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Blurred Boundaries in Pre-Modern Texts and Images: Aspects of Audiences and Readers-Viewers Responses

  • Dafna Nissim and Vered Tohar
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Blurred Boundaries and Deceptive Dichotomies in Pre-Modern Texts and Images
This chapter is in the book Blurred Boundaries and Deceptive Dichotomies in Pre-Modern Texts and Images

Abstract

This article explores recent scholarship on the dynamic interaction among artistic manifestations of various categories, such as sacred and secular, male and female, real and fictional, and conflicting emotions in pre-modern texts and images. Inspired by Hans Georg Gadamer’s perspective on interpretation and reader-response criticism, it examines how audiences perceived and received these works from a socio-historical standpoint. Relevant research reveals that medieval societies did not rigidly adhere to these cognitive categories as absolute dichotomies. Instead, for reading communities, art viewers, and object users, these categories are often blended, negotiated, and intertwined with one another. This perspective challenges earlier paradigms that depicted domains such as sacred and secular as separate and hierarchical. It argues that medieval audiences adeptly navigated between the holy and the mundane, embracing the fluidity of these concepts without experiencing cognitive dissonance. The aesthetic preferences of the authors and artists played a significant role in connecting the moral and spiritual dimensions of artistic works with everyday life experiences, presenting a pre-modern understanding of the permeability of these concepts.

Abstract

This article explores recent scholarship on the dynamic interaction among artistic manifestations of various categories, such as sacred and secular, male and female, real and fictional, and conflicting emotions in pre-modern texts and images. Inspired by Hans Georg Gadamer’s perspective on interpretation and reader-response criticism, it examines how audiences perceived and received these works from a socio-historical standpoint. Relevant research reveals that medieval societies did not rigidly adhere to these cognitive categories as absolute dichotomies. Instead, for reading communities, art viewers, and object users, these categories are often blended, negotiated, and intertwined with one another. This perspective challenges earlier paradigms that depicted domains such as sacred and secular as separate and hierarchical. It argues that medieval audiences adeptly navigated between the holy and the mundane, embracing the fluidity of these concepts without experiencing cognitive dissonance. The aesthetic preferences of the authors and artists played a significant role in connecting the moral and spiritual dimensions of artistic works with everyday life experiences, presenting a pre-modern understanding of the permeability of these concepts.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgements V
  3. Table of Contents VII
  4. Blurred Boundaries in Pre-Modern Texts and Images: Aspects of Audiences and Readers-Viewers Responses 1
  5. The Sacred and the Profane in German Courtly Romances and Late Medieval Verse Narratives: With an Emphasis on Ulrich Bonerius and Heinrich Kaufringer 15
  6. The Poetic and Ideological Blurring of Boundaries in the Jewish Book of Ethics Orḥot Ṣaddiqim 41
  7. Laughing at Death: Blurred Boundaries in Giotto’s Last Judgment 57
  8. The Popular in Service of the Sacred: The Sculpted Musicians of Santiago de Compostela 79
  9. Image and Legend of Saint Margaret as an Aid in Childbirth Rituals 101
  10. Violent Women and the Blurring of Gender in some Medieval Narratives 125
  11. On the Heavenly and the Earthly, the Secular as Sacred – A New Reading of Medieval Hebrew Fables 145
  12. The Secular and the Sacred in a Bifolio from Louis of Laval’s Book of Hours and Its Spiritual Use 165
  13. Between Psalter and “Mirrors for Princes”: On the Moral and Didactic Messages in BL Cotton MS Domitian A XVII 185
  14. Visual and Textual Authority: Reading Chevalier in Manuscripts of La Vie des pères 205
  15. Aspects of Italian and Flemish Identity in Relation to Book Illumination: Reception of Devotional and Antiquarian Ideas through Depictions of Jewelry 229
  16. List of Illustrations 249
  17. Notes on Contributors 253
  18. Index 255
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111243894-002

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgements V
  3. Table of Contents VII
  4. Blurred Boundaries in Pre-Modern Texts and Images: Aspects of Audiences and Readers-Viewers Responses 1
  5. The Sacred and the Profane in German Courtly Romances and Late Medieval Verse Narratives: With an Emphasis on Ulrich Bonerius and Heinrich Kaufringer 15
  6. The Poetic and Ideological Blurring of Boundaries in the Jewish Book of Ethics Orḥot Ṣaddiqim 41
  7. Laughing at Death: Blurred Boundaries in Giotto’s Last Judgment 57
  8. The Popular in Service of the Sacred: The Sculpted Musicians of Santiago de Compostela 79
  9. Image and Legend of Saint Margaret as an Aid in Childbirth Rituals 101
  10. Violent Women and the Blurring of Gender in some Medieval Narratives 125
  11. On the Heavenly and the Earthly, the Secular as Sacred – A New Reading of Medieval Hebrew Fables 145
  12. The Secular and the Sacred in a Bifolio from Louis of Laval’s Book of Hours and Its Spiritual Use 165
  13. Between Psalter and “Mirrors for Princes”: On the Moral and Didactic Messages in BL Cotton MS Domitian A XVII 185
  14. Visual and Textual Authority: Reading Chevalier in Manuscripts of La Vie des pères 205
  15. Aspects of Italian and Flemish Identity in Relation to Book Illumination: Reception of Devotional and Antiquarian Ideas through Depictions of Jewelry 229
  16. List of Illustrations 249
  17. Notes on Contributors 253
  18. Index 255
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