The Interrelationships of Text and Illustration in Some Middle English Literary Manuscripts.
- Author/Editor
- Braeger, Peter C.
- Title
- The Interrelationships of Text and Illustration in Some Middle English Literary Manuscripts.
- Published
- Braeger, Peter C.. "The Interrelationships of Text and Illustration in Some Middle English Literary Manuscripts." PhD thesis, Purdue University, 1986.
- Review
- Chapter 1 surveys some approaches used to analyse the effect of illustrations on a reader, among them Alain-Marie Bassy's distinction between textual "relay" and textual "anchorage." Chapter 2 analyses certain Middle English prefatory pictures which operate like Bassy's "relay;" these pictures bring familar iconographic motifs to bear upon the authorial persona the literary work presents. Depicting either the Lover's Confession or Nebuchadnezzar's Statue, the prefatory miniatures in manuscripts of Gower's Confessio Amantis help characterize the works protagonists and help confirm the poet's own role as a prophet who warns the king that the final age of history has come. Chapter 3 shows that the illustrations in MS New College 266 typically highlight moments of moral conversion and self-recognition from the exempla. Chapter 4 shows that the illustrations in MS Morgan M.126 typically emphasize scenes from the exempla that reflect the political and moral discord of the present age described by Gower in the Prologue. An appendix contains iconographic descripions and reproductions of the miniatures used in the study. [JGN 5.2]
- Date
- 1986
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies