Image and Imagination
Picturing the Old French Epic- Authors:
- Publisher:
- 2009
Summary
The first in-depth interdisciplinary study of word and image in the Old French chanson de geste, Image and Imagination: Picturing the Old French Epic examines the fascinating relationship between illumination and epic narrative constructed by the medieval understanding of the imagination. The study focuses on the epic cycle known as 'the geste of Saint Gille,' including Aiol and Elie de Saint Gille. The poems in manuscript were produced in the context of the opulent francophone Flemish courts of the mid-to-late thirteenth century. The manuscript (known as BNF fr 25516) is richly illuminated, and the study includes the popular Beuves de Hanstone, forerunner of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and the poem Robert le Diable, later becoming Meyerbeer's celebrated opera. Concluding with the comparative study of BNF fr 24403's epic treatment of the only illuminated version of Chretien de Troyes' first Arthurian work, Erec et Enide, and the Sancti Bertini version of La Chevalerie Vivien, the first dated collection of epics made for a prominent northern Bishop, this study introduces the hitherto little-explored world of medieval illumination and epic narrative poetics.
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Bibliographic data
- Copyright year
- 2009
- ISBN-Print
- 978-0-7618-4832-5
- ISBN-Online
- 978-0-7618-4833-2
- Publisher
- Hamilton Books, Lanham
- Language
- English
- Pages
- 174
- Product type
- Book Titles
Table of contents
- Contents No access
- Figures No access
- Acknowledgments No access
- Introduction No access
- Chapter One. Aiol, Illumination and the Poetics of the Epic No access Pages 1 - 31
- Chapter Two. The Illuminated Geste de Saint Gille, Pictor and the Past No access Pages 32 - 49
- Chapter Three. Parody, Illumination and Genre Renewal No access Pages 50 - 66
- Chapter Four. Roman, Estoire, Exemplum: Illumination of Epic Compilation No access Pages 67 - 92
- Chapter Five. Illuminating the Old French Epic: Two Late Thirteenth-Century Franco-Flemish Examples No access Pages 93 - 112
- Figures No access Pages 113 - 158
- Selected Bibliography No access Pages 159 - 168
- Index No access Pages 169 - 174





