THE INTERRELATIONSHIPS OF TEXT AND ILLUSTRATION IN SOME MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS

PETER CARL BRAEGER, Purdue University

Abstract

This study analyzes the interrelationships of text and illustration in a number of Middle English literary manuscripts, in particular, in manuscripts of John Gower's Confessio Amantis. The study does not deal with the style of the manuscript pictures; nor does it attempt to establish that the pictures represent the artist's response to the literary work. Instead, it examines the kinds of literary and critical problems that, in their manuscript context, the illustrations invite a reader to consider. Chapter 1 surveys some approaches that have been suggested for analyzing the effect of illustrations upon a reader, among them Alain-Marie Bassy's distinction between textual "relay" and textual "anchorage." Chapter 2 analyzes certain Middle English prefatory pictures that operate like Bassy's "relay"; these pictures bring familiar inconographic motifs to bear upon the authorial persona the literary work presents. The standard presentation miniatures accompanying works like Hoccleve's Regiment suggest the author's role as royal servant and counsellor. Depicting either the Lover's Confession or Nebuchadnezzar's Statue, the prefatory miniatures in manuscripts of Gower's Confessio help characterize the work's protagonists and help confirm the poet's role as a prophet who warns his king that the final age of history has come. The narrative illustrations in MS. New College 266 and Morgan M. 126 of the Confessio depend on the "anchorage" of Gower's exempla. Chapter 2 shows that the New College illustrations typically highlight moments of moral conversion and self-recognition from the exempla. On the other hand, as Chapter 4 shows, the illustrations in 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. Moreover, many of the Morgan pictures employ the "multiscenic" method, stressing for the reader the relationship between the sin of the protagonists and their subsequent fall from political power. Each pictorial program highlights different kinds of exempla and thus encourages a different kind of reading of Gower's poem. An appendix containing iconographic descriptions and reproductions of the miniatures follows the text of the study.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Literature|Middle Ages

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