The author is Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of Art History at New York University , Institute of Fine Arts, and a leading authority on English medieval manuscript illumination. This volume bring together twenty-six of Professor Sandler's studies, focusing on illustrated manuscripts produced in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, particularly on the illuminated psalters. The marginal illustrations in these psalters are a topic of particular interest, and there are a number of iconographic studies derived from this material. A separate section deals with the illustrated encyclopedias of the period, particularly the Omne bonum.

In Medieval English Manuscripts and Literary Forms, Jessica Brantley offers an innovative introduction to manuscript culture that uses the artifacts themselves to open some of the most vital theoretical questions in medieval literary studies. With nearly 200 illustrations, many of them in color, the book offers both a broad survey of the physical forms and cultural histories of manuscripts and a dozen case studies of particularly significant literary witnesses, including the Beowulf manuscript, the St. Albans Psalter, the Ellesmere manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, and The Book of Margery Kempe. Practical discussions of parchment, scripts, decoration, illustration, and bindings mix with consideration of such conceptual categories as ownership, authorship, language, miscellaneity, geography, writing, editing, mediation, illustration, and performance—as well as of the status of the literary itself. Each case study includes an essay orienting the reader to particularly productive categories of analysis and a selected bibliography for further research. Because a high-quality digital surrogate exists for each of the selected manuscripts, fully and freely available online, readers can gain access to the artifacts in their entirety, enabling further individual exploration and facilitating the book’s classroom use. Medieval English Manuscripts and Literary Forms aims to inspire a broad group of readers with some of the excitement of literary manuscript studies in the twenty-first century. The interpretative frameworks surrounding each object will assist everyone in thinking through the implications of manuscript culture more generally, not only for the deeper study of the literature of the Middle Ages, but also for a better understanding of book cultures of any era, including our own.

The "Vows of the Peacock" - written in 1312 and dedicated to Thibaut de Bar, bishop of Liège - recounts how Alexander the Great comes to the aid of a family of aristocrats threatened by Indians. The poem remained popular throughout the fourteenth century and was soon followed by two sequels. Twenty-six illuminated manuscripts constitute part of a catalogue and concordance of all Peacock manuscripts. One of the most provocative, (PML, MS G24), has twenty-two miniatures which illustrate chivalry and courtly love, as epitomized in the text. An unusually high number of scurrilous marginalia, however, surround them. An interdisciplinary exploration of iconography, reception, image-text-marginalia dynamics, and context reveals their ultimate polysemy as scatological comedians and serious harbingers of sin.

Interdisciplinary approaches to the material culture of the middle ages, from illuminated manuscripts to church architecture.

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.

This volume offers unparalleled coverage of all aspects of art and architecture from medieval Western Europe, from the 6th century to the early 16th century. Drawing upon the expansive scholarship in the celebrated 'Grove Dictionary of Art' and adding hundreds of new entries, it offers students, researchers and the general public a reliable, up-to-date, and convenient resource covering this field of major importance in the development of Western history and international art and architecture.

English Gothic Misericord Carvings: History from the Bottom Up by Betsy Chunko-Dominguez is the first book to move beyond textual dependence and traditional iconographic analysis when examining misericords. It likewise builds the most thorough discussion to date of the relationship between the misericord’s several potential audiences – including patron, craftsman, occupant of the seat, and modern viewer. Beyond the bounds of misericord studies, there are implications here for study of the relationship between center and margin in late medieval art; and, indeed, what constitutes ‘center’ and ‘margin’ as conceptual realms. Ultimately, this book attempts both to re-integrate the study of misericords into the study of Gothic art in general, and to re-center them in relation to our understanding of late medieval culture.

Early modern princely courts were not only inhabited by humans, but also by a large number of animals. This coexistence of non-human living beings had crucial impacts on the spatial organization, the social composition and cultural life at these courts. The contributions enrich our knowledge on another aspect of court life and invite to reconsider our basic understandings of court, courtiers and court society.

Tracing the Gospel text from script to illustration to recitation, explores the ritual and architectural context of illuminated manuscripts.