Description
Book SynopsisAn investigation of the depiction of the story of Theophilus in both its original texts, and images. The legend of Theophilus stages an iconic medieval story, its widespread popularity attesting to its grip on the imagination. A pious clerk refuses a promotion, is demoted, becomes furious and makes a contract with the Devil. Later repentant, he seeks out a church and a statue of the Virgin; she appears to him, and he is transformed from apostate to saint. It is illustrated in a variety of media: texts, stained glass, sculpture, and manuscript illuminations. Through a wide range of manuscript illuminations and a selection of French texts, the book explores visual and textual representations of the legend, setting it in its social, cultural and material contexts, and showing how it explores medieval anxieties concerning salvation and identity. The author argues that the legend is a sustained meditation on the power of images, its popularity corresponding with the rise of their role in portraying medieval identity and salvation, and in acting as portals between the limits of the material and the possibilities of the spiritual world Jerry Root is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of Utah.
Trade ReviewA valuable contribution towards understanding the power of the image in late medieval rituals of religious devotion. * PARERGON *
Jerry Root's well-researched study includes a table of illustrations of the legend, a bibliography, a list of illustrations, a general index, and an index of figures. It is scholarly, perceptive, and critically and theoretically grounded, and will attract readers with a variety of interests: folklore, cultural history, literature, art history, medieval theology, hagiography, and also particularly the history of ideas about identity and interiority. * Folklore *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Homage to the Devil: ritual, writing, seal The Self as dissemblance Intervention of the Virgin Sacramental action and Neoplatonic exemplarism Conclusion Works Cited Appendix: Image Charts
