The Social Life of Illumination

Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages

Edited by Joyce Coleman Edited by Mark Cruse Edited by Kathryn A Smith

Book cover: The Social Life of Illumination

Extent: 576 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Medieval Studies

Series: Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe

Series volume number: 21

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(November 2013)

ISBN: 9782503532127

6.26 x 9.41 inches

Price: $195.00

In stock

Art historians and literary scholars explore how the interplay of images and texts in medieval manuscripts enabled an array of social interactions that helped to shape communal identities and experience.


This anthology is the first broadly based exploration of an issue now emerging at the intersection of art history and literary study: how the interplay of images and texts in medieval manuscripts enabled an array of social interactions that helped shape individual and communal experience and identities. An interdisciplinary group of scholars, from Art History, English, and French departments, has combined to explore the ways in which pictures in a book can have a ‘social life’. Setting aside the traditional assumption that illuminated manuscripts were meant chiefly for the eyes of solitary reader-viewers, the essays in this anthology demonstrate that illuminations took on social dimension in many ways. They could cue internal dialogues with religious figures or family members; they could be described, explained, and/or viewed communally during public readings; and they could draw their viewers into joint celebration of core secular or religious values. As much as architectural monuments, contracts, and rituals, illuminations provide a way for us to map the multiple dimensions of medieval social life.

  • Edited by Joyce Coleman
  • Edited by Mark Cruse
  • Edited by Kathryn A Smith