This collection looks beyond the literary, religious, and philosophical aspects of Chaucer's texts to a new mode of interdisciplinary scholarship: one that celebrates the richness of Chaucer's visual poetics. The twelve illustrated essays make connections between Chaucer's texts and various forms of visual data, both medieval and modern.
Basing their approach on contemporary understandings of interplay between text and image, the contributors examine a wealth of visual material, from medieval art and iconographical signs to interpretations of Chaucer rendered by contemporary artists. The result uncovers interdisciplinary potential that deepens and informs our understanding of Chaucer's poetry in an age in which digitization makes available a wealth of facsimiles and other visual resources.
A learned assessment of imagery and Chaucer's work that opens exciting new paths of scholarship, Chaucer: Visual Approaches will be welcomed by scholars of literature, art history, and medieval and early modern studies.
The contributors are Jessica Brantley, Joyce Coleman, Carolyn P. Collette, Alexandra Cook, Susanna Fein, Maidie Hilmo, Laura Kendrick, Ashby Kinch, David Raybin, Martha Rust, Sarah Stanbury, and Kathryn R. Vulic.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface . Chaucer: Visual Approaches / Susanna Fein and David Raybin
Acknowledgments
I. WAYS OF SEEING
1 Intervisual Texts, Intertextual Images: Chaucer and the Luttrell Psalter / Ashby Kinch
2 Creative Memory and Visual Image in Chaucer’s House of Fame / Alexandra Cook
3 “Quy la?”: The Counting-House, the Shipman’s Tale, and Architectural Interiors / Sarah
Stanbury
4 The Vernon Paternoster Diagram, Medieval Graphic Design, and the Parson’s Tale /
Kathryn Vulić
II. CHAUCERIAN IMAGESCAPES
5 Standing under the Cross in the Pardoner’s and Shipman’s Tales / Susanna Fein
6 Disfigured Drunkenness in Chaucer, Deschamps, and Medieval Visual Culture / LauraKendrick
7The Franklin’s Tale and the Sister Arts / Jessica Brantley
8 Miracle Windows and the Pilgrimage to Canterbury / DavidRaybin
III. CHAUCER ILLUSTRATED
9 Translating Iconography: Gower, Pearl, Chaucer, and the Rose / Joyce Coleman
10 “Qui bien ayme a tarde oblie”: Lemmata and Lists in the Parliament of Fowls /
Martha Rust
11 The Visual Semantics of Ellesmere: Gold, Artifice, and Audience/ MaidieHilmo
12 Drawing Out a Tale: Elizabeth Frink’s Etchings Illustrating Chaucer’s “Canterbury
Tales” / Carolyn P. Collette
Notes
Bibliography
Editors and Contributors
Index of Manuscripts
General Index
“Susanna Fein and David Raybin, consummate Chaucerians, have drawn together one of the most compelling collections of essays I have seen on Chaucer in recent years. . . . Essay after essay, including each of their own, shapes a sparklingly original argument based on a wealth of visual material: the profusion of images, new arguments, and deeply researched manuscript observation offers insights on every page. We do not just read Chaucer freshly, we see his imagination at work and are sent back to his writing to rediscover its rich colors for ourselves.”
—Ardis Butterfield, author of The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language, and Nation in the Hundred Years War
