prayerful Artifice: The Fine Style as Marian Devotion in Hieronymus Wierix’s Maria of ca. 1611 WALTER S. MELION Secret Wisdom: Antoon Wierix’s Engravings of a Carmelite Mystic JAMES CLIFTON Working the Senses with Words: The Act of Religious Reading in the Dutch Republic ELS STRONKS
