Mirror in Parchment: the Luttrell Psalter and the Making of Medieval England

Camille, Michael

ISBN 10: 0226092402 / ISBN 13: 9780226092409

Published by University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998

About this Item

Peach-colored cloth boards with black lettering; peach-colored DJ with color illustration and white and black lettering; 410 pp.; richly illustrated. "What is the status of visual evidence in history? Can we actually see the past through images? Where are the traces of previous lives deposited? Michael Camille addresses these important questions in Mirror in Parchment, a lively, searching study of one medieval manuscript, its patron, producers, and historical progeny."-- Publisher's description. VG (Textblock is lightly foxed; interior is clean; binding is solid.) VG (Lightly edgeworn and scuffed.). Seller Inventory # 194919

Bibliographic Details

Title: Mirror in Parchment: the Luttrell Psalter ...

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Publication Date: 1998

Binding: Hardcover

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis:

Examining how the past is represented through visual evidence and images, this text analyzes one medieval manuscript, created for the English nobleman Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (1276-1345), its patron, producers and historical progeny. The Psalter's representations of manorial life have come to profoundly shape the modern idea of what medieval people, high and low, looked like at work and at play. Alongside such supposedly truthful representations, the Psalter presents myriad images of fantastic monsters and beasts. The text examines how these patently false images have been disparaged or ignored by modern historians and art historians, for they challenge the credibility of those pictures in the Luttrell Psalter that we wish to see as real. The text addresses late medieval chivalric ideas, physical sites of power and the boundaries of Sir Geoffrey's imagined community, wherein agricultural labourers and monsters play a similar ideological role.

About the Author:

Michael Camille (1958-2002) was professor of art history at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art.