Fair and Varied Forms: Visual Textuality in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts 0415942675, 9780415942676, 0415803683, 9780415803687

Table of contents :
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
Chapter One: Graphic Signification
Perception and Conception
Potency of Images and Words
Modes of Interaction and Substitution: Metaphoric Tropes
Structure in the Graphic Field
Contexts
Chapter Two: Inner Space, Outer Space, Graphic Space: Words and Pictures in Anglo-Saxon Culture
The Print-Culture Bias
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes Toward Scribes, Illustrators, and the Visual
Anglo-Saxon Readers and Writers
Anglo-Saxon Artisans
Image Veneration
Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Books
Patterns of Identification: Schemata
Patterns of Interaction and Substitution: Metaphoric Tropes
Patterns of Relationship: Spatial Models
Images of Time
Time and Space on the Manuscript Page
Chapter Three: The Reading Subject and the Devotional Text: The Harley Psalter
The Manuscript
The Psalms in Anglo-Saxon Life
Purpose of the Harley Psalter
Psalm 33
Psalm 1
Psalm 113
Patterns of Relationship: Cosmic Space
Patterns of Identification: Schematization and the Representation of Women
The Political Nature of the Psalter
Patterns of Interaction and Substitution: More on Metaphor
Chapter Four: Narrative Time in Graphic Space: The Illustrated Hexateuch
The Manuscript
Patterns of Identification: Schemata
Patterns of Interaction and Substitution: Metaphoric Tropes
Patterns of Relationship: Movement in Narrative Space
Spatial Time
Allegorical Time
Chapter Five: My Monster, Myself: 'The Marvels of the East'
The Manuscript
The Monstrous Races
Patterns of Identification: Schematic Monsters
Patterns of Interaction and Substitution: Dog-Ants and Valkyry-eyed Beasts
Patterns of Relationship: Occupying the Framed Space
Chapter Six: Marginal Portraits and the Fiction of Orality: The Ellesmere Manuscript
Changes in the Making and Reading of Texts Since the Eleventh Century
Chaucer and the 'Canterbury Tales'
Patterns of Relationship: Page Layout and the Reader
Modes of Identification: Schemata and Discursive Detail
Patterns of Substitution and Interaction: Metonymic Focus on Orality
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Author Index
Subject Index

Citation preview

FAIR AND VARIED FORMS

MEDIEVAL HISTORY AND CULTURE VOLUME

15

STUDIES IN

MEDIEVAL HISTORY AND CULTURE

edited by

Francis G. Gentry Professor of German Pennsylvania State University

A ROUTLEDGE SERIES

OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES

1. "AND THEN THE END WILL COME"

Early Latin Christian Interpretations ofthe Opening ofthe Seven Seals

9. CHOOSING NoT TO MARRY

Women and Autonomy in the Katherine Group Julie Hassel

Douglas W. Lumsden

10. FEMININE FIGURAE

ARTHURIAN ROMANCE

Representations of Gender in Religious Texts by Medieval German Women Writers

Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

Rebecca L.R. Garber

2. TOPOGRAPHIES OF GENDER IN MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN

3. CHRISTIAN, SARACEN AND GENRE IN MEDIEVAL FRENCH LITERATURE

Imagination and Cultural Interaction in the French Middle Ages

11. BODIES OF PAIN

Suffering in the Works ofHartmann vonAue Scott E. Pincikowski

Lynn Tarte Ramey 12. THE LITERAL SENSE AND THE 4. WORD OUTWARD

Medieval Perspectives on the Entry into Language

GOSPEL OF JOHN IN LATE MEDIEVAL COMMENTARY AND LITERATURE

Mark Hazard

Corey Marvin

13. THE REPRODUCTIVE UNCONSCIOUS 5. JUSTICE & THE SOCIAL CONTEXT

IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY

OF EARLY MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN

MODERN ENGLAND

LITERATURE

Jennifer Wynne Hellwarth

Robert G. Sullivan 14. MYSTICAL LANGUAGE OF SENSATION

6. MARRIAGE FICTIONS IN OLD FRENCH SECULAR NARRATIVES, 1170-1250

A Critical Re-evaluation of the Courtly Love Debates Keith Nickolaus

7. WHERE TROUBADOURS WERE BISHOPS

The Occitania ofFolc ofMarseille(c. 1150-1231) Nichole M. Schulman

8. JOHN CASSIAN AND THE READING OF EGYPTIAN MONASTIC CULTURE

Steven D. Driver

IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES

Gordon Rudy

FAIR AND VARIED

FORMS Visual T extuality in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts

Mary C. Olson

RouTLEDGE

New York & London

Published in 2003 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 www.rourledge-ny.com Published in Great Britain by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN www .rourledge.co.uk Transferred to Digital Printing 2009 Copyright© 2003 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. Portions of Chapter Four originally appeared in Mosaic, a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature, Vol. 31, No.1, pp 1-24, March 1998. Reprinted with permission. Portions of Chapter Six are reprinted with permission from Chaucer Illustrated: 1be Canterbury Tales in Pictures through Six Centuries, ed. Joseph Rosenblum (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press). Plates 1-15 are reprinted by permission of the British Library; Plates 16-20 are reprinted by permision of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Olson, Mary C., 1941Fair and varied forms : visual textuality in medieval illuminated manuscripts I by Mary C. Olson. p. em.- (Studies in medieval history and culture; v.15) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-94267-5 1. English literature-Old English, ca. 450-1100-Criticism, Textual. 2. English literature-Old English, cs. 450-1100-IIIustrations. 3. Illumination of books and manuscripts, MedievalEngland. 4. Art and literature-England-History-To 1500. 5. Books and reading-EnglandHistory-To 1500. 6. Illumination of books and manuscripts, Anglo-Saxon. 7. Illumination of books and manuscripts, English. 8. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400-Manuscripts. 9. ScriptoriaEngland-History-To 1500. 10. manuscripts, Medieval-England. 11. Manuscripts, English (Middle) 12. Manuscripts, English (Old) I. Title. II. Series. PR179.T48 047 2002 829.09-dc21 2002006359 ISBNIO: 0-415-94267-5 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-415-80368-3 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-94267-6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-80368-7 (pbk) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.

Series Editor Foreword

Far from providing just a musty whiff of yesteryear, research in Medieval Studies enters the new century as fresh and vigorous as never before. Scholars representing all disciplines and generations are consistently producing works of research of the highest caliber, utilizing new approaches and methodologies. Volumes in the Medieval History and Culture series will include studies on individual works and authors of Latin and vernacular literatures, historical personalities and events, theological and philosophical issues, and new critical approaches to medieval literature and culture. Momentous changes have occurred in Medieval Studies in the past thirty years in teaching as well as in scholarship. Thus the goal of the Medieval History and Culture series is to enhance research in the field by providing an outlet for monographs by scholars in the early stages of their careers on all topics related to the broad scope of Medieval Studies, while at the same time pointing to and highlighting new directions that will shape and define scholarly discourse in the future. Francis G. Gentry

VII

For Lee Humphrey

Pulchras formas et uarias, nitidos et amoenos colores amant oculi .... Ipsa enim regina colorum lux ista perfundens cuncta, quae cernimus, ubiubi per diem fuero, multimodo adlapsu blanditur mihi aliud agenti et eam non aduertenti. Insinuat autem se ita uehementer, ut, si repente subtrahatur, cum desiderio requiratur; et si diu absit, constristat animum.

The eyes love fair and varied forms, and bright and soft colors .... For this queen of colors, the light bathing all which we behold, wherever I am through the day, gliding by me in varied forms, soothes me when engaged in other things, and not observing it. And so strongly it does entwine itself, that if it be suddenly withdrawn, it is with longing sought for, and if absent long saddens the mind. St Augustine of Hippo

xi

Contents

List of Illustrations Preface Introduction

xv xvu xtx

CHAPTER ONE

Graphic Signification Perception and Conception Potency of Images and Words Modes of Interaction and Substitution: Metaphoric Tropes Structure in the Graphic Field Contexts

1 7 14 19 23 27

CHAPTER TWO

Inner Space, Outer Space, Graphic Space: Words and Pictures in Anglo-Saxon Culture The Print-culture Bias Anglo-Saxon Attitudes toward Scribes, Illustrators, and the Visual Anglo-Saxon Readers and Writers Anglo-Saxon Artisans Image Veneration Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Books Patterns of Identification: Schemata Patterns of Interaction and Substitution: Metaphoric Tropes Patterns of Relationship: Spatial Models Images of Time Time and Space on the Manuscript Page

29 29 31 33 36 37 39 40 46 51 55 58

CHAPTER THREE

The Reading Subject and the Devotional Text: The Harley Psalter The Manuscript The Psalms in Anglo-Saxon Life xm

65 65 66

xiv Purpose of the Harley Psalter Psalm 33 Psalm 1 Psalm 113 Patterns of Relationship: Cosmic Space Patterns of Identification: Schematization and the Representation of Women The Political Nature of the Psalter Patterns of Interaction and Substitution: More on Metaphor

Contents 69 72 78 81 83 85 93 95

CHAPTER FOUR

Narrative Time in Graphic Space: The Illustrated Hexateuch The Manuscript Patterns of Identification: Schemata Patterns of Interaction and Substitution: Metaphoric Tropes Patterns of Relationship: Movement in Narrative Space Spatial Time Allegorical Time

99 100 101 105 113 116 124

CHAPTER FIVE

My Monster, Myself: The Marvels of the East The Manuscript The Monstrous Races Patterns of Identification: Schematic Monsters Patterns of Interaction and Substitution: Dog-Ants and Valkyry-eyed Beasts Patterns of Relationship: Occupying the Framed Space

131 132 134 141 146 149

CHAPTER SIX

Marginal Portraits and the Fiction of Orality: The Ellesmere Manuscript Changes in the Making and Reading of Texts Since the Eleventh Century Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales Patterns of Relationship: Page Layout and the Reader Modes of Identification: Schemata and Discursive Detail Patterns of Substitution and Interaction: Metonymic Focus on Orality Conclusion Notes Bibliography Author Index Subject Index

153 154 157 158 162 169 177 181 199 223 227

List of Illustrations

PLATES

1 Psalm 33. Harley Psalter. f. 19. London BL Harley 603. All Harley Psalter photographs are used by permission of the British Library. 2 Psalm 1. f. 1v. 3 Psalm 113. f. 58. 4 Psalm 114. f. 59. 5 Psalm 44. f. 26. 6 Psalm 132. f. 68v. 7 The Trinity. f. 1. 8 Death schema. f. 10v. Old English Illustrated Hexateuch. London, BL Cotton Claudius B.iv. f. 53v. All photographs from the Illustrated Hexateuch are used by permission of the British Library. 9 The fall of the angels. f. 2. 10 Jacob's dream. 43v. 11 Tamar is led to the fire. f. 57. 12 The sacrifice of Isaac. f. 38. 13 Panotus. Nowell Codex. f. 104. All photographs from this manuscript are used by permission of the British Library. 14 Donestre. Nowell Codex. f. 103v. 15 Gold-digging ants. Nowell Codex. f. 101. 16 Opening page. Ellesmere Chaucer. San Marino, Huntington Library MS El26 C9. f. 1. All photographs are used by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California 17 The Physician. f. 133. 18 The Cook. f. 47. 19 The Squire. f. 115v. 20 Chaucer. f. 153v. XV

73 79 82 84 86 88 92 107

110 112

122 127 142 143 149 159 163 164 166 170

xvi

List of Illustrations

FIGURES

[The drawings and diagrams are by the author.] 1.1 Aztec Annal. Codex Mexicanus, p. 71. Boone and Mignolo 65. 1.2 Spiral Continuum 1.3 Memorial effigy. Conyi, Ziani, Kenya. Art/artifact 150. 1.4 Carving of a Witch from Bali. The Art and Culture of Bali 99. 2.1 Evangelist figure. Gospels of St. Willibord. f. 18v. Paris, Biblioteque Nationale, Lat. 9389. 2.2 Soldiers from the Bayeux Tapestry. Musee de reine Mathilde. 2.3 Noah and his sons. Junius MS. p. 74. Oxford, Bodleian Llibrary MS Junius 11 2.4 Ira and Patientia. Psychomachia of Prudentius. London, BL MS Cotton Cleopatra C. viii. f. 11 v. 2.5 Superbia. Psychomachia of Prudentius. f. 13v. 2.6 King David, King Harold, and Bishop Benedict. Psalter f. 4v. Cambridge, University Library MS Ff. 1.23. King Harold. Bayeux Tapestry. Bishop Benedict. Eadui Psalter. London, BL Arundel MS 155. f. 133. 2.7 The psalmist attacked by a lion. Paris Psalter. Paris, Bib!. Nat., lat. 8824. f. 5. 2.8 Cnut and Emma's cross. New Minster Liber Vitae. London, BL Stowe MS 944. f. 6. 2.9 Cain and Abel. Junius MS. p. 49. 3.1 Schematic types from the Harley Psalter. London, BL Harley 603. 3.2 Diagram of Psalm 33 3.3 Diagram of Psalm 1 3.4 Diagram of Psalm 113 3.5 Diagram of Psalm 44 3.6 Details of Psalms 122 f. 65.and f.130 3.7 Details of Psalms 13 f. 7v. and 108 f. 56 4.1 Joseph's coat. Old English Illustrated Hexateuch. London, BL Cotton Claudius B.iv. f. 53v 4.2 Horned Moses. f. 136v. 4.3 Israelite Women harping. f. 92v. 4.4 Enoch ascends to heaven f. 11 v. 4.5 The angel's message to Hagar f. 36. 4.6 God and Noah. f. 14. 4.7 Jacob bows to Esau. f. 54. 4.8 Sarah objects to Ishmael playing with Isaac f. 35v 4.9 Allegorical Time 5.1 Blemmya. Nowell Codex. London BL MS Cotton Vitellius A.xv. f. 102v. 5.2 Conopena. f. 1 OOr.

5 12 17 18 41 42 42 43 43 44

49 59 60 72 73 80 83 86 87 89 102 103 104 106 108 108 118 119 125 144 146

Preface

The ideas that have come to fruition in this book began long before I began work on my Ph.D. dissertation at Purdue University. The almost fifteen years when I made my living as a graphic artist established ways of thinking about texts as visual elements that interact with pictures to generate meanings beyond the literal sense of the words. I believe that it is perhaps only in advertising art today that we find the same level of awareness of the appearance of text and the importance of letter forms that was the everyday attitude of scribes and illustrators in the Middle Ages. This awareness has helped me to look at illustrated manuscripts from the point of view of the scribe and illustrator, to better understand the use of schemata and iconography, and to understand spatial arrangement of elements in the graphic field as part of the meaning generated by the page. In addition to my graphic art experience, I have had the benefit of many excellent teachers who have shared their time, their knowledge, and their personal libraries freely and generously. I am especially indebted to the members of my dissertation committee: Shaun Hughes, Ann Astell, Beate Allert, and Richard Dienst who all share a dedication to careful scholarship and an enthusiasm for learning, and who spent many hours reading drafts of the chapters and making insightful and constructive suggestions. Also important are my earlier medieval professors, Norman Hinton whose generosity in giving his time for independent study made my undergraduate degree possible and Roberta Bosse who supervised my mastser's thesis. I am also indebted to Purdue University for their support with fellowships and for providing an atmosphere conducive to rigorous scholarship. My family members have given their unfailing support, especially my husband Lee Humphrey who is always willing to listen to me read drafts of my work, Amy England from whom I get a good idea almost every time I talk to her, and Bob Uptain, Lucy England, Jim Guinn, Sarah and Brian Mason, Ben England, and Sean and Becky Humphrey for their encourage-

xvii

xviii

Preface

ment, support, and for their generous contributions in the form of computer equipment and technical advice without which I could never write anything. Part of Chapter Four appeared in a slightly different form in Mosaic 31.1 as "Genesis and Narratology: The Challenge of Medieval Illustrated Texts" and part of Chapter Six will appear in Chaucer Illustrated: The Canturbury Tales in Pictures through Six Centuries, forthcoming from Oak Knoll Press. I am grateful to Mosaic and Oak Knoll for permission to use this material.

Introduction

This study is about texts that contain both words and pictures, about what they are, how they are related, and how they work in the same graphic space. Illustrated texts of the medieval period are well suited for such an investigation. They represent a period in which words and pictures are combined to produce an artifact that is celebrated rather than denigrated because of the combination. This is not the case with illustrated texts in Western culture in general, especially during the period between the Middle ages and the twentieth century. The dynamics of medieval illustrated texts are still (and probably will always be) imperfectly understood. It is my hope that this study will provide new ways of reading and viewing these texts; but I also hope that the reading strategies outlined here need not be limited to the medieval period of England or Western Europe, but will have significance for other times and places as well. Consequently, I will work from general to specific, dealing first with a broad theoretic approach to the nature of words and pictures, their relationship to and interaction with one another. Then I will focus on the Middle Ages, and finally on specific manuscripts. The language used in discourses about words and pictures-text/image, visual/verbal, for example-reveals the polarization that has often been assumed to be their natural relationship. However, in trying to define the terms, I find that they refuse to stay contained within their taxonomic spaces. They continually climb over, under or around those boundaries that are erected to control them. The same is true for every classification scheme or dichotomy that is offered in explanation or description of how marks made in a graphic field are to be viewed, read, or interpreted. Categories of perceptual/conceptual, natural/conventional, optic/haptic, dense/ discreet, as well as those of word/image or visual/verbal reveal a polarizing impulse in methods of creating cognitive structures. While the creation of taxonomic categories provides certain advantages of manageability, it is XIX

XX

Introduction

also, as Barbara Stafford claims, anatomizing, dissecting, and amputating, and has resulted in a suppression of ambiguity, contradiction, and superfluity (132). I will make only one definitive category distinction in this study, and that must be positioned between spoken and written language. The temporal nature of the spoken word is operative in the oral mode. When any word or idea is written, it becomes at once spatial, and as such, separable from the pictorial only by degree. Because my purpose is to read words and pictures together, I have chosen to emphasize this plastic, spatial nature of writing. I will also call attention to the semiotic nature of pictures, although this has been done much more extensively by others, especially Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson ("Semiotics and Art History"). Consequently, question of the split between the picture and the spoken word and their different ways of functioning lies outside the scope of this study. Both verbal and pictorial texts in illustrated manuscripts are inherently visual, although the degree of connection to the auraVoral is greater in the early Middle Ages than it is in the later periods. However, no matter how strong the tie between the written and aural aspects of words, the written words are nonetheless spatial. The focus, then, is on the relationship between written words and pictures rather than words and pictures in a broader sense. I begin by defining two terms. The first is graphe. I use this Greek word (and its plural graphai) because it seems to have a certain neutrality. It refers to a mark, either writing or drawing; and so by graphe I will mean any mark of any type placed on a page, a drawing, letter, pictogram, doodle, decorative element; drawn, painted, printed, or even incised. The second term to be defined is graphic production. This term includes the contents and aspects of the graphic field. It could be a page, a double page opening, a manuscript, an area of canvas, wall or any surface that contains graphai. It contains, as well as the graphai, the dimensions of the page or other ground and its physical characteristics such as color, texture, weight, and anomalies such as holes. This has increased importance for medieval texts in which parchment shows wide variations, and where physical characteristics such as holes are often incorporated into the graphai. Michel de Certeau, in his definition of writing, posits the priority of a blank page upon which the subject constructs a text (134 ). However, I would argue that there is no blank page in either the physical or the cultural sense. The page already, by its inherent attributes (which include the characteristic of being a page), delimits, demands, and interacts with the graphai and the meanings that they attempt to produce. The removal of boundaries between verbal and pictorial graphai is hardly a new idea. My intention, however, is to further explore the ramifications of reading graphic productions in such a mode. Mieke Bal has used rhetorical analysis of visual works in Reading Rembrandt. "Figures of style," she claims, "or figurations of meaning are not used only in Ian-

Introduction

xxi

guage but in other media as well. That is to say, concepts from one field of literature, are not merely being metaphorically transposed to the other, visual arts; rather, both already use the same devices to shape meaning" (69). In choosing modes of investigation for this study, I did not want to favor those which have been traditionally associated with either verbal or pictorial texts. Consequently, I chose one from each tradition, and one that seemed to me to be comparatively neutral. Schematization comes from the art-historical tradition, and, while it has received attention as a factor in other periods, it is especially pertinent for medieval art. From the rhetorical tradition, I have chosen to deal with metaphorical tropes. Again, as an approach with broad application, it lends itself readily to the investigation of medieval texts. Finally, I will examine the ways in which the ideas embodied in any cultural production are understood and expressed spatially. This way of processing texts has not received the kind of attention that schemata and metaphor have, and is therefore less firmly associated with either discipline. The term "schema" needs further clarification. This word has been used in a number of different ways in different disciplines at different times, including several that figure in this study. The primary meaning for our purposes is that of a means of representing, whereby a form is used generically for any instance of a particular image: a dog, a woman, a building, etc. Each example may have particularizing details, but the basic form is the same in each case. Schematization is typical of children's drawings, as well as of the art of certain cultures including the medieval. 1 In cultures such as the medieval, it reflects particular ideas about the uses of art, including a cultural bias toward the creation of taxonomies. It assumes an audience with at least a general knowledge of a rather loose code of pictorial signs. While it seems at times to have much in common with iconography, the two are somewhat different. Iconography looks at the ways a type is consistent across the spectrum of times and cultures; for example, St. Peter is always depicted with keys, a king with a crown. Schematization, on the other hand, looks at the ways a person or object is consistent across types; for example, all depictions of men by a particular artist will be drawn according to one schema, with particularizing details added for the purposes of identification. Icons belong to a larger community of codification than do schemata, which in some cases are consistent only within the work of a particular illustrator. Ernst Gombrich makes the claim that so-called perceptual art also uses traditional schemata. The artist, he believes, has a repertoire of standard or ideal forms which are modified to reflect specific information received through perceptions (Art and Illusion 73 ). Criticism of Gombrich's schema theory focuses on the fact that he presents it as a totalizing construction which ignores social factors (Bryson "Introduction" xviii). Many so-called perceptual artists do, in fact, appear to employ schemata, even while looking at the subject, but this is a drawing tech-

xxii

Introduction

nique that is quite different from that used by medieval artists; they may follow an exemplar, or call upon their memory, but do not usually sit in front of the person or object and look at it as they draw. Behind the art of the Middle Ages lies a set of assumptions that is different from that of the following centuries. Other uses of the word "schema" are pertinent to this study. Linguists use the term to refer to certain kinds of metaphorical figures. Mark Johnson defines the idea in terms of patterns of actions, conceptions, and perceptions: "a schema is a recurring pattern, shape, and regularity in, or of, these ongoing ordering activities ... (they are) structures for organizing our experiences and comprehension" (29). For example, the vertical classification schema provides metaphoric expression for power relationships, morality, esthetic values, and kinds of knowledge, to name a few. Other schemata listed by Johnson include container, paths, links, compulsion, blockage, attraction, and center/periphery" metaphors (113-126). Classical rhetoric uses the term for certain verbal figures. Donatus lists scemata along with metaplasmus and tropi as rhetorical devices. He divides schemata into figures of diction and figures of sense, although he is more concerned with figures of diction, seventeen of them in particular. These involve such devices as paronomasia (puns) and anaphora (the repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses) (Murphy 33-34). JElfric uses this rhetorical sense in his Grammar: "Sume sind gehatene scemata, paet sind mislice hiw and fregernyssa on ledensprrece, hu heo betst gelogoo beo" (Grammatik xxv). 2 Sometimes the term schema is used for an oral formulaic phrase, although this is not the common practice. In this sense it closely corresponds to the sense of the pictorial schema. Unless the text indicates otherwise, I will use the term to refer to the kinds of pictorial schemata described above as common to medieval art. The first chapter deals with the semiotic, phenomenological, and cultural nature of graphai. It examines the ramifications of the perceptual/ conceptual split, questioning the customary assumptions regarding their difference. Next, an investigation is undertaken to provide theoretical support for the argument that words and pictures signify in the same ways. Here I have proposed a spiral continuum as a model for the relationships between different types of graphic signifiers. Following a discussion of image potency, the chapter concludes by establishing the parameters of the three modes of investigation which structure my investigation-schema, metaphor, and spatiality. Chapter two focuses more specifically on the medieval period, particularly the Anglo-Saxon period. It looks at evidence of attitudes toward words and pictures in medieval culture in the writings of JElfric and others, and the influence of such earlier writers as Augustine, Boethius, and Pseudo Dionysius. It investigates the role of artisans in Anglo-Saxon culture, espe-

Introduction

xxiii

cially evidence of the role of women in manuscript production. It explores in general the role of schematization, metaphor, and the use of the spatial as a way of organizing information and expressing meaning in AngloSaxon manuscripts. Of particular pertinence are the ways in which medieval people understood time. We can find several models, both linear and cyclic, providing spatial frameworks for temporal concepts. The remaining chapters deal with four specific manuscripts: The Harley Psalter (Harley 603), The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch (Cotton Claudius B.iv.), The Marvels of the East (in the Nowell Codex, Cotton Vitellius A.xv.), and the Ellesmere Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales. (San Marino, Huntington Library MS El26 C9). I have chosen manuscripts from three genres of the Anglo-Saxon period to test whether the reading strategies are effective for different types, and a manuscript from the Middle English period to test whether they are effective over a broader span of time. The Harley Psalter is a devotional work, used extensively by monastics and laity alike in the celebration of the liturgy and in private devotion. The Hexateuch is a narrative based ultimately on oral tradition, in which are embedded the myths and legends of the Judea-Christian religion. For its Anglo-Saxon audience, it represents not only a "true" and "real" account of historical events and people, but also embodies, in allegorical figures, the Incarnation and Apocalypse. The Marvels of the East might be called a scientific text, in that it purports to represent and catalogue actual monstrous races, animals, and places in a marginally constituted Orient. The Canterbury Tales is a compendium of narrative material with a pilgrimage/taletelling contest frame-narrative. It is also, as Ann Astell has convincingly demonstrated, an encyclopedic work in the tradition of Hugh of St. Victor, Martianus Capella, and Macrobius. In each case, the genre of the work seems to be a factor of major importance in the kinds of page layout and illustrations that make up the visual part of the text. Chapter Three examines specific illustrations in the Harley Psalter, and the ways in which spatial organization, schemata, and metaphor function in this particular text. Schematization in this text reveals a deep androcentric bias which is carried over from the exemplar, although mitigated by certain illustrations of women in those pictures which deviate from it. Spatial organization consistently shows a three-part cosmos with separate levels for heaven, earth and hell. These realms interpenetrate frequently. The role of the reader is that of a subject who is projected into the text space by the illustrations as well as by the language of the verbal text. The genre of the Psalter (devotional) profoundly affects the choice of illustrations, and the layout of the page. Another influencing factor is the political situation in Anglo-Saxon England, an influence which is most obvious where the illustrations deviate from the exemplar. Chapter Four deals with the Old English Hexateuch and its function as a narrative text. In particular, it examines the relationship between narra-

XXIV

Introduction

tive and time. Calling upon the narrative theory of Paul Ricoeur and others, it identifies ways of depicting time in the manuscript, shows how the idea of time shapes a narrative, and how that shape is changed or reinforced by the illustrations. Here, I focus on the evidence of allegorical interpretation on the part of the illustrators, and the understanding of allegorical exegesis as a theory of time. In addition, synecdochic tropes in the illustrations emphasize the communicative function, especially the habitual reiteration of the covenant, functioning to foreground this aspect of the Hexateuch narrative. In Chapter Five, we see how the Marvels of the East text manifests medieval attitudes toward difference. A treatise on monstrous races, animals and plants, it reveals ways of dealing with physical and cultural anomalies by presenting dehumanizing aspects of customs and living habits. Although one might expect less schematization in such a text, the technique is still very much in evidence. Customary schemata for people and animals are altered to reflect the particular anomaly of the monstrous being under scrutiny. In comparison with Beowulf and the Life of St. Christopher in the same manuscript, where the monstrous creatures appear in narratives and have names, the monsters in this text are characterized by a lack of relationship to other peoples, or in many cases, even to each other. This lack is particularly revealed in the way they are represented in the illustrations. At the same time, I argue that the monstrous races embody fears of bodily violation or dismemberment, which are offered for the controlling gaze of the viewer. Chapter Six moves ahead almost four hundred years to the time of Chaucer. After recounting some of the changes that have taken place in manuscript production and reading practice, the study turns to an investigation of the Ellesmere Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales. It looks at the relationship between the commercial nature of the production and the illustrations and page layout. All of the pilgrim portraits foreground the fiction of orality which is a basic ingredient of the Tales. This operation of foregrounding is the locus of metaphoric tropes in the illustrations which present metonymic representations of orality. Chaucer's portrait presents a somewhat different problem than the other portraits do. It is situated in a relationship of tension with the narrator Chaucer's presentation of himself. Examination of the verbal text focuses on Chaucer's two tales, and their relationship to his portrait. The page layout of the manuscript reflects changes that have taken place in the ways manuscripts are produced and read. Its highly literary nature must be read against the emphasis on orality that one finds in the illustrations. In each example, the genre of the work plays a defining role in the way the illustrations interact with the verbal text and vise versa. For example, The temporally static state of affairs of the two non-narrative texts influences the illustrative pattern. On the other hand, the Canterbury Tales is usually thought to be a narrative work, but its illustrations call attention

Introduction

XXV

to its other aspects. The Ellesmere Chaucer then is not a narrative in the same way that the unillustrated Hengwrt Chaucer is a narrative. The visual element changes the perception of genre. One of the determining characteristics of a genre is the way in which the text relates to its audience. It is this relationship which the scribe and illustrator enhance or resist, or in some cases create, with the design of the page, the style and size of the script, and the characteristics of the illustrations. But before we can consider genres in a specific text, we must first look at some of the ways in which words and pictures signify.

FAIR AND VARIED FORMS

CHAPTER ONE

Graphic Signification

Modern text and image theory perhaps begins with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Laocoon, published in 1766. This study of the relationship between painting and poetry remains an important work in the field. 1 As the basis for his comparison, Lessing uses specific works-the Laocoon statue, now in the Vatican, by a Greek sculptor of uncertain identity and date, and Virgil's account of the Laocoon story in Book II of the Aeneid. His most important distinction lies in the temporal and spatial characteristics of verbal and visual art (which he takes in a fairly narrow sense, and generally refers to as poetry and painting). He writes: I reason thus: if it is true that in its imitations painting uses completely different means or signs than does poetry, namely figures and colors in space rather than articulated sounds in time, and if these signs must indisputably bear a suitable relation to the thing signified, then signs existing in space can express only objects whose wholes or parts coexist, while signs that follow one another can express only objects whose wholes or parts are consecutive. (78)

Therefore, by Lessing's definition, painting is suitable for depicting objects, persons, scenes, or single actions-that which exists in a single moment, from a single vantage point. Poetry is suited to the relating of consecutive actions, and not for ekphrasis, "the verbal representation of visible objects. " 2 Lessing believes that the representation of more than one point in time in a painting shows bad taste, and that the portrayal of a scene in poetry by consecutive descriptions of objects is tedious and ineffective. In fact, he believes that it is very difficult for a painter to show any kind of progressive action, or for a poet to describe. Therefore, Lessing believes that poets should not attempt description, because even though the eye moves over the painting in a linear fashion, it does so very rapidly, and the impression is that of a unified whole, while the verbal description takes so 1

2

Fair and Varied Forms

long that one cannot maintain continuity (86). (However, the poet can describe sounds and smells which the painter cannot depict.) An interesting development here is that Lessing claims that the referential (motivated) nature of visible signs confines their use to expression of only those objects whose whole or parts coexist. The arbitrary (unmotivated) nature of verbal signs also allows them to represent coexisting bodies; however, the parts must be disassembled in order to be described (8588), and the object disintegrates. The motivated for Lessing is bound to the spatial and the unmotivated to the temporal. The problems inherent in an approach which limits the visual and verbal to the extent that Lessing does are obvious. It is hard to see how his analysis of poetry as consecutive action could apply to lyric poetry, for example. And of course a cross-cultural historic spectrum of visual and verbal practices contains works considered admirable in their own time and place which do those very things that Lessing finds abominable. 3 Why, then, is Lessing still considered significant? As McCormick claims, it is because of "the principles which he demonstrated in a singularly brilliant display of style and method, and [because of] the new era in art and literature which he ushered in with the Laocoon" (xxviii). Indeed, he makes an important distinction between the temporal and spatial qualities of certain genres. These characteristics of time and space which he recognized in visual and verbal representations are important considerations today in text and image studies. They are also relevant, to a certain extent, for this study, although the focus has shifted to the spatial. Lessing's distinctions between visual and verbal rest on the oral nature of the verbal-the sound that exists only at a point of time and then is forever lost, remaining only and imperfectly in the memory of the hearer. Although he does not specifically address the issue, he seems to see writing as subordinate to oral language, and therefore in the category of the temporal. Ironically, while his study encompasses both the form and meaning of visual art, he considers only the meaning of verbal art. The sound of poetry has certainly been an important consideration for poets of many, if not all times and places, including Lessing's. 4 A study of imitative sounds and meters in writing reveals that verbal media (especially poetry) have a great deal more referentiality in common with the visual arts than Lessing admits. Jacques Derrida, in Of Grammatology, seeks to call attention to the very split which Lessing ignores. He challenges the view of verbal representation which relegates writing to a derivative status. He quotes Rousseau's definition of writing as a "supplement to the spoken word." Writing, claims Derrida, ... no longer indicating a particular, derivative, auxiliary form of language in general (whether understood as communication, relation, expression, signification, constitution of meaning or thought, etc.), no longer designating the exterior surface, the insubstantial double of a major signifier,

Graphic Signification

3

the signifier of the signifier-is beginning to go beyond the extension of language. In all senses of the word, writing thus comprehends language. Not that the word "writing" has ceased to designate the signifier of the signifier, but it appears, strange as it may seem, that "signifier of the signifier" no longer defines accidental doubling and fallen secondarity. "Signifier of the signifier" describes on the contrary the movement of language: in its origin, to be sure, but one can already suspect that an origin whose structure can be expressed as "signifier of the signifier" conceals and erases itself in its own production. There the signified always already functions as a signifier. The secondarity that it seemed possible to ascribe to writing alone affects all signifieds in general, affects them always already, the moment they enter the game. (7)

Derrida thus expands the definition of writing. He does not reverse the speech/writing hierarchy, but denies any hierarchy of signifiers. Writing in the narrow sense and speech are aspects of the same system: For some time now... one says "language" for action, movement, thought, reflection, consciousness, unconsciousness, experience, affectivity, etc. Now we tend to say "writing" for all that and more: to designate not only the physical gestures of literal pictographic or ideographic inscription, but also the totality of what makes it possible; and also, beyond the signifying face, the signified face itself. And thus we say "writing" for all that gives rise to an inscription in general, whether it is literal or not and even if what it distributes in space is alien to the order of the voice: cinematography, choreography, of course, but also pictorial, musical, sculptural "writing." (9)

Derrida thus places himself in opposition to traditional ways of understanding the nature of writing. He sees the precedence of spoken language (phonocentrism) as the basis for the linearity of Western metaphysics, a concept which "merges with the historical determination of the meaning of being in general as presence" (12). Such phonocentric thinking historically has privileged alphabetic systems, denying to pictographic system even the name of writing. Derrida quotes Saussure's statement from A Course in General Linguistics that there is "no writing as long as graphism keeps a relationship of natural figuration ... " (Quoted in Derrida 32). Linguists who espouse the hierarchical model, of whom John de Francis is representative, have claimed that writing in the "full" sense of the word depends on a phonetic correspondence to spoken language. In Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems, DeFrancis examines several pictographic documents: a Yukaghir (Siberian) "love letter," and several examples of Native American picture writing. The love letter, an often cited example, is not, he claims, writing at all, but "nothing more than the semiritualized product of...Yukaghir party games" (932). The Native American texts he dismisses as (1) having a mnemonic function-as a supplementary memory aid for events already committed to memory (35), and (2) having a "preconcerted" nature (40), whereby the meaning of symbols

4

Fair and Varied Forms

has been agreed upon beforehand. DeFrancis's reasons here seem to be based partly on the fact that he himself (and others outside of the culture of origin) could not decipher the content of the messages. He does not explain why the presence of a pre-arranged code might not be seen as an indication of a writing system rather than otherwise. In any case, he calls these types of communication "Partial/Limited/Pseudo or Non-writing" (42) They are writing systems that never quite made it. The one step that they lack, according to DeFrancis, is the phonetic connection. Writing, in his scheme, undergoes an evolutionary process where pictographs and ideographs are lower on the scale than syllabic systems, which in turn are lower than alphabetic systems. DeFrancis points out that even hieroglyphic writing has a phonetic element which allows it the status of full writing. However, as Derrida demonstrates, there is no writing system that is purely phonetic: Phonetic writing does not exist; no practice is ever totally faithful to its principle. Even before speaking ... of a radical and a priori necessary infidelity, one can already mark its massive phenomena in mathematical script or in punctuation, in spacing in general, which it is difficult to consider as simple accessories of writing. (39) 5

DeFrancis's privileging of the alphabetical system is ethno-centric, as is (it follows) the separation of writing and image. Chinese painting, for example is so closely allied to writing, that artists speak of writing a painting. In fact, in many Chinese painting styles, techniques are derived from the techniques of calligraphy (Yee 206). Lessing's neglect of the form of poetry would be unthinkable for the Chinese who say that language has three elements-thought, sound, and form. There is such reverence for the form of writing in Chinese culture, that people do not tear up or throw away paper that has writing on it. Instead it is burned in a little pagoda built especially for the purpose (Yee 5). In the West, Elizabeth Hill Boone, in the introduction to Writing Without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes, points out that art and writing in pre-Columbian America are identical. The Nahuatl word for "to write," tlacuiloliztli, is also the word for "to paint" (3 ). Boone calls upon Derrida's theories of grammatology to refute the ideas of writing historians, especially those of DeFrancis. She writes: What is most alarming about these statements and views is that they are based on harmfully narrow views of what are thought and knowledge and what constitutes the expression of these thoughts and this knowledge, and they summarily dismiss the indigenous Western Hemisphere. It is time that we realize that such views are part of a European/Mediterranean bias that has shaped countless conceptions-such as "civilization," "art," and the "city"-that were defined according to Old World standards and therefore excluded the non-Western and non-Asian cultures. An expanded epistemological view would, and should, allow all notational systems to be encompassed. If the indigenous American phenomena are to be considered objectively, a broader view is required. (9)

Graphic Signification

5

Boone agrees that some writing systems followed a process of development from pictographic to abstract to phonetic systems. However, she points out that this evolutionary model does not fit all systems. Some other systems, including Aztec and Mixtec, seem to have developed from earlier abstract forms to more the pictorial ones of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (13).

Boone points to mathematical and musical notations as examples of non-verbal writing systems (9), and diagrams and models which portray spatial relationships more economically than verbal writing (10). The identification of different forms of writing with varying spatial and temporal applicability has something in common with Lessing's distinction between spatial and temporal modes; but because the designation of pictorial systems as "writing" has blurred the boundaries and foregrounded the distinction between speech and writing, the territory looks very different. Writing has shifted its center of gravity from aural to graphic. Written word and picture are no longer polarized but reveal themselves as aspects of the same mode of expression. An examination of Aztec and Mixtec writing systems reveals that not only can their texts use both spatial and linear modes of expression, but some texts utilize both types in the same textual space. Boone describes three modes of structuring stories in Late Post-classic Mexico. Mixtec texts are event-oriented (she calls them res gestae). In these, individual elements are oriented to the "intersection of event and participant" (54). A series of pictures shows events involving a person or persons; the time and place change. Aztec writing is of two types. The first, cartographic histories, are primarily spatial. Events are placed in relation to the geographic whole,

Figure 1.1 Aztec Annals, Codex Mexicanus

6

Fair and Varied Forms

"each part is framed spatially by everything else" (55). Lines of footprints show movement from place to place, blue disks indicate years. The yearcount annals, however, are primarily temporal or linear. They consist of year blocks in sequence (Figure 1.1). Each block contains the year name and number, while significant events are shown outside the block, connected to it by a line. The location of events is assumed unless a place sign is present. These documents all contain temporal and spatial elements, yet their form allows shifts from one mode to another. They are both writing and drawing, made of motivated signs. Dana Leibsohn, also in Writing Without Words, shows how Nahuatl cartographic histories combine temporal and spatial characteristics in balance in the same pictorial space. Leibsohn uses the terms of Michel de Certeau-tour and tableau-for two types of spatial projection. Certeau claims that "every story is a travel story-a spatial practice (115). Tour depicts an itinerary, a passage through a changing space in conjunction with an unfolding narration. Tableau uses a stable fixed locale in which movement takes place. Certeau claims that visual images usually give precedence to one projection or the other. However, cartographic histories use both, with a tension resulting from the incongruity (166). In the documents, geography is indicated by a series of pictorial toponyms. Narration follows the movement from place to place. The spaces between toponyms do not reflect actual distance. In them, empty time and empty space collapse so that the temporal or spatial can be repressed (172-74). There is no territory that "naturally" belongs either to the spatial or the temporal. Mitchell writes: There is semantically speaking ... no essential difference between texts and images." The differences, he claims, come "between visual and verbal media at the level of sign-types, forms, materials of representation, and institutional traditions" (Picture Theory 116). In fact, even in spoken language, the spatial is always present, as J. F. Lyotard indicates in Discours, Figure. Lyotard begins with the structural linguistics of Saussure, with which he juxtaposes the phenomenalism of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in a move which overcomes some of the limitations of each. He sees the discursive and figural as occupying different kinds of space. The discursive, he explains, employs representation by concepts which are positioned on a grid of opposition (Readings 3). Saussure's concept of difference-the play between signifiers-involves the langue as a space in which each signifier occupies a position in opposition to the others. Lyotard's reworking points to an irreducible difference between discours and figure. This difference is not between writing and pictures, but between the two aspects of any verbal or pictorial text. The figural represents a space totally heterogeneous to discursive space which is also always present in it (and vice versa) and in fact, works in the visual basis for the semiotic field. Lyotard criticizes Derrida for "excessive textualism." 6 As Readings puts it, "Lyotard works with a very restricted account of textuality in order to refute the claim that everything is indifferently a matter of representation to

Graphic Sig11i(ication

7

insist that there is always a figural other to textuality at work within and against the text" (5). Letters and words, which according to Saussure are always non-motivated and transparent, have a plasticity which renders writing opaque once it is noticed. In painting or drawing, the line has no concept of itself, yet it marks figural space (Readings 19). Lyotard writes: Or Ia ligne presente une ambiguite comparable a celle de )'intonation. D'un cote elle touche a une energetique, de )'autre a une ecriture. Nous conaissons bien ce par oil elle permet l'ecriture: c'est precisement que les verticales, les boucles, les jambages, les horizontales, les angles peuvent etre depouilles de leur sens plastique, et ne plus valoir que comme traits distinctifs constituants des signifiants scripturaux. On peut assurement se soucier de Ia "bonne forme" des lettres et de leur disposition en page, c'est une tache que les meilleurs imprimeurs n'ont jamais abandonee, mais il faut admettre que cette bonne forme est toujours au croisement de deux exigences contradictoires, celle de Ia signification articulee et celle du sens plastique. La premiere requiert Ia plus grande lisibilite, Ia second vise a faire sa juste place a l'energie potentielle que se trouve accumulee et exprimee dans Ia forme graphique en tant que telle. II est aise de comprendre que si l'on gagne ici, on perd Ia. (216) 7 ·

But both the transparency and the plasticity of writing are connected to the physical act of reading-in the attempts of writers and typesetters to conform the written text to the movements of the eyes, or to call upon the spatiaV physical experience of the letter forms themselves. Merleau-Ponty recognizes the participation of the body in both perception and thinking; the role of the body is to provide a "matrix for every other existing space" (MerleauPonty 176). The movement of the eye as a participant in the world is seen against the structuralist version of the eye as a stationary, passive receiver of impressions, a point on a perspectival grid. Language is not just read, decoded, but also seen, the body is involved in an interactive process with the environment (Readings 11-12). It is this corporeal interaction that gives opacity to the transparent. I will return later to this idea of the otherness or heterogeneity of discourse and figure, the temporal and spatial in the graphic field. It presents certain problems which can better be taken up after other issues are dealt with. PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION

The question of perception is closely tied to questions of meaning in the visual arts. Among visual theorists, the classic controversy concerns the perceptual/conceptual division-generally situated as a polarized pair. The terms conceptual and perceptual, as they are commonly used, distinguish less- or non-mimetic from mimetic graphai. The conceptual is thought to be derived from an inner image and is associated with memory and imagination. As David Summers expresses it,

8

Fair and Varied Forms Just as we make thought out of perception, so we may depict the thought rather than the perceived, and into the category of the "conceptual" might be lumped so-called primitive art, provincial or popular art, certain modern art, the art of the mad, Egyptian art, medieval, and even Byzantine art. (232)

Western art, from the Renaissance up to the modern period, is usually included in the perceptual category, as is the later Greek art. In its most extreme sense, the idea of perceptual art is based on a premise that all humans perceive visually in the same way, and as a corollary, would produce universally recognizable images (depending on the skill of the artist) if attempting to imitate their perceptions. Ernst Gombrich in Art and Illusion, denies the polarity, calling conceptual images "relational models" and perceptual images "more complex relational models" (89). Gombrich states that a culturally defined concept always precedes the production of an image. Therefore, all images are conceptual. However, having made this claim, Gombrich makes it evident that he still believes in a principal of natural representation. As Mitchell puts it, "Sometimes it seems as if he is simply clarifying what would have been obvious all along in Art and Illusion, other times as if he has really changed his mind" (lconology 81). For example, in "Image and Code" he writes, "Perspective is the necessary tool if you want to adapt what I now like to call the 'eye-witness principle,' in other words, if you want to map precisely what any one would see from a given point, or for that matter, what the camera could record" (14). And in the same essay, he refers to "the special tricks of naturalism" developed by Western art which incorporate in the image "all the features which serve us in real life for the discovery and testing of meaning" (41). Merleau-Ponty is one of the major proponents of perceptualism. He is concerned with the role of the body in the perceptual act. For MerleauPonty, however, rather than a stable point of reception, the body is a fi~ld of perception and action (16). Vision is attached to movement, especially movement of the eyes, so that the body holds things in a circle around itself. It is this overlapping of motor and optical fields which "forbids us to conceive of vision as an operation of thought that would set up before the mind a picture or representation of the world, a world of immanence and ideality" (162). The objects of perception exist within and because of the body: What the light designs upon our eyes and thence upon our brain, does not resemble the visible world any more than etchings do .... Vision is not the metamorphoses of things themselves into the sight of them; it is not a matter of things belonging simultaneously to the huge, real world and the small, private world. It is a thinking that deciphers strictly the signs given within the body. Resemblance is the result of perception, not its mainspring. (171)

Graphic Signification

9

Neither Gombrich nor Merleau-Ponty espouses the extreme view of perceptualism, but both in different ways want to acknowledge its role. Norman Bryson expresses the general dissatisfaction that many art theorists find with perceptualism: What Perceptualism leads to is a picture of art as apart from the rest of society's concerns, since essentially the artist is alone, watching the world as an ocular spectacle but never reacting to the world's meanings, basking in and recording perceptions but apparently doing so in some extraterritorial zone, off the social map. Perceptualism always renders art banal, since its view never lifts above ocular accuracy, and always renders art trivial, since the making of images seems to go on, according to Perceptualism, out of society, at the margins of social concerns, in some eddy away from the flow of power. ("Introduction" xxi-xxii)

Those who are opposed to perceptualism deny any kind of naturalism, or any significant role of visual perception in the interpreting or production of images. As Bryson's remarks suggest, this view emphasizes the role of culture in all aspects of visuality. It recognizes a split between two types of representation, but denies that what looks "natural" or "real" is founded on something other than what conceptual art is founded on. "Vision," says Bryson, is socialized .... Between the subject and the world is inserted the entire sum of discourses which make up visuality, that cultural construct, and make visuality different from vision, the notion of unmediated visual experience. Between retina and world is inserted a screen of signs, a screen consisting of all the multiple discourses on vision built into the social arena. ("Gaze" 91-92)

Keith Maxey suggests that rather than regarding visual forms as ... the means by which artists capture the qualities of the real world, as instruments with which nature may be translated into artistic likenesses-a mimetic view of representation-we can approach visual forms as if they are value-laden interpretations of nature which vary from culture to culture and period to period. (103)

In such a scheme, there could be no distinction between what we think of as "realistic" and what we call arbitrary, impressionistic, or stylized, or any other of the names applied to conventionalized or abstracted graphai, nor would vision be segregated from the other senses. The divisions provided by culturally derived ideas of reality would vary from one society and historical period to another, or might not exist at all. If we recognize the determining role of culture in the production and reception of visual images, must we then position ourselves in opposition to the perceptual, or is such an opposition false? To deny that the body exists in the equation would obviously go against common sense. In fact, any knowledge of the material world is indirect, mediated by the senses. It is

10

Fair and Varied Forms

the concept of a stable material world that is to be challenged rather than that of perception. And the role that the body plays in understanding and referring to what is perceived is not to provide a universal model for the real, but to establish an understanding based on spatiality. In MerleauPonty's words, "The perceived world is the always presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value, and all existence" (13 ). The knowledge of our own body's space extends to the space of perceived objects (175). "For the soul, the body is both natal space and matrix of every other existing space" (176). Although we also exist in time, our ways of expressing ideas spatially reveal the importance of spatial senses (sight and touch) to our thinking processes. For example, even temporal phenomena such as sound are described spatially. Given the physical properties of pitch or heat, it would be more accurate to speak of fast and slow pitches or fast and slow temperatures than high or low pitches or temperatures. The basis of perceptual thinking is much less obvious and more pervasive than just realistic visual representation, and art as well as language in David Summers's words, "articulates the spatiality of human experiences ... " (236). The cultural matrix, as important as it may be, cannot exist outside the physical parameters of perceptual experience. The polarizing of terms in these discourses, the othering of the visual by the verbal, the perceptual by the conceptual, and vice versa, is a function of the desire to categorize by opposition as opposed to the desire to synthesize or find correspondences. These two apparently opposing impulses inform most of our discourses and are themselves based in a spatial/somatic mode of understanding. Such impulses need not be mutually exclusive. One should be able to envision a model of graphic function which encompasses both categorization and correspondence, and which integrates the role of all perceptions, not just the visual. I intend to propose such a model. But first it is necessary to address the categories and terms it will employ. First, I would like to propose that we reconsider the very categories of perceptual/conceptual." According to the way art historians define the terms, perceptual art is always concerned with visu.al percepts. I would argue, however, that those who polarize the perceptual/conceptual ignore a largely unrecognized phenomenon (although Miriam Shild Bunim called attention to it in 1940, later writers have not given it consideration). Often what is considered conceptual is, in fact, an attempt to represent perceptions other than the visual by visual means. An obvious example is Arthur Dove's painting Foghorns in which the sound is represented by large fuzzy concentric circles. Here the painter depicts an aural percept rather than a visual one. Yet most would place the painting in the conceptual category. To be accurate, the category of the perceptual should cover much more territory than it does by present definitions. But what is in fact contrasted in the perceptual/conceptual polarity is rather a particular version of ocular representation with all other versions. This version is the monocular, convergent perspective paradigm of art from the Renaissance through the

Graphic Signification

11

nineteenth century which posits a stationary viewing subject. What we actually have is a number of strategies of representation, of which monocular representation is only one. All of these involve conceptualizing the matter being represented; but in the case of monocular art, the paradigm of "visual accuracy" takes precedence over other ways of portraying concepts, and these are suppressed. Consequently, I use the term "conceptual art" as a somewhat negative designation; that is, I use it to refer to that art that does not employ that rather narrow monocular strategy of representing, and differentiate it from ocular or optical art rather than perceptual art. In the traditional scheme, a scale that begins with arbitrary signs would traditionally move from there through the relatively referential to the "natural" or "realistic" (read visual). However, as we have seen, this view denies the role of culture in the defining of a (nonexistent) real. If there is no real or natural image, what do we find at this position on the continuum? If we admit a category of image that is not completely arbitrary, then can we differentiate among values of non-arbitrariness? Summers, in his discussion of conceptual and perceptual images, states: "Concepts are ... generic or general, and are opposed to the particular, which is perceived" (232). It is this quality of particularity that I would like to use in place of realness or naturalness. Images showing particularity are neither more nor less perceived, real, or natural, than other images, nor are they necessarily tied to the visual. The presentation of their particularity is not necessarily related to styles of artistic production. A picture such as Durer's famous drawing, Young Hare, would show a high degree of particularity-a particular hare of a particular breed, size and age as well as shown in a particular stance. Young Hare would fit in the old category of perceptual (visual) realism. However, a map (not usually considered realistic) could also exemplify the particular (a contour map would show greater particularity than an outline map). A child's drawing which uses a moveable viewpoint could be as particular as a drawing of the same scene which uses converging perspective. This scheme would reconfigure the way images are aligned. Neither the map nor the child's drawing would have been grouped with Diirer according to the old system, because they are not considered realistic, even though a moveable viewpoint drawing may better represent sensory input than a drawing from one viewpoint. Another term that must be defined is codedness. This term has extended its scope from the designation of a system of symbols for conveying meaning to include culturally produced styles of representation. Bryson, describing the semiotic system of graphai, says, " ... the scale running from arbitrariness to natural resemblance is conventionally coded throughout is extent" (99). This scheme would then apply the term coded to any kind of graphe except the most abstract painting and drawing, or to arbitrary marks. However, Jirf Veltrusky objects to " ... the rather indiscriminate application of so metaphorical and ambiguous a term as 'code' to phenomena ranging from the semiotic system through the styles of particular schools

12

Fair and Varied Forms

and historical periods to the personal style or idiom of an artist" (123-4 ). I intend to use the term in a more limited sense than Bryson does. An item's codedness would depend on established symbolism-that is, the graphe would always appear in generally the same form. Therefore, the more particularized a graphe is, the less coded. However, there is no corollary that the less particular it is, the more coded. We can now represent these relationships among graphai with the spatial model of a spiral continuum (Figure 1.2) . The spiral continuum shows no sharp divisions, but gradations from coded to non-coded, particularized to non-particularized. The bar curves around on itself to show the connection between the non-particularized, coded position and the non-particularized, non-coded position. However, the circle does not close because there is no graded movement between these last two conditions. At the CNP point, we would find alphabetic writing, musical and mathematical notation. Moving counterclockwise, we find ideograms, hieroglyphics, and pictograms. Comic strip pictures and schematized drawings would occupy the position between CP and NCP. At the bottom would be the most particularized category (described above). Beyond this point graphai would become less particularized and less coded, culminating in abstract painting or drawing. Although visual perception certainly plays a role in how we recognize particulars, it does not define any category. The emphasis shifts from the style in which images are expressed to the kind of information they in-

Highly coded, nonparticularized

Non-coded, non-particularized

Coded, somewhat particularized

Non-coded, very particularized

Figure 1.2 Spiral Continuum

Graphic Signification

13

elude. Such a shift makes the continuum a more useful model, because the qualities being considered have greater correspondence to one another. This model, of course, does not represent spoken language which would be part of yet another continuum. Such a model would look proportionately somewhat different from the graphic one, because human beings make much less use of imitative sounds than of representational graphai. The phonic model would intersect with the graphic one at the CNP point where speech and writing have a connection. In discussing illustrated texts, we are looking at texts which include graphai from more than one point on the continuum. They are combination texts, not because the nature of their components is essentially different, but because they contain different types of graphai-more or less coded-or, as Mitchell points out, because the materials and institutional traditions are different for each. s While this model is useful for presenting certain aspects of the nature of the relationship between types of graphai, it is admittedly simplistic and is not intended to provide an all-encompassing paradigm. As we have seen from Lyotard, the plastic letter is always present in its discursive aspect, and some idea is always present in abstract art. Also, the continuum itself is problematic. Its linear nature precludes the representation of some kinds of connections, and even favors the kind of binary divisions we are trying to avoid. Summers believes that "the location of all images along the same continuum of representation ... seems ... to be potentially radically conventionalist, thus pushing representation strongly in the direction of the linguistic paradigm" (235). However, the model does not necessarily lean to either the linguistic or the graphic, but accommodates both, and the threedimensionality of the spiral allows more play between and among types. A more serious limitation is that it does not address all aspects of the ways in which plastic forms communicate. For example, art critics have from the beginning recognized the role of other aspects of painting and drawing in conveying meaning: the potency of certain images, the quality of line or stroke, the spatial arrangement of the area, the way images are framed in the space, the path the eye travels around the picture, the strong impact of color, etc. Most of these are well-known and often described. These same qualities affect the reception of letter forms as well, although these effects have been less studied. (Veltrusky would include some of these in semiotics, but I do not). An example of the effect of line quality of verbal forms can be seen in a haiga by the Japanese poet-artist Yosa Buson (1716-1786), "Brooms, Poems, and Poet." The term haiga is a combination of hai (haiku) and ga (picture) and refers to a form which integrates the two. The three haiku from right to left read: One sweep, one splash And earthly dust is gone.

Fair and Varied Forms

14 Departing spring1 brush the fallen blossoms From my behind. First drizzling rainA drop from my hat On the eyebrow.

The first haiku refers to the flash of insight that "sweeps away earthly concerns" for the Zen initiate. Its calligraphy echoes the stiff scratchiness of the broom straw while that of the second, seemil'lg to emanate from the drawing of the broom itself, imitates its sweeping brushing movements. The third follows the rapid movements of the "scurrying nobleman and his attendant" (French 69). In each case the quality of line and brush stroke of the haiku produces meaning in the same way the picture does. All are integrated with the meanings of poem and figure. The haiga has certain characteristics in common with concrete poetry in which meaning is produced equally by the significance and form of the graphai or by the form alone and with the kinds of figural alphabets produced in certain periods such as the Middle Ages where letters are formed by human or animal forms. The relationship between words and pictures in the Buson poem is rather different from that of a newspaper photo with its caption or the elements of a magazine advertisement. Ballists the following types of relationships of words to pictures: source, pretext, response, thematic companion, counterpart, theoretical subtext, surrounding context, and critical rewriting (Rembrandt 4). This list does not exhaust the possibilities. In some works that are primarily pictorial, for example, the graphic letter forms may serve as visual texture, or stand metaphorically for the idea of writing in general. Removal of the boundary between written words and pictures precludes the possibility of establishing any kind of static relationship between them. Each graphic production must then be interpreted on its own terms. Relationship may be sought in cultural practice, the function of the object, reaction of the reader/viewer, but not in any inherent difference between the word and picture. POTENCY OF IMAGES AND WORDS

In addition to generating denotative meaning, graphai have varying degrees of emotional potency. They are capable of producing astounding reactions in those who see/view/read them. David Freedburg, describing responses to two- and three-dimensional image representations, writes: People are sexually aroused by pictures and sculptures; they break pictures and sculptures; they mutilate them, kiss them, cry before them, and go on journeys to them; they are calmed by them, stirred by them, and incited to revolt. They give thanks by means of them, expect to be elevated by them, and are moved to the highest levels of empathy and fear. They have always responded in these ways; they still do. They do so in societies

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we call primitive and in modern societies; in East and West, in Africa, America, Asia, and Europe. ( 1)

Some of these responses may be, as Freedburg believes, wired into our psyches; but most, if not all, accrue meanings in their cultural contexts. Even those responses which are based in physical/biological drives are never culturally neutral. If we see a picture of a hamburger, we may feel hungry; but this may be as much a response to the cultural construct hamburger as it is to our physical need for food. Some graphai which provoke strong responses are highly particularized, such as certain religious icons; some, like flags, are more generalized. Some are images, some are written words. What gives these things their ability to evoke such strong responses? Freedburg's book, The Power of Images, attempts to answer the question for pictorial representation. He considers the use of images, both three- and two-dimensional, over a period of several hundred years, paying particular attention to those images that have been considered "low" or popular art. He describes religious figures and icons as objects of meditation and means of healing, votive images, replicas in wax and other materials, voodoo figures, and those used in public expressions of honor or punishment. Freedburg's conclusion is that images derive their power from their perceived ability not only to represent but actually become the object represented. This ability is attested by anthropologists such as Marcel Mauss in magical rites and practices in a widely ranging group of cultures. According to Mauss, two of the ways magical images work are by contiguity and similarity. A part of a person or object or anything that has come in contact with that person or object contains its essential principal and is therefore able to substitute for it. The same is true of those things which have an established similarity to the person or object. The similarity is wholly conventional. The resemblance is theoretical or abstract rather than illusional. But the abstract nature of the relationship does not prevent the complete fusion of image and object (Mauss 64-69). Freedburg's examples are taken mostly from Western European culture. This bias is intentional. He wants to avoid the popular conception that so called primitive peoples are simple enough to conflate signifier and signified, but those in technologically developed Western cultures are not. "I was ... concerned," he writes, to show that the kind of responses I described could not just be relegated to the past or to backward or provincial places .... ! hoped that anyone reading the chapters would swiftly realize that many of the elements of response described in them did indeed obtain in the present, and that they were ones which modern readers would recognize in themselves, even if reluctantly. (429)

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Thus, Freedburg claims a widespread and common tendency to conflate image and represented object. All cultures, he claims, have religious imagery, in spite of the "myth of aniconism"-the premise that a culture can have either no imagery at all, or an absence of spiritual imagery, and further, the more free of imagery, the higher the degree of spirituality (54). Even in cultures where iconography is severely constricted, such as Islam and Judaism, one finds figural representation, as, for example, where calligraphy takes human or animal forms. Religious images are among the most potent, especially where they are used in ritual. Freedburg cites examples from Africa and Australia among others (56), but he is primarily concerned with religious imagery in the West. People meditate on images in order to make the absent present (161). Aquinas and Bonaventure both suggest that one of the uses of images in meditation is emotional arousal (Freedburg 163); not vestigia, says Bonaventure, but simulacra ( 166). Freed burg points to Geiler von Kayserberg, a 15th/16th century preacher who recommends to the illiterate that they buy a penny picture of Mary and Elizabeth for meditational purposes-that they kiss it, bow and kneel before it (177). The potency of venerated paintings and statues in shrines is well-attested. Such images are believed to heal the sick and injured as well as provide spiritual benefits. The common assumption that it is the saint or virgin that works through its symbolic representation is shown to be inadequate to explain the phenomenon. Often, in spite of theological claims to the contrary, a particular image receives exclusive credit. Freedburg cites the example from the Miracles of Our Lady of Chartres of a man healed by Our Lady of Chartres who was prevented by the virgin from expressing thanks to Our Lady of Soissons because that image had not performed the healing miracle (120). These miracle-working images are reproduced in their particular form and the reproductions are often as efficacious as the original (128). In fact, according to Freedburg, the potency of the image often seems to increase with the number of reproductions, spreading contagiously "from like to identified like" (145). 9 Masks and figures which are part of religious rites also are able to become the entity whom they represent. For example, guardian figures made by the Fang of Gabon are attached to baskets in which the relics of prominent ancestors are kept. In the practice of envoutement, the practitioner forms a representational figure of some material like clay or wax, then pierces, mutilates, or otherwise destroys it in order to work the same pain or destruction on the person it represents. In such a case the figure is seen as more than a symbol. It must become the represented in order for the magic to work. Freedburg finds examples from Greece, Egypt, England, and Italy as well as Haiti (263-70). Some kinds of image potency seem to be more rooted in the physical/ psychological aspects of humanity than in the cultural. Not unexpectedly, they seem to involve the body or body parts. One of these is the ability of

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images to cause sexual arousal. Although there are variations from one culture to another, some images seem to be cross-culturally more potent than others. Representations of breasts and genitalia have a strong resonance in all cultures, although this probably varies. The number of fertility figures is witness to the potency of the image of the erect phallus, the large breasts or protruding belly. In our own culture, images which exude sexuality are used for advertising purposes in the hope that their strong potency will be transferred by association to the object offered for sale. Another image phenomenon based in the physical is the importance of eye representation and symbolism. The eyes are the feature most able to enliven an image. Studies of saccadic eye movements show subjects fixate on the eyes, nose, and mouth when viewing portraits; but they return more frequently to the eyes. We are all familiar with the phenomenon of the eyes of a portrait which seem to follow one's movements. Eyes not only look, they look back. In pictured faces where one or more features are omitted, the absence of eyes is probably the most disturbing. They are much less common than figures lacking ears, mouths or noses (Figure 1.3 ). David Summers, in his discussion of substitutive images, which he sees as an extension of metaphorical expression, claims that such an image may be "specified and empowered by the addition of recognizable elements." For example a stone standing for a person may be given eyes. "Virtually any mark or object might become an eye if two such objects are placed as a horizontal pair near the top of an object" (253-4). The object is thus, in

Figure 1.3 Memorial Effigy from Kenya

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Fair and Varied Forms

Freed burg's terminology, enlivened; but also, as Summers claims, "the stone will posses powers of sight as its counterpart did" (253). The represented eye, standing as a substitute for the physical eye, performs the same function-is able to become that which it represents. The idea of touching is often associated with eyes. One of the most important symbols in Egyptian religion is the Eye of Horus-the "wajat eye"-the eye that touches. Distortion or dismemberment of body parts is also potentially a powerful representation strategy. We have already mentioned emphasis of eyes and genitals, but any kind of distortion is potentially disturbing or compelling, either in calling attention to heightened function, or in the threat of disruption of those boundaries by which we construct our world. I am not here referring to what appears as distortion because of style differences, but to purposeful distortion to convey charged emotional content as in Figure 1.4. Many cultures have had a fascination for creatures part human and part animal, some benevolent, some threatening. Depictions of mutilation or dismemberment also cause profound uneasiness. The history of iconoclastic controversy, defacement of images, and even the desire to establish boundaries between word and image categories suggest a deep-seated fear of images. This fear, claims Freedburg, results from the belief that images can become what they represent; establishing a category of image called "art" is an attempt to defuse the power of some images. Idols have power, art does not (376). There are also instances where written words seem to function as substitutes in the same way that images do. For example, Freedburg describes the

Figure 1.4 Carving of a witch from Bali

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Roman practice of cursing called defixio in which the name of the victim was incised on a lead tablet which was then buried (264). Certainly we find evidence of a similar practice in graffiti where a person is defamed by public announcements of ineptitude or bad character (for example, my favorite: "Segovia uses a capo"). although the power to humiliate is perhaps less than in the instances of public punishment. The written word then substitutes for the speech act which pronounces public shame upon the targeted individual. Early Christians had the practice of wearing as a charm a quill containing a rolled up piece of papyrus on which were written the opening words of John's gospel (Kermode 442). The prohibition of images in Judaism has resulted in an emphasis on the physical written word. Phylacteries, mezuzot, and the veneration of the Torah as an object indicate a response to the written word that is more emotional than theological. Freed burg suggests that verisimilitude is an important aspect of the conflation of signifier and signified. However, there are examples where abstract symbols show evidence of the ability to be conflated with the referent. In fact, they sometimes function more effectively for some purposes, for example: the elaborate rules and procedures which dictate the reverence with which a county's flag can be handled and displayed, and the almost manic hostility aroused by flag burners strongly suggest that this is a substitutive image, what Summers call a real metaphor. The flag functions as a substitute for the country itself, or for that collection of emotion, sentiment, memories, and idealized concepts that form the basis for many people's patriotism. Native American sand painting uses abstract symbolism in ceremonies where the efficacy of the ritual comes partly from the painting itself. The swastika, a potent symbol in many cultures, represents the earth itself-its four bars the compass points, its arms the direction of the earth's rotation, and its center the spirit from which all things emanate (Vellasefior 15). The cross or crucifix is a potent symbol that embodies the efficacy of the crucifixion, or even the whole of Christianity. It becomes an instrument of power to focalize these ideas for believers. In these examples image potency does not depend on verisimilitude. The referent is so large or amorphous as to prevent particularized representation. Yet in some sense, the signifier still becomes the signified because of its ability to function-inspire reverence, heal, repel evil spirits. These images acquire potency over a period of time, and their power is purely culturally derived. After many centuries of positive cultural significance, the swastika has now acquired the ability to arouse feelings of horror in many people because of its association with Hitler and Nazi Germany. MODES OF INTERACTION AND SUBSTITUTION: METAPHORIC TROPES

If words and pictures produce meaning in the same way, then strategies for reading/viewing pictorial texts should work equally for verbal texts and

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Fair and Varied Forms

vice versa. Tropes such as metaphor that are traditionally seen as verbal can produce meaning both verbally and pictorially. Pictorial strategies such as schemata should have corresponding verbal forms; in fact they do, but under a different name. The issue has been confused by naming which always involves categorization and interpretation of concepts. The function of pictures as tropes has been recognized by others such as Mieke Bal (Rembrandt) and Carl Hausman. Schemata also have a parallel in verbal expression. We must look more closely at these forms to understand better how they function before turning to textual examples. One commonly held linguistic definition of metaphor states an equivalence between terms taken from separate semantic domains (Sapir and Crocker 4). In George Lakoff"s words, "Each metaphor has a source domain, a target domain, and a source to target mapping" (Women, Fire and Dangerous Things 276). The idea of equivalent terms is typical of a traditional understanding of metaphor which has focused on the word as a unit of meaning and carrier of the metaphoric function. In this model a "proper" meaning for a word is replaced by a meaning borrowed from a domain not proper to it. More recent thought, however, rejects this substitution model in favor of what Max Black has named an "interaction view" of metaphor (38). Formulated by I.A. Richards and further developed by Black, Monroe Beardsley, and Paul Ricoeur among others, this model proposes that metaphor is not a naming operation, which exchanges one expected word for another (the metaphoric one) as if that were secondary or simply derived from a given meaning; the metaphor is not just a shortened simile; its meaning cannot be reduced to the notion of replacement or substitution, but the creation of a third entity. The unit of meaning is not the word, but the sentence. The source and target domains (called tenor and vehicle by Richards, and primary and secondary subjects by Black) along with their associations and connotations, interact with one another so that both are profoundly affected (Black calls the secondary subject a "system" rather than a thing ("More about Metaphor" 27]). The juxtaposition of two ideas in an unfamiliar combination provides a tension between their meanings antecedent to inclusion in the metaphor, and between the two terms themselves (Hausman 119). As Ricoeur puts it, "To affect just one word, the metaphor has to disturb a whole network by means of an aberrant attribution" (21 ). This aberrant attribution causes the tension that metaphor produces between the likeness and unlikeness of the juxtaposed terms. This view is not necessarily in conflict with Lakoff's mapping. Both see the work of metaphor as a movement and a discursive process. While Ricoeur embraces the discursive model, he wants to call attention of the word as focus for the construction: It is to the 'focus' that the 'system of associated commonplaces' is applied in the manner of a filter or a screen. It is, again, through a focalizing effect that interaction or tension polarizes on a 'vehicle' and a 'tenor'; they re-

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late to each other within the statement, but it is the word that assumes each of the two functions. (Rule of Metaphor 131)

The distinction will be important when we examine pictorial metaphors. This definition focuses on newly-coined metaphors. Metaphoric expressions familiar from Lakoff and Johnson (Metaphors We Live By), which provide expressions that reflect the basis of our understanding of how the world is structured, have become idiomatic in language, so that they no longer produce tension. They are usually called "dead" metaphors, although Carl Hausman prefers the term "frozen" (19), and Black suggests "dormant" or "extinct" ("More about Metaphor" 25). At the other end are the live metaphors-those for which surprise is an important ingredient. Mark Johnson claims that "metaphor is one of the chief cognitive structures by which we are able to have coherent, ordered experiences that we can reason about and make sense of" (xv). Referring to Richards's discourse on metaphor, Ricoeur writes, "Far from being a divergence from the ordinary operation of language, it is 'the omnipresent principle of all its free action' (Ricoeur 80, Richards 90). It does not represent some additional power, but the constitutive form of language" (80). As such, it can, as Black claims, "generate new knowledge and insight by changing relationships between the things designated" ("More about Metaphor" 35). Metaphoric juxtapositions have traditionally been seen to be motivated by resemblance. However, as we have seen, the idea of natural resemblance has inherent problems. Understanding of resemblance in metaphor, as in pictorial representation, is individual and cultural. Production of meaning is a process of reading and viewing, where correspondence is a result of the juxtaposition of disparate ideas, and depends on what Black calls "a system of associated commonplaces" as well as the experiences of the individual reader/viewer (Models and Metaphors 40). Bruce Fraser describes a study in which he attempted to discover the extent to which subjects would agree on metaphoric interpretation when the metaphor was given out of context. He provided metaphoric statements "He's an X" and "She's an X" into which various terms were inserted (337). He discovered that there was some general agreement as to positive or negative interpretations, and that the interpretations differed significantly for "He's an X" and "She's an X" where the X term was the same. For example, where X=a ripe banana, He: is soft, is an OK person, is malleable, is mushy headed, "too dirty to write down," is old and worn, is outmoded, is overripe, is soft, is all yellow, is nice, is friendly, is always ready, is harmless, is eccentric, is good now but rotten soon, is well hung, is phallic; She: is oversexed, is raring to go, is crazy, stands out to be picked on, has appeal, is mushy, is too soft, is fully developed, is hot to trot, is voluptuous, is provocative, is soggy, is sensitive, is easy to hurt, is slender, takes care of herself, is waiting to be peeled, is too hot, is available. (338)

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Fair and Varied Forms

The significant differences in metaphoric interpretation generated by this study reveal how one of the most culturally determined categories-gender-is grounded in social constructs. The subjects were both men and women. Fraser found no significant difference in the kinds of responses according to sex of the subject, although he admits the small number of subjects was a limiting factor. A striking example of pictorial metaphor is Paul Klee's painting, Vocal Fabric of the Singer Rosa Silber. The vowel sounds are expressed as letters along with the initials of her name which appear on or through the cloth, which is like and is represented as the tonal quality of Rosa Silber's voice (Colley 53). Response to this metaphor depends partly on the title of the painting, but also on a knowledge of the alphabet, and certain characteristics of a type of singing whose quality is directly related to the treatment of vowel sounds. The tropes of simile, metonymy and synecdoche are frequently connected with metaphor, and should be dealt with here. Simile is closer to metaphor in that it also juxtaposes disparate ideas. Simile, however, holds them apart as it calls attention to correspondences. Metonymy and synecdoche, on the other hand, deal with concepts from the same semantic domain. There is none of the incompatibility that is the basis of metaphor (LeGuern 15-16, cited in Ricoeur Metaphor 182-83). Metonymy, claims Ricoeur, "remains a semiotic process, perhaps even the substitutive phenomenon par excellence in the realm of signs" (198). However, interaction is not absent from these tropes, but functions internally to the domain in question. If substitution were complete, we would have exactly the same response to the term "ship" as to the term "sails," or to "the president" as to "the white house" (to use the commonest examples). This is not the case, however. To call ships sails calls attention to one attribute of ships and suppresses others. It also broadens the connotations of the term "sails." This interaction is equally in evidence in pictorial metonymy and synecdoche. Mieke Bal points out that a symbol in a painting can be a synecdoche for an entire narrative ( She uses the dog in Rembrandt's illustration of the story of Tobias as an example) (181 ). In doing so, a symbol can characterize the narrative as well; and the role of the symbol in a particular narrative can alter the way we understand it. Hausman see tropes in painting in a more general way. He calls attention to Vermeer's Young Woman With a Water jug. In this painting the figure of the woman exists in a space that is defined by the light entering the window, providing a metaphoric relationship: "space that is light and light that is space (151-52). In fact, Hausman goes so far as to say that non-representational painting can function metaphorically in that it can give "insight into ourselves and the world" (167). The study of pictorial metaphor is closely related to that of iconography. Van Straten describes the traditional three phases of iconographic interpre-

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tation: 1) the pre-iconographical description which lists persons, objects, etc. in the picture, 2) the iconographic description which identifies the subject of the work, and 3) the iconographical interpretation which explores secondary meanings (172). It is in this third phase that metaphorical and metonymic interpretation is located along with identification of symbols and attributes. It is sometimes difficult to differentiate between metaphors and symbols or attributes, although for our purposes, not particularly important to do so. Symbols and attributes are often metonymic-a skull for death, an hourglass for the transitoriness of life, keys for St. Peter, etc. Van Straten sees iconology as a kind of fourth phase of iconography-a non-art historical investigation of the cultural, social, and historical background of the picture. Iconography provides a horizontal structure of relationships within the realm of art. However, metaphor studies of illustrated texts can be seen as more vertical, locating the verbal and pictorial texts in the same field. Van Straten's definition corresponds to the agenda of cultural art historians such as Michael Camille and Keith Moxey who seek to understand paintings and text illustrations across disciplines. In the case of illustrated texts, both verbal and pictorial manifestations must be read/viewed not only in terms of cultural, historical and anthropological approaches, but in the ways that the two produce meaning by their play against and through one another. Both pictorial and verbal metaphors are created works. Hausman sees them as "foci of evolving reality." He writes: ... if the world is not a static structure waiting to be described by inquirers who are active only in terms of being attentive, if it is instead something dynamic that evolves, then the condition of resistance is not simply something waiting to be discovered. It must be dynamic and part of an evolving reality that interacts with creative inquiry and helps create the metaphors that interact with it creatively. (20 1)

The study of metaphoric expression has great potential as a means of reading verbal and pictorial texts, both separately and in the kinds of juxtaposition common to illustrated woks. The relationships that arise between and among semantic domains, the connotations and resonances that are discovered in an image or word and the tensions that are created by the interaction of disparate ideas are all products of the use of metaphoric tropes. STRUCTURE IN THE GRAPHIC FIELD

One traditional way of studying the arrangement of elements in the graphic field has focused on the ways in which the organizer of that space believes it is possible to control the response of the reader/viewer, both in the order and speed with which the material is processed, and in the production of meaning generated by spatial relationships. If we trace the history of attitudes toward control of space in the graphic field, we see an increasing belief in, and attempts to practice such control throughout most

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of the twentieth century. Henry Poore's Pictorial Composition of 1903 is a typical example of the Western approach to the subject. Poore lists seven fundamental forms which are the basis for all pictorial composition (1 7), and gives advice on how to control the glance of the viewer as it "enters" and "exits" the graphic field. Poore constructs the picture space as a funnel into which the glance must be invited or enticed, but not too quickly. A zigzag approach is the most effective (76). The lines lead the eye to the requisite Center of Interest. The path should not be "clogged" by obstructing objects, nor distracted by strong lines leading out of the frame. Conversely, the eye must not be allowed to depart too quickly. Guard the exit, commands Poore (90). The eye should never be permitted to leave the principle figure or object to go straight back and out through the center (82). However, if the painter does not provide some path out, the viewer is forced to "back out" (an awkward situation indeed!) Another typical approach is described in Bearden and Holty's The Painter's Mind (1969). Abandoning the basic shapes and techniques of eye movement control, Bearden and Holty concentrate on the manipulation of structural elements in the production of aesthetically pleasing constructions. Repetition, movement and counter movement, play between figure and ground, and rhythm provide the means of constructing graphic space. The study of methods of control is nowhere more prominent than in the theories of graphic production for advertising. David Ogilvie, successful ad agency owner, outlines his philosophy in terms of definitive rules based on empirical evidence gained from studies of reader responses. Some of these are: • 10% more people read a heading that is placed below an illustration (89).

• • • •

A drop-in initial increases readership by 13% (97). Photos are better than drawings (77). Color is twice as memorable as black and white (79). Leading (space between lines of type) increases readership by 12% (101 ).

Ogilvie has identified what appears to him to be the most effective layout consisting of photo, heading and copy in that order, and used it repeatedly. His method is grounded in a belief in the consistence of reader response. Many of Ogilvie's rules involve the organization of material into easily digestible pieces or the separation and ordering of parts; but he does not theorize about aesthetics, taxonomies, or psychological reactions. He is interested only in applying statistics to try to control his readers' looking to the greatest extent possible, with the ultimate aim of selling objects or services. Related to Ogilvie's use of page arrangement is the idea of the transparency of the sign. This is a phenomenon of printing more than of handwriting, and involves the arrangement of words on the page. When text is presented in such a way that the least possible attention is required by the

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plastic aspects of the letter, so that the content is processed without an awareness of it, then the writing becomes transparent and dispensable. Page layout and typographic practice are the vehicles by which designers attempt to make verbal texts become transparent. Although it is commonly believed that certain practices are more effective than others, it is probably more a matter of consistency over the whole corpus of printed texts. Thus most large bodies of verbal text feature flush left columns, a limit to the length of the line in proportion to the type size, paragraph indentations, and serif typefaces. These features are believed to allow the eye to move smoothly and quickly from one line to the next, and not to call attention to the plastic form of the letter. The same concept applies to pictorial texts as well. Whenever the content is so immediately apparent as to cause the viewer to be unaware of the medium, the text is transparent. All of the above named techniques are grounded in a belief (which has been increasingly called into question) in the ability to control the ways the viewer processes the material. A commonly used tool for control of material in the graphic field is the grid. A grids provides an underlying structure for the material presented. The grid establishes boundaries for the material as a whole, controls placement within the field, and establishes relationships between parts. Jack Williamson identifies four types of grids which he ties to the discourses of four different periods of Western art: The point, field, and line grids for late medieval, renaissance, and modern respectively, and the fracture of the grid which characterizes the post modern. The point grid is based on the intersection of vertical and horizontal axes. Williamson demonstrates that these points intersect with and call attention to moments of intersection between heavenly and earthly realms. In so doing, they produce meaning by pointing, dividing, and categorizing the material of the page. The field grid, characteristic of art from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century, finds its expression in the field of converging perspective. The emphasis shifts from appearance to structure, from spirituality to rationality. The grid then "comes to represent not only the structural laws of the principles behind physical appearance, but the process of rational thinking itself" (176). The modern grid, exemplified by Mondrian's geometrical rectangles, is composed of bars that overlap but do not intersect. These lines continue implicitly and infinitely beyond the frame. Williamson sees a representation of the mathematical and physical laws of the universe. This field in its homogeneity is anti-hierarchic. The post modern attitude explodes or violates the grid to reveal the chaos at the atomic level behind the superficially predictable and "defiles the typographic message" (Williamson 181-84). The explosion of the grid reveals a loss of belief in the ability to control, and signals a shift in interest from the domain of the creator to the domain of the receiver. Postmodern readings of graphic space are not concerned with control, but with individ-

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Fair and Varied Forms

ual interpretation. A deconstructive school of graphic design based on post modern literary theory produces designs that purposely work against the possibilities provided by the verbal text. In terms of typography, the construction of the graphic space subverts its own readability, violates its own boundaries, and generally attacks the whole concept of transparency. Examples can be seen in Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse which both describes and embodies this philosophy as the opening page of Ray Slade's essay demonstrates. The title intrudes into the text; the mixing of fonts and the uneven base line of the header call into question traditional values of consistency and order. A fissure opens up the center of the page acting as both a gap and a barrier that divides the text against itself. Marginal commentary abuts the main body of text as if to insist on its own primacy, and a fragment of distorted text in the center arrests whatever flow of words remains. The result is a self-conscious disruption of transparency. Other types of graphic design from the Cranbrook Academy use space in equally deconstructive ways, involving visually complex juxtapositions of two and three dimensional forms, type and pictures, order and chaos. Studies of the economy of the page based in psychology, anthropology, and phenomenology have continued to structure understanding in terms of paired concepts such as Arnheim's centricity/excentricity, Gandelman's optic/haptic, and Certeau's tour/tableau. Arnheim's Power of the Center attempts to show how the two impulses (centricity/excentricity) provide the basis for all of the dynamics of the graphic field. While they always interact, they are always separable. Arnheim finds a universal impulse to centrality grounded in the human being as the center of his or her own universe. However, this being is not stationary. As Abraham Moles expresses it, "each [person] really perceives that environment as a mental landscape of his immediate action, as a strolling about in a limitless corridor on the walls of which is written a text, the context of his action" (12 7). Arnheim sees the centric and excentric impulses evinced in volumes and trajectories whose inherent weight and force intersect and interact with one another to provide the dynamic tension of the page. Each graphic field has its own implied center which acts upon all the graphic elements. These forces reflect "vital aspects of the human experience,"-those actions which emanate from the core of the self and interact with other centers of being (ix). Claude Gandelman (drawing on Alois Riegl's Die Spatromanisch KunstIndustrie) differentiates between optic (linear) viewing and haptic (tactile) viewing. Optic viewing scans the object according to its outline, while haptic viewing "focuses on surfaces and emphasizes the value of the superficies of objects" (5). Arnheim's ideas on volume and trajectory in the graphic space resonate with DeCerteau's tour and tableau-the narrative strategies of time and space, the optic and haptic visual techniques described by Claude Gandelman, and Mark Johnson's image schemata of container and trajectory. But a closer examination of these dichotomies reveals inherent problems. Gan-

Graphic Signification

27

delman's representations of linear saccadic eye movements show the jerky movement of the eye from point to point. On the other hand, haptic viewing, he claims, is concentrated in points of fixation (8). All of Gandelman's diagrams show fixation at points of greater visual complexity and contrast. Only one shows the eye movement following the outline, and it is this one that shows more saccades returning to previous points of fixation. It is difficult to see from the diagrams how Reigl's two types are reflected. According to Alfed Yarbus, viewers fixate on points where the most information is to be obtained. A record of saccades may show differing patterns, but the variations are related to the kind of information the viewer needs, and reflect the same process of obtaining it (192-93). If a difference is to be seen, it should be most obvious in the scanning of writing in which surface texture is purposely minimized. But here, also, the information is extracted from the graphai at points of fixation as Yarbus explains (199-200). 10 While there are fewer regressions (returns to previously scanned materials) in the eye movements of an average reader than in those for an outline drawing, Yarbus's diagram showing saccades of a speed reader (39) looks remarkably like that of the viewer of the drawings. The division between optic and haptic cannot be demonstrated by' diagrams of saccades. Similar problems obtain for each of the dichotomies described above. Matter is motion. The line that indicates motion also defines form, the gaze that touches, that experiences texture is not qualitatively different from the glance. The tour and the tableau are both spatial arrangements. Temporality can be expressed only spatially in graphic production. The idea of a trajectory in a picture is always metaphoric. Movement takes place outside the text, in the eye of the viewer. Graphic productions are always inherently spatial; it is the processing of these productions that is temporal and linear. CONTEXTS

We cannot stop with the page itself, or even with the page as one part of a series of graphic fields experienced in sequence. The context of its presentation as a vehicle of meaning also contributes to the very production of meaning. A book, for example, is not merely words set in type or written, but is also an object whose material characteristics very widely. The experience of reading a nineteenth century edition of Pride and Prejudice is not the same as the experience of reading a Penguin paperback version of that novel with a painting on the cover and a recent preface. The Hamlet of the Riverside Shakespeare is more weighty as a part of a heavily annotated segment of the Shakespeare canon than when it is physically (if not culturally) freed from that context. The many manifestations of the biblical texts-from the papyrus roll to the illuminated gospel with gold and jeweled cover, to the Gideon Bible-provide radically diverging experiences of reading. From the material characteristics of the book itself, context

28

Fair and Varied Forms

spreads in increasingly wider circles to encompass the whole culture of its time, and all of the cultures of previous times that have acted upon it. Interpreting historical texts in terms of their larger cultural context is both necessary and problematic. If we know nothing about the context of a work, any meaning we produce is extremely limited; the more it is removed from own time, the more limited the reading will be. On the other hand, contemporary critical approaches recognize the futility of trying to reproduce an originary experience of the text. Contextual information, as Lee Patterson has pointed out, is as subjective as textual information (44). Any version of history is itself culturally and politically constructed; history is produced in the same way that graphic productions are. Both are artifacts, and have no more basis in the "real" than a "realistic" painting has in some objectively constituted idea of "nature." There is no "objectively determined, self-evident, original context that can reveal the original meaning of the text" (Patterson 44). If there were such a context, we would not be able to enter it. We are products of our own contexts, and not capable of objectivity. Some would claim that all meaning is produced by the interpreter, and there is no meaning inherent in the text . Is there, then, in Mieke Bal's words, an "occasion of meaning" in the graphic production itself? Theorists have dealt with this problem in several ways. Bal (quoting Ernst VanAlphen) finds no unified concept of meaning, but two "moments of meaning production"-the text and the reader (13). This approach places a creative value upon interpretation equal to that placed upon creation of the graphic product, and in recognizing the subjectivity of all interpretive acts, valorizes that interpretation. Baxandahl attempts to discover the purposiveness of an artifact by reconstructing the problem that motivates it. Keith Maxey suggests looking at the function of a work and the ways in which it participates in the social process (103, 115). Martin Jay identifies scopic regimes that reveal divergent ways of looking in Western art beginning with the Renaissance ("Scopic Regimes of Modernity"). Martin Irvine proposes a system that combines Foucaultian archival construction of knowledge, reception theory, and historical semiotic theory (182). This approach would investigate "the historical conditionsmaterial, social, linguistic, institutions-that produced the culture of the text" ("Medieval Textuality" 184). Along with this approach, I would adopt Lee Patterson's position that, while the producer of the work does not necessarily control or even recognize its influences, still the producer's intentions need not be ignored (Negotiating the Past 73). I propose to bring to bear on the study of graphic production as broad a base of knowledge as possible. This approach may at times call upon any or all of the avenues of investigation described above. But any interpretation must acknowledge its own constructedness, contingency, and incompleteness. In it must always inhere the ability to exist side by side with other interpretations, and an openness to reexamination and revision.

CHAPTER TWO

Inner Space, Outer Space, Graphic Space

Words and Pictures in Anglo-Saxon Culture

The three strategies for reading words and pictures described in Chapter One apply in specific ways to medieval texts. This chapter will investigate these applications, and attempt to describe medieval attitudes toward writing and illustration, focusing on the early period. I will begin by calling attention to some of the ways in which we view texts from a cultural position whose familiarity with linear, monocular perspective and with printing strongly affects our responses; and second, I will speculate on how we might attempt to use our recognition of these biases to respond to AngloSaxon texts. The dismantling of the taxonomic boundaries separating viewing and reading has particular ramifications for manuscripts of the medieval period whose illustrations are seen not as a record of percepts, but as two-dimensional representations of states of being and cosmic relationships. The "inner space" of these conceptual constructions is projected onto the "outer space" of the material world and is given form in the graphic space of the manuscript page. We will look at some specific ways in which these concepts are formulated in words and pictures, through reading schemata, metaphoric tropes, and spatial realizations of knowledge and ideas. THE PRINT-CULTURE BIAS

Our position at the culmination of 600 years of print culture (a culture that is rapidly changing from print to electronics) gives us a very different outlook on words and pictures from that of people in a manuscript culture. Hans Belting calls attention to the shift that took place from the picture as image to the picture as art: We are so deeply influenced by the "era of art" that we find it hard to imagine the "era of images." Art history therefore simply declared everything to be art in order to bring everything within its domain, thereby effacing the very difference that might have thrown light on our subject. (9)

29

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Fair and Varied Forms

The idea of art is for us divorced from a sense of utility or function. Those whose work has a practical purpose find it difficult to be taken seriously as artists. As Belting indicates, there was no art as art in the middle ages. Books, especially liturgical or devotional books, received elaborate decoration for a purpose. Every image functioned in some capacity-to inform, to aid in devotion or memorization, or to explain ideas. The concept of the book as graphic production has changed considerably as the result of its reproducibility. In a manuscript culture, books could be copied but never duplicated. There is a kind of built-in artifactual quality in a unique production, and where all artifacts are unique, the culture prizes uniqueness less, nor does it consciously promote the kind of individual expression that we find in a culture that enjoys mass production. 1 This is not to say that everything was slavishly copied. The fitness of the particular graphic production for the needs of its users was a consideration that often resulted in changes and innovations in both words and pictures, although as Gameson points out, words were less likely to undergo modification than pictures were (Role of Art 11). Because medieval people had no concept of plagiarism, the writer or artist was free to copy or make changes at will; but the emphasis was, in Elizabeth Eisenstein's words, on "recovery" of past authoritative voices rather than on "discovery" through creative productions (123).

Illustrated books are often denigrated in our culture because they are believed to involve a perceptual response rather than an intellectual one.2 While there is evidence that people in the Middle Ages had a bias against perceptual evidence, the most valued books seem to be the most highly decorated, because of the increased effort in production as well as the aesthetic effect. Because their pictures are more concerned with concepts, they could not be denigrated as too perceptual, if in fact, the idea of art as a record of percepts were not foreign to them. Panofsky suggests that one characteristic of perspectival art that caused it to be rejected by cultures such as the medieval is the individuality of the viewpoint it represents (Perspective 71). Bunim explains it as a reflection of the religious focus of the age: "The emphasis on a transcendental rather than on the experienced world favored a symbolic rather than a wholly imitative art" (42). Panofsky sees the art of the medieval period as impelled by a reaction against the classical style. For England, at least, this explanation is too simple. The illustrations of the tenth and eleventh centuries in England were preceded not by the art of the classical period, but by that of the insular period. The insular tradition is a product of Celtic and Scandinavian influences, and undoubtedly represents an embracing of folk art style as much as a reaction against any individualistic or perceptual agenda of the classical period. Certainly, medieval art continued to use classical iconography, but the development of the style is probably much more complex in England or other countries with a separate folk tradition than it is in countries like Italy.

Inner Space, Outer Space, Graphic Space

31

Correspondingly, manuscript culture is less concerned than ours is with the transparency of writing. Certainly many texts are written in a regular script with few indications of division or commentary such as large initials, rubrics, glosses or illustrations. In this they reflect a culture that is still largely oral. But many early manuscripts do employ these devices which disrupt transparency, particularly at points of division. Of course, for the non-literate, which would include most of the population, the verbal text is entirely opaque. In such a milieu, the book exudes an aura of the perceived power of literacy and the mystery of an unknown code, an aura that would affect the attitude of the literate as well as the non-literate. That aspect calls particular attention to the graphic nature of writing. Non-particularized graphai in an unknown code represent the extreme point of non-transparency; the graphic form is completely opaque. Our position in a print-based culture has caused us to de-emphasize or lose awareness of the textual material as form. !Elfric, following Donatus, reveals that the Anglo-Saxons were aware of the issue when he calls particular attention to the graphic nature of writing; he lists three characteristics of a letter: name, form, and power (nama, hiw, and miht) (Grammatik 5). If our reading of medieval texts is filtered through our experience of print culture, it is even more true that our reception of medieval pictures is affected by our familiarity with linear perspective, a theory and practice of viewing which, in its nineteenth-century manifestation, in the words of Peter de Bolla, "imagines a viewing scene and generates a theoretical description of the practice which erases almost entirely the 'real.' It creates a fantasy of the identification of the viewer with the painter" (222). Such a practice produces a dichotomy between a viewing subject and a viewed object, a perceiver and a perceived. Medieval art, on the other hand, presents graphically mapped concepts, states of being, relationships, into which the viewer is sometimes projected as the reader is projected as a participating subject rather than a viewing subject. Unlike pictures based on perspectivism, medieval pictures are two-dimensional, and the drawing of objects features a non-stationary viewer. Different planes of one object can be shown from different viewpoints, or lines can diverge rather than converge with distance to allow for a fuller representation. Depth is present as a concept but depicted in two dimensions: upper, lower, left, right, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, central or marginal. ANGLO-SAXON ATTITUDES TOWARD SCRIBES, ILLUSTRATORS, AND THE VISUAL

In certain ways, then, the Anglo-Saxons would nave seen the boundaries between words and pictures to be less marked than our culture does. 3 Otto Pacht believes that the two became closer when the codex replaced the roll: "As the pictorial language of art was suddenly perceived to be inwardly related to the sign language of the book, the barriers fell between the two domains that had up to now been heterogeneous and in antiquity funda-

32

Fair and Varied Forms

mentally distinct" (Book Illumination 27). We see evidence of this in the words of several writers who were contemporary with or well-known to the Anglo-Saxons. The most famous example is Gregory's statement: "Nam quod legentibus scripture, hoc idiotis praestat pictura cernentibus, quia in ipsa ignorantes vident, quod sequi debeant, iu ipsa legunt qui litteras nesciunt; uncle praecipue gentibus pro lectione pictura est" (Epistolae: 270 Quoted in Raw 4) 4 Bede repeats the sentiment in a homily: We make images "ut qui litterarum lectione non possent opera Domini et Salvatoris nostris, per ipsarum contuitum discerent imaginum" (Homiliae Geniunae, Liber Secundus, "Homilia XVIII" PL 94. Quoted in Illich 108). 5 And "also to set before those who were ignorant of letters, as it were, a living reading of divine history" (De temp/a 213, Quoted in Raw 13 ). The claim that pictures can be read suggests a conceptual union of words and pictures which recognizes both as encoded communications. 6 At the same time, it is unlikely that these same non-literate men and women thought they were reading pictures; the concept of reading belongs to the literate. C.R. Dodwell has pointed out that for some the vocabulary of painting and writing began to be interchangeable. For example, an illustration in the Trier Gospels is labeled, "Thomas scribsit," and Aethelwulf speaks of painting words 7 (Quoted in Dodwell 55). A number of scribes were also illustrators, for whom perhaps the activities of painting and writing were not separate activities. Certainly, the use of combined forms abounds in the manuscripts of the period. Initial letters assume or integrate animal forms, incipits are often highly decorated. The visual appearance of the letters contributes to their reception and interpretation as much as their coded signification. The pictorial nature of the letterforms is one of the predominate characteristics of many Anglo-Saxon incipits, especially those of the insular period such as the Lindisfarne gospels. In spite of this evidence, there are still other indications that a definite word/image split existed, although images always constituted an important part of Christian piety, as Margaret Miles has pointed out (3). The same kinds of image denigration that we find in other times and places are in evidence here, although in perhaps a less virulent form. Bede shows evidence of this attitude in his life of Benedict Biscop. He describes the pictures of the apostles, Mary and scenes from Revelation painted on boards which Benedict brought from Rome to adorn the church ... " qua tenus intrantes ecclesiam omnes etiam letterarum ignari, quaquaversum intenderent, vel semper amabilem Christi sanctorumque ejus quamvis in imagine, contemplarentur aspectum" ("Vitae quinque abbatorum" col. 718). 8 The implication is that pictures, although useful, are inferior to writing, and more suitable for simple-minded or unlearned people. The attitude reflects a general distrust of perceptual evidence typical of medieval thought and those who influenced it such as Boethius and Augustine. Boethius warns that one should trust reason more than the senses, because perceptions (hearing is

Inner Space, Outer Space, Graphic Space

33

under discussion here) vary from one person to another. Reason is like a judge and has final authority (De musica 1.9) After confessing to fleshly lusts involving the other senses, Augustine confesses lust of the eyes: Pulchras formas et uarias, nitidos et amoenos colores amant oculi. Non teneant haec animam meam; teneat eam deus, qui fecit haec bona quidem ualde, sed ipse est bonum meum, non haec. Et tangunt me vigi/lantem totis diebus, nee requies ab eis datur mihi, sicut datur a uocibus canoris, aliquando ab omnibus, in silentio. Ipsa enim regina colorum lux ista perfundens cuncta, quae cernimus, ubi per diem fuero, multimodo adlapsu blanditur mihi aliud agenti et eam non aduertenti. Insinuat autem se ita uehementer, ut, si repente subtrahatur, cum desiderio requiratur; et si diu absit, contristat animum." (Confessiones Book X. Chapter 33.50) 9

Augustine derides philosophers whose minds are sense-bound, but also finds fault with Plato's ideal forms which must exist within the mind, itself mutable and therefore untrustworthy (De civitate Dei VIII. 5-7). He looks for a new kind of heavenly vision which differs from the earthly: "Vis itaque praepollentior oculorum erit illorum, non ut acrius videant quam qui dam perhibentur videre serpentes vel aquilae ... set ut videant et incorporalia." (De civitate Dei XXII.29) 10 JElfric finds a division in the character of words and pictures when he echoes the words of Augustine: Oft gehwa gesih3 fregre stafas awritene, ponne hera3 he 3one writere and pa stafas, and nat hwret he mrena3. Se 3e cann 3rera stafa gescea3, he hera8 heora fregernysse, and rre8 pa stafas and understent hwaet he gemrena8. On o3re wisan we sceawia8 metinge, and on o8re wisan stafas. Ne gre8 na mare to metinge buton pret pu hit geseo and herige; nis na genoh pret pu stafas sceawige, buton 3u hi eac rrede, and pret andgit understande ("Dominica in Media Quadragesima" Homilies Sermones Catholicil 186). 11

We find here an aesthetic appreciation of both letterforms and pictures, but no recognition that pictures have any type of content. However, in seeming self-contradiction, JElfric in this same homily, as well as elsewhere, writes at length about reading the world and biblical narration through symbols (tacnes). ANGLO-SAXON READERS AND WRITERS

If the Anglo-Saxons saw art and writing as closely related activities, their denigration of drawing and painting suggests that they did not completely conflate the categories. Margaret Miles goes so far as to claim that the two modes of representation reflect different modes of thinking. Miles believes that written texts of the period reflect the bias of those whose identity is subjectively constituted (mostly males), as opposed to the somatic orientation of images which reflect a viewpoint particular to women, peasants, and other non-literate people. If indeed this mind/body, word/image

34

Fair and Varied Forms

male/female polarization exists in early medieval society, it does not allow such easy categorization. In the first place, both words and pictures were produced in a literate monastic environment by both men and women. Second, the mental and physical in writing and drawing are too enmeshed to be thus separated. Ivan Illich emphasizes the physical nature of reading and writing for medieval people: The reader understands the lines by moving to their beat, remembers them by recapturing their rhythm, and thinks of them in terms of putting them into his mouth and chewing. No wonder that pre-university monasteries are described to us in various sources as the dwelling places of mumblers and munchers (54).

Illich also calls attention to the way in which those learning to write incise the letters in wax, reinforcing by sense of touch, in the muscles, what they hear and say. The common practice of reading aloud ensures that written texts retain their connection to the spoken word, much more than in our own culture. Thus medieval readers and writers were much more aware than we are of both the written word's plasticity and its connections to orality. If Miles's division between the male constituted verbal and female constituted pictorial texts were valid, there would have to be some corresponding division in the labor of text production. This was not the case. The textual-production culture did not exclude women, nor limit them to one kind of expression. Monastic houses included both men and women. The early period produced many double monasteries, and they were usually ruled by an abbess. Christine Fell writes, "From the time that Christianity came to England, men and women shared equally, not only in conversion to the new faith, but in the learning that accompanied it" ( 109). Although the monastic revival of the tenth century is usually described in terms of the creation of new houses for monks, women also had an important part in it, although no longer in double monasteries (Fell127). Houses for women in both periods were established by noble women, sometimes for their own retirement, or sometimes for the education of their daughters (Lucas 31 ). The education they received there does not seem to have been different from that given to men. Many women are praised for their learning and wisdom. One of these is a nun of the eighth century, St. Leoba, abbess of Bischofsheim. When she was living in the double monastery of Wimbourne under the abbess Tetta, Boniface requested that she take part in the Anglo-Saxon mission to Germany because "Sibi iniunctae transmitteret et Leoam Verginem quam fama sanctitatis et doctrina vertutem tunc per longinqua divulgaverat et laude celebri multorum ora repleverat" (Ruldolph of Fulda, Vita 125-26). 12 Her biographer writes further of her: Nam, cum ab ipsis infantiae rudimentis grammatica et reliquis liberalium litterarum studiis esset instituta, tanta meditationes instantia spiritalis scientiae perfectionem conabatur assequi, ut, consentiente cum ingenio lee-

Inner Space, Outer Space, Graphic Space

35

tione, duplicato naturae et industriae bono eruditissima redderetur. Veteris enim ac Novi Testamenti codices sagaci mente perlustrans, divina praecepta memoriae commendabat. (Rudolph of Fulda, Vita 118) 13

He reports that she had one of the younger nuns read to her while she slept, and (he admits this is hard to believe) she would awake to correct any misreading (215). She also wrote poetry in Latin. 14 Michele Brown calls attention to Aldhelm's work in praise of virginity composed for the nuns of Barking which "demonstrates the prowess at learning that they would have need to tackle his Joycian style." She writes that they "responded eagerly to the research task presented by Bede's call for data for his Ecclesiastical History" (25). Another nun of the German mission, Huneberc of Heidenheim, wrote a book on the travels of Willibald about whom little else is known. Her use of the modesty topos emphasizes her gender: Istas certe litterarum apices non idiota disputare inchoo, quod de vestrae sagacitatis industria me aliquid defidere aestimatis, seu quod bene non noverim ego multos vestrorum, quos dominus Deus nosterque antistes mihi prestantiores, non solum virili sexui, sed et etiam dignitate divinae condicionis ministerio preferre dignatus est, multo melius divinae legis eruditione et nihilominus indagatione sollerti cura procaciores disponere edissereque posse. Sed qui me, indignam tamen, de illorum genealogii stirpe aliunde propagateam, forte de extremis ramorum cauliculis, me fore noveram, de tantis talisque virorum beatudinibus venerabileque vitae eorum, non solum in actibus, sed in iteneribus variis multifariisque miraculorum magnitudinibus perfecte proficiscentium aliquid memoriae dignum lectoris legendi manibus inponere me libet. 15

As this disclaimer reveals, although women could be as well-educated as men were, they were not free from discrimination. In the following chapters, we will see that women, even though they contributed to text production, are often conspicuous by their absence in illustrations. There is good evidence for women's involvement in text production. Boniface writes to his good friend Eadburga to ask her to copy for him "cum auro ... epistolas domini mei, sancti Petri apostolic, ad honorem et reverntiam sanctarum scripturarum ante oculos carnalium in praedicando"I6 (Epistolae 286). Boniface requests books from a number of people, but this is the only request extant that asks for a particular copy to be made. In fact, Talbot believes that nuns produced most of the texts used by Boniface (xiii). St. Edyth, the daughter of King Edgar, is renowned for her many accomplishments including spirituality, music, learning, painting and calligraphy: vox cignea, canor angelicus, mellita facundia, generosum et ad omnia capax ingenium, legendi intellectuosa flagrantia, manus pingendi, scriptitandi, dictitandi tam decente[r], quam artificiose; digiti aurific[i]s, gem-

36

Fair and Varied Forms marii, citharedi, citharizantes Christi nuptias et angelorum organa, cui omnia consecrantur in gratia eterna. (Goscelin 68-69) 17

While women could be well-educated producers of manuscripts, these were only wealthy women. As with men, the lower classes were usually excluded from the ranks of the literate. However, there were other avenues for participation in the community of the Book. Everyone attended mass, listened to homilies and the liturgy, and saw the biblical narratives depicted in wall paintings, crucifixes, and on vestments. Although the liturgy was in Latin, homilies were often delivered in the vernacular including translations of the lessons. The tenth-century Regularis Concordia indicates that liturgical drama was in practice at this time when it describes a quem quaeritas enactment in which the monks would take the part of the angel or the women at the tomb: "Nam, quia ea die depositionem corporis Saluatoris nostri celebramus, usum quorundam religiosorum, imitabilem ad fidem indocti uulgi ac neophytorum corroborandam, aequiperando sequi si ita cui uisem fuerit uel sibi taliter placuerit, hoc modo decreuimus" (43). 18 There follows a detailed description of a ceremony in which the cross is placed in the sepulcher and guarded until early Easter morning, when it is returned to its proper place. Then at nocturnes, one brother taking the part of the angel sits in the sepulcher until the three brothers representing the three women shall come to the tomb looking for Christ (44-49). In this way the Latin words of the Good Friday and Easter liturgy were translated into actions to transmit the biblical text to the non-literate. Although its language was Latin, non-literate members of the community would understand them by the acting out in physical space. Knowledge of scripture was filtered through the interpretive medium of the preacher and the artisan. Given the involvement of both women and men in the production of manuscripts and the difficulty of separating physical from intellectual modes of experience, Miles's gender connections cannot be substantiated. There was not one culture for illustrators and another for scribes. Some illustrations are more androcentric than others, but because the provenance of so many manuscripts is unknown, we cannot even draw conclusions about women's manuscripts versus men's manuscripts. For everyone, the body was more present in writing than it is today, and pictures could have profound intellectual and spiritual content. To suggest otherwise is to perpetuate the hegemony of the verbal and to ignore the commonality of monastic modes of manuscript production. ANGLO-SAXON ARTISANS

The admiration for the scribe and the illustrator in Anglo-Saxon society was partly a product of the image of God as maker. Artisans of all kinds commanded a certain amount of respect, goldsmiths in particular, according to Dodwell (Anglo-Saxon Art 44-45), but also embroiderers in gold.

Inner Space, Outer Space, Graphic Space

37

Brown claims that great store was placed on the hero scribe in Ireland, and that this probably was true in England as well (26). The Anglo-Saxon aesthetic sense, as Dodwell shows, valorizes the costly, but also the reflection of light from surface texture and glitter (Anglo-Saxon Art 9-38). We can assume that this admiration extended to books decorated in gold and colors, certainly to the jeweled covers that adorned them. Augustine contrasts the artisan in her or his creative capability with God: 'Quomodo autem fecisti caelum et terram ... Non enim sicut homo artifex formans corpus de corpore arbitratu animae ualentis imponere utcumque speciem, quam cernit in semet ipsa interno oculo ... Ergo eixisti et facta sunt atque in uerbe tuo fecisti ea" (XI.V.7). 19 And in De civitate Dei he writes: "Neque enim haec carnali consuetudine cogitanda sunt, corporalibus membris, quod artis industria potuerint, fabricantes" (XII.24). 20 Artisans are like God in their role as makers, but different in the derivative nature of their creations, and in the physical/material/perceptual nature of their efforts. The concept of God as maker seems to have been an important one to the Anglo-Saxons. One of the frequently-used titles for God is Scyppend, Shaper, creator. This name suggests the anthropomorphization of God's role in the creation-the shaping with hands-and indeed the biblical version fosters that interpretation. In one poem, Christ is called craftsman: "se crrefta ... ond se cyning sylfa" ("Christ I" 12). Aelfric calls God "sean Wyrhta" (Lives of the Saints 17). Hands were an important symbol. Both priests and bishops had their hands blessed (Egbert Pontifica/1 0 and 29). The hand of God in word and picture represents God's power, protection, and blessing. Several hundred years later, at the end of the period of manuscript production, Johannes Trithemius urged his monks to continue writing manuscripts in a statement that exemplifies the monastic attitude toward the making of books: Scriptor devotus, qualem describere intendimus, deum laudat, angelos letificat, iustos hominess confortat, peccatores emendat, humiles commendat, bonos conservat, superbos debellat, condemnat pertinaces. Scriptor peitate insignis dei preco est, quia bvoluntatem eius et presentibus annunciat et futuris, promittens bonis vitam eternam, penitentibus veriam, negligentibus penam, contemnentibus damnationem. (35) 21 IMAGE VENERATION

Another biblical influence on the broader concept of representation by image is the statement that men and women are made in God's image. Augustine interprets this image non-materially, likening human memory, understanding, and will to the three persons of the trinity (De trinitate CIV 370-94). The connection is repeated by JEifric in a homily ("De Fida Catholica" Homilies I 28 8 ), but the idea is represented graphically by depictions of God in human form. The biblical injunction against images seems to have been applied primarily against Germanic gods and idols,

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Fair and Varied Forms

both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian, which were seen as a threat to the belief and practice of Christianity. The substitutive nature of those images was denounced while Christian images were venerated. Nevertheless, however strongly it may have been denied, their substitutive role is evident. Reliquaries and statues of saints, for example, as Belting has shown, become conflated with the relics or saints they were made to enshrine or honor: The relic as pars pro toto was the body of the saint, who remained present even in death and gave proof of his or her life by miracles. The statue represented this body of the saint and, as it were, was the saint's new body, which like a living body, could also be set in motion in a procession. The body like sculpture made the saint physically present. (299).

The crucifix wielded a protective power over people and objects (Raw 18). The power of these images derived from God but resided in the object because of its formal (metaphoric) or connective (synecdochic) efficacy. While I know of no evidence that images in a book had a substitutive function, religious books themselves, especially the Gospels, were highly venerated. As Piicht puts it, "The book not only contained the Gospel, it was the Gospel" (Book Illumination 10). Gospel books were carried in processions along with the cross and relics. Vercelli Homily 12, describing the Rogation day ritual says: ... we sceoldon on Gode JElmihtigum piowigan mid usse gedefelice gange 7 mid sange 7 mid ciricena socnum 7 mid fa:stenum 7 mid a:lmessylenum 7 mid halegum gebedum. 7 we sculon beran usse reliquas ymb ure land, pa medeman Cristes rodetacen pe we Cristes rna:! nemnao, on pam he sylfa prowode for mancynnes alysness. Swelce we sculon beran pa bee pe man hateo godspel. ( Vercelli Homilies 228) 22

Although the primary purpose of the Rogation Day rituals was penitential-they emphasized almsgiving, fasting, and vigils-the observance had roots in a Roman fertility rite that placated the God of mildew and attempted to ensure a bountiful wheat harvest, and still functioned as a fertility ritual in Anglo-Saxon times (E.O. James 168, 220-21 ). The procession around the land called upon the power of God residing in the relics, cross, and Gospel book to make the land fruitful. The whole book, words and pictures, representing God's story of salvation had associative and substitutive powers. Gameson points out an instance where the Gospel book became a substitute for Christ himself: In the ceremony for Good Friday described in the Leofric Missal and the Regularis concordia, the gospel book was the focus of a particularly dramatic practice; when the words "Partiti sunt uestimenta" were reached in the reading of the Passion narrative, two deacons snatched away in modum furantis the doth that had earlier been placed underneath it. (Role of Art 60-61)

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39

ANGLO-SAXON ILLUSTRATED BOOKS

Not all books were religious, nor were they all illustrated. Almost 1000 Anglo-Saxon manuscript volumes have survived, and many other documents as well (Backhouse et al. 143). Only a small portion of these are illustrated. Of the material that we have by which to judge, poetry is less often illustrated than prose. Although the sample is small enough to make any conclusions tentative, we might expect this to be the case. Much surviving poetry comes out of oral tradition, or is original. These poems contrast with biblical material, which has a long textual tradition of illustration. Given the emphasis on authority and recovery, it is not surprising that no illustrated poem survives that does not have a long textual history.23 Many poems such as Judith and the Advent Lyrics have a textual history, but no illustrations. Besides religious texts, most illustrated prose texts including herbals, The Marvels of the East (two versions), and the Phaenomia, all of which might be considered scientific, have a tradition of illustration. While tradition may be important in determining the presence or absence of pictures in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, and there is a degree of continuity for symbols, I agree with Barbara Raw when she writes, "The process of tracing the form of a picture back to its source tells one little about the meaning of the picture in the society which created it. Even when a picture is copied mechanically from a model its meaning is not the same because its context is different" (2). We must look at each manuscript in its own context, at its cultural milieu, its readers, the situation which gave rise to its graphic productions, in addition to or outside of the desire to recover or reproduce authoritative voices. We are able to make some general comments about the function of manuscript illustrations. Unlike church sculpture and wall paintings, they evidently did not serve as a substitute for writing, since they were probably seldom seen by the non-literate. Illich suggests a didactic function ("Just as the preacher enlivens his word by gestures, so the figure illuminates the reading of the written word"), and the adornment of an adored object (107-108). Illich adds that the pictures cue the monastic reader and provide visual support to "the sound given off by the lines" (1 09). Mary Carruthers comments on the mnemonic function (she claims that all of the illustrations in the Utrecht Psalter were made to stimulate memory) (22 7) as does Carol-Gibson Wood (1 0), and Raw calls attention to meditative focusing, the structural functioning, and the conflation of past and present (3, 23-24 ). Each of these claims has validity. Each manuscript has its own function, economy, and direction which is accomplished by the combination of words and pictures. We will consider specific functions below. I now want to examine the three above-mentioned approaches to reading/ viewing illustrated Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and the ways in which they produce meaning. These aspects are schematization, metaphoric tropes,

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Fair and Varied Forms

and spatial representation of concepts. The following discussion is not meant to limit or dictate reading strategies, but to suggest some ways in which traditionally dissimilar kinds of texts (verbal and pictorial) can be read as like. PATTERNS OF IDENTIFICATION: SCHEMATA

Perhaps the most striking difference between medieval and later Western art is the high degree of schematization and stylization found in the medieval period. We can think of the schema in medieval art as a tool in a discursive intertextual strategy which involves the use of a rather loose code. The code may consist of elements that are part of a cultural system, or it may include elements that are peculiar to an individual illustrator, but are recognizable because they fit a general image-making strategy with which readers and viewers are familiar. Schematization is characteristic of Anglo-Saxon art throughout its history. In the Insular period, depictions of animals, plants, and people have a decorative function that rivals their representative role. But the main focus of all Anglo-Saxon imagery as mentioned above, is conceptual rather than optical. The artist uses only the degree of particularity required to establish meaning or identification, and the devices used to indicate particularity are themselves schematic. A system of established conventions of representation has at least three functions. First, figures consistent with an established code of reference allow less ambiguity of interpretation, placing people and objects within taxonomic categories. Second, the system facilitates production of illustrations by providing ready-made formulas which are much like the formulaic phrases of oral poetry. Third, it appeals to the desire for an authoritative model since many of the conventions and the illustrations themselves are copied from exemplars. Paul Zumthor's characterization of oral formulaic style as a "discursive intertextual strategy" accords with our characterization of pictorial schemata (89). Let us examine some particular characteristics of schematization. In the Insular period, images are highly decorative and stylized. Plants and animals form, or are integrated with, interlace designs. In the carpet pages, birds and other animals in intricate interlace fill in the all the spaces of the page, having undergone what Piicht calls "rigorous ornamentation" (Book Illumination 175). The same process affects single figures such as evangelist portraits (Figure 2.1 ). The degree of particularity in these examples is close to zero. The style reflects a love of pattern and surface texture; according to Wilson, "It also reveals that horror vacui which is so obvious an element of the whole of Germanic art of the post-Roman period. No space could be left unornamented" ("Anglo-Saxon Art" 10). Metalwork, crosses, jewelry, textiles, and other arts of the period exhibit similar decorative techniques. While patterns and certain plant and animal forms recur, especially in such representations as evangelist portraits, there seems to be

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41

Figure 2.1 Evangelist figure, Gospels of St. Willibord

greater freedom and variety. This is in keeping with the decorative function, although the discursive is still present, as we shall see in the discussion of spatiality. In later manuscripts, schematization takes a different form. Figures are less decorative, more representative, yet still not particularized. People in groups tend to be identical (Figure 2.2). Berst! calls these cubic groups. They can also be made up of trees or buildings (Berst! 42, ff. Cited in Bunim 49). They represent a generalized group of Israelites, onlookers, angels, or soldiers. Their importance is as a group, not as individuals. Rhetorically they correspond to terms in verbal descriptions or narrative such as we find in the Bayeux Tapestry: "Hie Willelm dux alloquitur suis militibus ... " The milites belong to a group of undifferentiated soldiers. In these cases neither pictorial nor verbal text is individually differentiated. If an individual has narrative or rhetorical importance, he or she is separated from the group, and often also is given recognizable attributes. For example, in Figure 2.3 Noah and his sons present an offering to God after leaving the ark. The three sons are identical in position and features of hair, clothing, and profiles. The figure of Noah matches the others from the waist down, but his upper torso bends forward offering the sacrificial bird. He is bearded and his hair color is different from his sons'. He is a member of a group, but also stands apart as its patriarch. Clothing schemata can

Figure 2.2 Soldiers from the Bayeux Tapestry

Figure 2.3 Noah and his sons, Junius Manuscript

Figure 2.4 Ira and Patientia, The Psychomachia of Prudentius

Figure 2.5 Superbia, The Psychomachia of Prudentius

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Fair and Varied Forms

differentiate individuals. In Figure 2.4, from Prudentius's Psychomachia, Patientia wears the typical clothing of an Anglo-Saxon woman. In another picture from this manuscript (Figure 2.5), Superbia wears the same clothing but is consistently pictured with bare feet, her mantle flying about her head as she rides her spirited horse. Ira, in Figure 2.4 wears a similar gown tied around the waist, but without the mantle. Her hair stands on end, and she holds a sword and shield. An individualizing schema can be repeated with slight variations for a number of cases. The king in majesty is one of the most common. Artists portray Christ, King David, Anglo-Saxon kings, and even bishops with the same basic schema (Figure 2.6). A book, scepter, crosier, harp or other prop provides differentiation between isoschematic figures. These representations are consistent with a desire to classify. Use of a particular schema places the person or object within a taxonomic group. The two main categories, of course, are good and evil. The division of things into polarized pairs begins with the creation story, which is in large part a work of division-dry land from water, light from darkness, heaven from earth. This pairing encompasses God and Satan, male and female, Anglo-Saxons and Danes, pagans and Christians, Here and There. A version of reality constituted by schematic representation is necessarily reductive. Inclusion in a particular category can label a person or activity, while deviation from the schema, aside from its function in identification, can signal an outstandingly good or evil person. 24 As Suzanne Lewis puts it,

Figure 2.6 Royal schema: King David, King Harold, and Bishop Benedict

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"Defined as appropriation, representation thus becomes constituted as an apparatus of power, a semiotic system at once fully historicized and politically inflected" (Reading Images 16). Biblical texts especially, had power which could be channeled in a particular direction by an illustrator to influence a patron or group, prevent deviation, or produce a particular behavior. In manuscript illustration, as in poetry, schemata facilitate production by providing a predetermined strategy. The illustrator and the writer have at their disposal a vocabulary of recognizable, codified forms. Where the range of types is limited, the meanings vary with the context as in the example of the king in majesty schema (Raw 89). The illustrations provide commentary, gloss, or interpretation rather than repeating the verbal material in pictures. For example, many Psalters contain not illustrations directly relating to the Psalms, but New Testament scenes such as Nativities or Crucifixions whose purpose is to emphasize the allegorical or prophetic nature of the Psalms (Raw 32). In the complex systems of signs and tropes which medieval writers inherited from classical rhetoric, one looks in vain for one that corresponds to pictorial schema. A tradition based on classical models going back to Donatus and the author of Rhetorica ad Herennium provided classification and descriptions of verbal strategies. Rhetorica ad Herennium lists 45 figures of speech, divided into two groups. The second group of ten later came to be called tropes. They are onomatopoeia, atonomasia, metonymy, periphrasis, hyperbaton, hyperbole, synecdoche, catachresis, metaphora, and allegory. Donatus lists three others: metalepsis, epitheton. and homeosis (Murphy 210). Although rhetoricians disagree on the precise meaning of the word trope, it generally involves a change in the meaning of a word. 25 Donatus divides rhetorical devices into three types: metaplasmus, scemata, and tropi. He divides schemata into figures of diction and figures of sense, although he is more concerned with figures of diction, seventeen of them in particular. These involve such devices as paronomasia (puns) and anaphora (the repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses (Murphy 33-34 ). !Eifric uses this rhetorical sense in his Grammar: "Sume sind gehatene scemata, paet sind mislice hiw and f::egernyssa on ledenspr::ece, hu heo betst gelogoo beo" (Grammatik xxv). 26 None of the rhetorical devices listed in Rhetorica ad Herennium and Donatus quite parallels visual schemata, which are more like the formulaic language described by Milman Parry, Alfred Lord, Paul Zumthor, and others writing about oral poetics. Both visual and verbal schematization in AngloSaxon texts are consistent with a culture that is still largely oral. Particularly in poetry, but also often in prose based in oral practice, formulaic phrases and formulaic character types form a significant aspect of the work. 27 Anglo-Saxon poetry makes extensive use of oral formulaic material.28 Oral formulaic style in poetry usually takes the form of repeated phrases with a fixed metrical structure. However, it can also be more

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Fair and Varied Forms

loosely defined. Those examples in Beowulf, according to Foley, are more likely to be "recurrent phrases with substitutions, individual stress words and morphemes, clusters of words, and narrative patterns" (Immanent Art 92). Like pictorial schemata, formulaic phrases can have a categorizing function. Descriptive phrases referring to heroes like hade hildedeor (battle-brave hero), sigorreadig secg (victory-blessed men), or wigendra hleo (warriors' protector), call on the " inherent meaning in an idealized model." They "lock the character into a type connected to ideas of leadership, loyalty, bravery, etc." (Foley Immanent Art 205-208). Also like visual schemata, they provide for the poet an economic means of establishing a character's identity. Hade hildedeor applied to Andreas, Judith, and Beowulf, works in the same way as the pictorial schema of the king enthroned. Zumthor also sees a stabilizing and maintaining role for formulas. "Tending toward hyperbole, they bear witness to the poet's acceptance of the society for which he sings" (92). Although this style originated in oral practice, it does not disappear with writing, but continues in evidence throughout the Middle Ages. Schemata, then, perform the same kinds of functions in both verbal and pictorial materials. Recognizable schematic codes in pictures ensure that the conceptual bias of the illustrations will be obvious. The distrusted perceptual is suppressed; the painter does not constitute her-or himself as a viewing subject in the way the Renaissance painter does, does not present a situation as from a subjective viewpoint. And a reading of formulaic texts positions the reader as a member of a discourse community. The viewer/ reader participates in the production of meaning where the material already belongs to a communal textual system of signification and hierarchical relationships. The role of the viewer is to situate her- or himself within an established, culturally constituted edifice of meaning and being where schematic codification encourages social adhesion among its members. PATTERNS OF INTERACTION AND SUBSTITUTION: METAPHORIC TROPES

As we have seen, metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche were classed among a wide range of rhetorical devices. In contrast to a present day understanding of metaphor as a basic means of constituting and expressing ideas, the Anglo-Saxon understanding, like that of the classical writers, was that it embellished ordinary language. For them, allegory was much more important than metaphor or synecdoche in understanding the structure of creation. We saw a brief overview of rhetorical classes above in the discussion on schemata. Here we will focus on five of the types of tropes; Metaphor (translatio), metonymy (denominatio), synecdoche (intellectio), simile (homeosis), and allegory (permutatio). According to Rhetorica ad Herennium, "Translatio est cum verbum in quandam rem transferetur ex alia re, quod propter similiatudinem recte videbitur posse transferi" (IV.34). 29 The author lists reasons for using metaphor: vividness, brevity,

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avoidance of obscenity, magnifying, minifying, and embellishing. The concepts of transference of meaning, resemblance as motivation, and the word as the unit of metaphoric meaning are all characteristic of this view of metaphor which fits the substitution model described in Chapter One. Bede describes metaphoric language: "Soler iterum tropica locutio reperiri, quae fit translata dictione a propria significatione ad non propriam similitudinem, necessitatis aut ornatus gratia" (De schematibus Col. 175). 30 He classifies metaphor in four types according to whether the terms refer to animate or inanimate entities (col. 179) Metonymy, says Rhetorica ad Herennium, "est quae ab rebus propinquis et finitimis trahit orationem qua possit intellegi res quae non suo vocabulo sit appellata" (IV.321)). 31 Bede calls metonymy a substitution of names, and in fact, denominatio means naming (De schematibus col. 181 ). Rhetorica Ad Herennium describes synecdoche as that which occurs "cum res tota parva de parte cognoscitur aut de toto pars" (IV.33 ). 32 Bede also defines it this way (De schematibus 182). Simile is not discussed much by any of these writers. Augustine, when commenting on the sheep metaphor from the Song of Songs, does not separate it from his allegorical interpretation of the passage. The passage is: "Thy teeth are as flocks of sheep that are shorn, which come up from the washing, all with twins, and there is none barren among them" (4.2). Augustine writes, "Nescio quomodo suauius intueor sanctos, cum eos quasi dentes ecclesiae video praecidere ab erroribus homines atque in eius corpus emollita duritia quasi demorsos mansosque transferre de doctrina" (Confessiones 11.8). 33 Augustine admits that he does not know why he likes figurative expression better than literal, but believes that "per similitudines libentius quaeque cognosci et com aliqua difficultate quaesita multo gratius inuenire" (De doctrina 11.8). 34 Allegory in Rhetorica ad Herennium is "oratio aliud verbis aliud sententia demonstrans. Ea dividitur in tres partes: similitudinem, afgumentum, contrarium" (IV.34). 15 Bede writes, "Allegoria est tropus quo aliud singificatur quam dicitur. " 36 He lists seven kinds of allegory: irony, antiphrasis, enigma, euphemism, paroemia, sarcasm, and asteismos. Of these types, medieval writers were most concerned with enigma which Bede calls "obscura sententia per occultam similitudinem rerum" (De schematibus 184 ). 37 The use of allegorical interpretation as scriptural exegesis originates with St. Paul, and was developed by Ambrose, although it was used in the classical world. Augustine in De doctrina Christiana brings it to full development. 38 Augustine's appreciation of the sheep simile is enhanced by his understanding of the allegorical meaning; the beloved's teeth are like sheep; but the teeth must denote the teeth of the saints for him to derive the greatest pleasure and benefit from the reading. Augustine claims that the whole world points to God the creator, and serves as a sign by its createdness (Confessions X.8-9). The idea of the world as the book of nature was a medieval commonplace. Ladner relates that natural phenomena were

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Fair and Varied Forms

considered vestigia Dei (230). The world stood parallel to the Bible, the book of God's written word. Since God created the world by means of his word, it is his spoken word. Thus, resemblance in the Middle Ages is tied up with spiritual likeness. Analogy is believed to belong to the order of creation, and carries a lot of cultural weight with complex associations. While medieval people saw allegory as the most important trope for constructing understanding of the cosmos, it is, in fact, based on the operations of other tropes. Allegory and metaphor are sometimes treated as though they are very similar; but the operation of allegory is in fact closer to simile than it is to metaphor. Max Black defines allegory as a trope where all the terms are metaphorical ("More about Metaphor" 27). In simile, none of the terms is metaphorical (Ricoeur 190). It is the conflation of like and different in metaphor that gives its characteristic tension. For simile and allegory, two ideas are simultaneously held up for consideration; in one both are explicit, in the other one is explicit and one is implicit. Our own reading will look at tropes from an interactive viewpoint while maintaining awareness of the Anglo-Saxon attitude. Once we begin looking at examples, it becomes obvious that categories of schemata and tropes are not always clearly differentiated. To compare the teeth of the beloved with sheep certainly is a figure that refuses the conflation of the parts. But this simile is part of a larger symbol for Augustine in which the beloved symbolizes the church and therefore the teeth (sheep) symbolize the saints. The attributes of Ira and Superbia (the sword, the flying headdress) are schematic indications of identity, but they also function metonymically as visible associations. The women themselves symbolize abstractions-vices. Whether an image, verbal or visual, is constituted as a metaphor, allegorical symbol, or schema depends on how one reads it. Part of the interpretative process will be to decide from which position to read these figures, and that may depend on what we want to find out. A reading of the ways they function in both words and pictures, perhaps will indicate ways in which the two interact, reinforcing, resisting, or supplementing the production of meaning. Also, the ways in which tropes engage cultural assumptions can give further insight into how texts exist in their particular culture. Metaphors and similes are popular in Old English literature, particularly in the homilies. For example, Vercelli Homily 11 uses several metaphors to illustrate ideas. God has provided spiritual lanterns (gastlice blacernas) to light the people's way-patriarchs, prophets, apostles, bishops, mass-priests, etc. (221, line 11). The Christian must think of him/herself as an exile in a strange land from his or her true home (heaven), and as a spiritual merchant (gastlice cypeman) who trades the pleasures of this transitory life for the eternal pleasures of heaven (224, line 63 ). Vercelli Homily 19likens the Christian to a bee hurrying to the hive (the church) where one finds the honey of spiritual knowledge (319, line 79). In this process, homely objects (lanterns and bees) take on an aura of spiritual meaning

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and the individual's idea of self is affected as a result of juxtaposition with unaccustomed terms. Illustrations sometimes participate in the tropes found in the verbal text. Figure 2.7 shows an illustration from the Paris Psalter which corresponds to the words, "nequando rapiat ut leo animan meam dum non est qui redimat neque qui saluum faciat .. ," in Old English, "ret nrefre mine fynd ne gripen mine sawle swa swa leo; for pam ic nat ealles hwa me agredde and gehrele, butan pu wylie. " 39 The illustrator is presenting the very same metaphor or simile in the picture that the Psalmist provides in the verbal text. However, commentators frequently see this as a sign of simple-mindedness on the part of the illustrator. Otto Piicht, pointing to a similarly close correspondence in the Utrecht Psalter illustration of Psalm 43, where God is asleep in a bed (illustrating the verse, "Awake, why do you sleep, 0 Lord?"), finds it strange that "the same illustrator, who conveys the true prophetic nature of the psalms, that is, interprets them in a typological and allegorical manner, often reverts to the most naive word illustration ... " (Book Illumination 170). 40 And Ruth Mellinkoff, explaining why Moses is depicted with horns in the Hexateuch, patronizingly supposes that AngloSaxon artists were probably unaware of the symbolical and metaphorical aspects of biblical language. Thus they translated gehyrned into a literal image, a horned Moses. It is Beryl Smalley who has pointed out the "the Anglo-Saxon on the eve of the Conquest may have been a good artist and poet; he was not intellectual." ([Smalley 119 quoted in Mellinkoff]26)

But no one ever assumes that makers of verbal tropes do so out of lack of sophistication. It is failure of our age to see medieval illustrations as highly conceptual that allows these pejorative interpretations.

Figure 2. 7 The Psalmist attacked by a lion, Paris Psalter

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Fair and Varied Forms

I said above that the very same trope is represented, but I wish to qualify that statement. The effect is more like a translation-it can never be quite the same in one language as it is in another. The juxtaposition of the two versions of the trope influences the reading of both. We are more aware of specific aspects of a lion-like enemy attack when we look at the illustration, and the words inform us that no help is at hand. In the Junius manuscript illustration which depicts Adam and Eve leaving Eden, Adam carries a spade and a bag of seeds. These are not mentioned in the verbal text which says that Adam must live by the sweat of his brow (forpon pu winnan scealt/and on eoroan pe pine andlifne/selfa gerrecan, wegan swatig hleor,/pinne hlaf etan, pend en pu her leo fast (Genesis lines 932-35). 41 The illustrator has chosen a different trope to indicate Adam's physical labor-a spade and seeds instead of sweat. The spade functions more effectively in a scene that must indicate future events. One can show that Adam will have to use the spade more easily than one can show that he will sweat. Another factor affecting the choice of illustration is that the sweat metaphor is not primarily a visual trope. It evokes a feeling of labor rather than a picture of it. The spade works better as a coded representation. The medium affects the kind of trope that will be used, and at the same time, gives an alternative reading of the verbal text. Another example shows a somewhat different relationship between word and picture. Psalm 65.12 says: "Imposuisti homines super capita nostra./Transivimus per ignum et aquam/et eduxisti nos in refrigerum. " 42 The illustration from the Bury Psalter shows a man, probably Abraham, holding a group of people to his breast. He reaches out to receive another from an angel. The concept of the bosom of Abraham is important in Christian imagery because of the gospel story of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16.19-31) where Dives the rich man looks up from Hell to see Lazarus the pauper in the bosom of Abraham and asks for a drink of water. Thus Abraham's bosom is associated with refreshment. In Adversus Marcion, Tertullian says, Vnde apparet ... esse aliquam localem determination em, quae sinus dicta sit Abrahae, ad recipiendas animas filiorum eius, etiam ex notionibus, parris scilicet multarum nation urn, in Abrahae censum deputandarum .... Earn itaque regionem, sinum dice Abrahae, etsi non caelestem, sublimiorem ramen inferis, interim refrigerium praebere animabus iustorum, donee consumatio rerum resurrectionem omnium plenitudine mercedis expungat .... (IV.34.12-13 ). 43

The picture provides a Christian gloss on the verbal text and creates a third metaphoric relationship: being lead to a cool place is like resting in the bosom of Abraham. Instead of a dual tension (between two domains), we now have a triangular tension. In another manuscript, Hannover Kestner Museum WM xxa, 36, we find synechdochic representations of symbols. The canon tables have the

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51

usual architectural structure. At the head of each column is an illustration of part of an evangelist symbol-the upper part of the head of the lion, the ox, and the man who peer over a balustrade-type division. Their positions do not correspond to the gospel material beneath them, so we can probably conclude that they represent the synoptic gospels as a unit rather than the individual gospels. These half-heads are pictorial synecdoches for the complete evangelist symbols which in turn signify the gospels in a somewhat arbitrary way (they are not rhetorical tropes). In the Psychomachia illustration we have already seen (Figure 2.5) Superbia is an allegorical personification, but her attributes-flying mantle, horse, etc. are metonymic tropes, and the figures themselves-the proud or angry person-have metonymic function. Like schematic representations, pictorial metaphors create meanings which exist alongside and interact with the meanings generated by the verbal graphai. PATTERNS OF RELATIONSHIP: SPATIAL MODELS

Understanding of the world is grounded in the spatial. "An image," writes Robert Neville, "is the form by which imagination synthesizes its components into experience" (19). Image-making, then, is an operation of the imagination informed by cultural and bodily experiences of the image maker. Every culture including the Anglo-Saxon has not one, but a number of spatial models for ordering information. These models are cultural maps of social relationships, the religious or scientific structure of the cosmos, understanding of time, and the familiar loci of daily life. These structures form the background against which spatial constructions are produced in graphic productions-verbally and pictorially in spatial metaphors, in page layout, com£osition of pictures, size of figures and letters, and in many other ways. 4 For the Anglo-Saxons, the cosmos is ordered on several models-scientific, Christian, mythic, and pagan, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but sometimes overlap and reinforce one another, and sometimes resist and contradict one another producing tension. The geocentric model of the Greeks provides one spatial scheme. The earth is a globe at the center of a series of concentric spheres. A number of early writers speak of the world as a globe. Boniface, in a letter to Eadburga, quotes a priest who had a vision in which he saw earth, and "nres eall pes middan eard, pa ic hine sceawode, buton swile he wrere on anes cleownen[es] onlicnysse, and eall his weorc" (Sisam, "Translation" 264). 45 Macrobius describes the earth as a globe (201-202), and Bede also calls it spherical (De Natura Rerum 3, col. 192). However, others such as Isidore and Cassiodorus do not accept the idea (Gurevich Categories 73). Augustine believes that the idea that people (antipodes) might inhabit the opposite side of the globe is nonsense (De civitate Dei XVI.9). 46 The movements of the heavenly bodies are tracked with care, and the procession of the planets, sun and moon

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Fair and Varied Forms

through the zodiac has profound significance as a spatial mapping of time. At the same time, a three-level theological model provides understanding of humanity's relationship to the cosmos as a middle ground between heaven and hell, God and Satan. In heaven with God are the nine orders of angels. It is the eventual home of saved souls. Satan and demons inhabit hell, and those not saved will find punishment there. Many homilies contrast either heaven and hell or heaven and earth. We have already seen examples of the latter from Vercelli Homily 11. Another anonymous homily constructs a dualistic soul journey, comparing the experience of the saved soul with that of the lost soul in opposing terms. The damned soul travels to hell accompanied by a demon, experiencing feelings of oppression, darkness and horror. The saved soul travels to heaven with an angel, experiencing happiness, light, and sweetness. ("Homily 9," Eleven Rogationtide Homilies 121-23). In both the geocentric and the three-level models, this world is situated as a center point of the cosmos. Hell could as easily be found on the other side of heaven based on the gospel warnings that some will be cast into outer darkness (Matt. 25. 30). However, the influence of the Greek Hades and the Sheol of the Hebrew scriptures, prevails. Sheol has various meanings: death, the abode of the dead, and the grave. The conflation of these ideas under one term contributes to the construction of the three-level model, but the tendency of people to centralize their own experience suggests that the spherical model and the three-level model are not geo-centric, but homo-centric. Also, because Western culture uses a vertical hierarchy, we find a construction of space where up is positive and down is negative. Heaven, in terms of up, is associated with all of the conditions desirable in this world while hell exhibits all of the undesirable conditions-in the words of Vercelli Homily 20, with both "pa egeslican brynas 7 pa unasecgendlican cylas" (burning flames and unspeakable cold) (342). The homilist contrasts them in a formulaic list: "l>xr ys ece med 7 pxr ys lif butan deaoe 7 pxr ys gefea buton unrotnesse 7 pxr is leoht buton pystrum 7 oxr is wlite butan awendedness 7 pxr is ece blis 7 ece gefea ... " (343 ). 47 One realm has all the good, one all the evil, and the middle one-middangeard-has both. Although the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity by the seventh century, there was perhaps still some world-structuring based on the earlier Germanic religion. This religion and its expressions were vigorously suppressed by the church, but it was never totally eradicated. The laws of !Epelred of 1008 prohibit heathen practices ("Laws of Aethelred"78). The rural nature of early Germanic religion probably was a factor in its tenacity in England. Animistic spirits inhabited oak trees, groves, clearings, and springs. The church was still trying to discourage well-worship in the eleventh century (Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art 112). Even where the old forms of worship had died out, thought structures could remain. The poem "The Maiden in the Mor Lay," recorded in the 14th century, is according

Inner Space, Outer Space, Graphic Space

53

to Peter Dronke, a poem about a water elf maiden, the origin of which is probably to be found in pagan religion (324-5). We know very little about the form of religion practiced by the AngloSaxons before Christianity. The surviving names of a few gods, Thunor, Woden, and Tiw suggest a relationship with Norse religion, but it may have differed significantly. That their idea of the structure of the cosmos is similar is conjecture, but a few clues are suggestive. 48 Voluspa, one of the poems of the elder Edda, speaks in the second stanza of nine worlds: "nfo man ec heima, nfo fvioi/miotvio mreran fyr mold neoan (1.1). 49 The tree is Yggdrasill the world tree (usually called an ash tree, but possibly a yew tree [Duerr 30]). The Old English "Nine Herbs Charm" mentions seven worlds, perhaps a variant on the nine. The world tree vertically connects Asgarour, Miogarour and Niflhel, but there is also a horizontal dimension; Jotunheimar (giantland) surrounds the sea or is in the east (according to different versions), Mtispelsheimur, the world of fire, is in the south. The arrangement has certain characteristics in common with the Christian one-the gods are higher than Miogarour, Niflhel is lower. Destruction comes from Muspelsheimur which is very hot while Niflheimur is very cold and dark. 6oin hung for nine days on the world tree and received wisdom. The Nine Herbs Charm says: J:>a wyrte gesceop witig drihten, halig on heofonum pa he hangode; sette ond sxnde on VII worulde earmum ond eadigum eallum to bote. pas nigon magon wio nigon attrum. Wyrm com snican, toslat he nan. J:>a genam Woden VIIII woruldortanas, sloh oa he nxddran pxt heo on VIIII tofleah. ("Nigon Wyrta Galdor" 188) 50

Another Anglo-Saxon charm mentions the !Esir: "Gif hit wrere esa gescot, oooe hit wrere ylfa gescot, oooe hit wrere hregtessan gescot, nu ic wille oin helpan" ("Wio JElfscot" 142-44). 51 Although the old religion has been suppressed, not all of its structuring concepts have disappeared. The world of human habitation itself also has several spatial models. For medieval Christians, the center of the world is Jerusalem. Eliade has argued the importance of a center for a conceptual map of world space: Every microcosm, every inhabited region, has what may be called a "Centre;" that is to say, a place that is sacred above all. It is there, in that Centre, that the sacred manifests itself in its totality, either in the form of elementary hierophanies-as it does among the "primitives" ... -or else in the more evolved form of the direct epiphanies of the gods, as in the traditional civilizations. (Images and Symbols 39)

The salient feature of this center, world navel, or axis mundi is a sacred mountain, pole or tree which allows communication among the levels of

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Fair and Varied Forms

existence. Golgotha is for Christians the cosmic mountain and the cross is the axis mundi. The conjunction of realms takes place here (took place in the past and symbolically always takes place) through the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Maps of the period reflect this conceptual spatiality, showing Jerusalem as the center of the world. All of the familiar civilized peoples live within an area around this center. Other races including Ethiopians and monsters (often placed in the same category) live on the margins. Like the giants of Norse mythology, they lie outside the boundaries of the known. Eliade writes: In archaic and traditional societies the surrounding world is conceived as a microcosm. At the limits of this closed world begins the domain of the unknown, of the formless. On this side there is ordered-because inhabited and organized-space; on the other, outside this familiar space, there is the unknown and dangerous region of the demons, ghosts, the dead and of foreigners-in a word, chaos or death or night. (Images and Symbols 37-38)

This kind of boundary-making works on more than one level. Within England itself, its land divided into shires, hundreds, hides, the inhabited regions are microcosms with their own centers and boundaries. The animism of Germanic myth comes into play here. In Anglo-Saxon times, all of the nonhuman creatures live outside the boundaries of town or village. The many words in Old English for these creatures and their characteristics or diseases associated with them attest to their continued existence in the minds of the Anglo-Saxons: a?!f, a?!fcynn, a?l{en, dweorg, wa?tera?l{en, 11!1{scene, a?!{adl, dweorge-dwosle, wudua?l{en, wa?tera?l{adl, brimwolf, wa?teregesa, meredeor, nicor, ent, nihtgenga, puca, werwulf, draca, and wyrm to name a few. When the old religions were suppressed, the beings associated with them were not forf:otten; they became marginalized, pushed outward to the borderlands. 2 Herbals offer charms against elf shot, dwarves, and elf sickness, some of which invoke the Trinity. Grendel roams about in the uninhabited regions and lives in a monster-infested mere. His raids on Heorot constitute not only a vicious attack, but a horrifying transgression of the boundary between worlds. The landscape is delineated by named landmarks-trees, fords, hollows, and copses. Following is an excerpt from a land grant at Crediton: Now these are the lands. First from the Creedy bridge to the highway, along the highway to the plough ford on the Exe, then along the Exe until the grassy islets, from the grassy islets onto the boundary ridge, from the boundary ridge to Luha's tree, from Luha's tree to the enclosure gate, from the enclosure gate to Dodda's ridge, from Dodda's ridge to Grendel's pit, from Grendel's pit to the ivy grove .... (Anglo-Saxon Prose 15)

Names such as Grendel's Pit reinforce the idea that supernatural beings inhabit the less inhabited areas.

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55

On a smaller scale, the individual dwelling maps out the same spatial structure. The threshold marks the boundary, the hearth the center, reproducing the cosmic relationships (Eliade Sacred and Profane 57-58). In the church a similar mapping is in evidence. The typical church building has an east-west axis with cross arms formed by porticos or transepts. Within this space, the symbolic movements of eucharistic rites and processions trace lines of connection between sites. While no record of particular processions has survived from Anglo-Saxon England, we do have a contemporary account from St. Riquier in Centula, France. This church featured eleven altars, mostly dedicated to saints, but also one to the Cross and one to the Holy Savior. It also had stations of the Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Nativity, and burial places of four saints. The monks began their circuit of daily prayers at the altar of the Savior, divided, and came together at specific sites such as the altar of the Cross and the stations of the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension (Taylor 148-52). The circuit varied; what is notable is the spatial representation of the events of the incarnation and the presence of the saints, and the tracing of these events by the bodily movements of the monks upon a cross-shaped grid in daily prayer. IMAGES OF TIME

An understanding of the world which is grounded in the spatial includes the way human beings experience and describe time. Augustine, examining the nature of time asks, "Quid autem metimur nisi tempus in aliquo spatio?" (Confessiones Xl.21.27). 53 In terms of daily hours, time was measured by the position and movement of the sun and the length of shadows rather than by a mechanical clock. The Anglo-Saxons have, as with their understanding of cosmic space, several models of the understanding of time in a broader sense. The Christian model has both linear and cyclic aspects. The long-term understanding is linear: creation, fall, incarnation, resurrection, ascension, second coming. The world has one beginning and one end. The redemptive act takes place once. When this world ends a new order takes over, not a return to an older, better order. The famous story from Bede in which life is described as the flight of a sparrow through a hall illustrates this linearity (Historia 282-84 ). However, in the liturgical year, the nativity, crucifixion, and resurrection occur again. The church does not just remember or commemorate these events, it lives them as for the first time. Eliade sees this as a break in the flow of profane time-a disruption by sacred time (Sacred and Profane 72), a historical time that has been "sanctified by the presence of Christ" (Sacred and Profane 111 ). The historical person of Christ has become mythological and is therefore able to recur in profane time. Ecclesiastical cycles involve not only the events of the incarnation, but the saints' days, fast days, the weekly remembrance of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and the daily cycle of the monastic hours. Each celebration of the Eucharist is a reenactment of the last supper. "The

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Fair and Varied Forms

order of the Ecclesiastical year," writes Peter Metz, "is reminiscent of a stately building. The same attitude governed the manifestations of nature which man saw around him .... All spheres were intimately linked together in their unity constituted the dwelling-place as it were, of medieval man, his virtual 'home'" (18). Augustine struggles with the notion of time, especially with the idea of the past and future which exist only in the mind: Quod autem nunc liquet et claret, nee futura sunt nee praeterita, nee proprie dicitur: tempora sunt tria, praeteritum, praesens et futurum, sed fortasse proprie diceretur: tempora sunt tria, praesens de praeteritis, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris. Sunt enim haec in anima tria quaedam et alibi ea non uideo, praesens de praeteritis memoria, praesens de praesenti bus contuitus, praesnens de futuris expectatio." (Confessiones KI.20.26) 52

Thus Augustine's model of time is a threefold present existing only in the mind, which does not depend on any connection to the physical world. Time, moreover, begins with the creation of the universe and ends with the apocalypse. Before and after is eternity. However, medieval people also have an understanding of time that was grounded in the earth's rotation and the movements of the heavenly bodies. Astronomical cycles provide a spatial basis for measuring time. The movements of the heavenly bodies across the sky, through the zodiac, provides a vast map of temporal cycles. Byrhtfero, in his Enchiridion, a manual for monastic students, provides methods for astronomical computations. He describes several different ways of measuring years-solar, lunar, embolismic, decennovennal-each with a different number of days, and the great year (6,000 solar years) in which all the heavenly bodies make a complete circuit. The solar year begins in March, the lunar (Roman) year in January. Official (ecclesiastical) time-keeping uses the Roman system with Roman names for the months and ides, nones, and kalends. However, both Bede and Byrhtfero list the Germanic names for the months as well. They are based either on agricultural markers (/Jrymylce, Weodmono) or on religious observations (Guili, Haligmono, Eastremono, Blotmono) (Byrhtfero 25, Bede De Temporum Ratione 356-57). Byrhtfero describes a complex method of aligning days of the week with lunar phases (42-61). 1£/fwine's Prayerbook offers lists of birth prognostics (147), bloodletting efficacy for the lunar phases (89), birth prognostics for days of the week, (147), and a list of "critical Mondays" (144). All of these relationships form a complex network whose basic outline itself corresponds to other systems of knowledge. The Enchiridion provides a diagram aligning the zodiac and the four seasons with the four elements, four characteristics (hot, cold wet, dry), and physical types and ages of humanity. These (to us) disparate kinds of information are mapped onto the spatial domain. Whether the Anglo-Saxons understood this mapping metaphor-

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ically, that is, as a conjunction of unrelated domains; or whether they understood them to exist in a unity that would allow them to be present in the same spatial representation, their presence together in the diagram exemplifies the tendency to look for correspondences in and among the parts of a unified cosmos. On a smaller scale, the days and hours are divided into a hierarchy of parts: a day has 24 tida (hours), 96 prica (points), 240 minuta (1110 hours), 360 drelas (parts), 960 momenta (moments), 1440 ostenta (minutes), and 541,440 atoms (about 1/6 of a second) (Byrhtfero 108-110). " ... ponne miht au asmeagan" writes Byrhtfero, "hu gefredlice seo sunne gesiho on pam dregmrele, eall swylce sum getyd wer sitte and sum meteruers mid his feoere I awrite" (104). 55 He gives a number of other temporal divisions, highlights, and observations-seven parts of the night, three parts of the day, the canonical hours, (125), the labors of the months, the ages of the world. The first day of the creation of the world occurred on March 18. Nineteen years completes a lunar cycle, 28 years a solar cycle. Aetas refers to a period in the history of the world ("ealne pis worulde ryne") saeculum from the beginning of the world to its end, and mundus (universe), to "eall pret is betweox heofenum and eoroan and on prere sre" (123). 56 The inclusion of mundus-a term of material substance in the list of temporal terms reinforces the feeling of the ambiguity of the nature of time-its occupation at times of the spatial realm, not just metaphorically, but literally, and is consistent with the conflation of disparate realms in Byrhtfero's diagram. If the Anglo-Saxons retained a sense of time from Germanic religion, we could expect to find evidence of a larger cosmic cycle. In Norse belief, the cosmic order is in decline. As Snorri Sturluson's Edda makes clear, Yggdrasil will die: Hjortr bitr ofan en a hli3u funar, sker3ir Ni3hoggr ne3an. Sva er sagt: Ormar fleiri liggja und aski Yggdrasils en pat of hyggi hverr 6svi8ra afa. hygg ek at a: myni mei3s kvistum rna. (Sturluson Edda 19) 57

The warring people of Muspell will attack, the gods will battle monsters, and the world will end. Then the whole cycle will begin again. Some Anglo-Saxon poetry shows an awareness of decline. For example, The Wanderer, though Christian in outlook describes a general waning: Swa pes middangeard ealra dogra gehwam dreose3 ond feallep

58

Fair and Varied Forms Ongietan sceal gleaw hade hu grestlic bi3 l:>onne ealll:>isse worulde wela weste stonde3, swa nu missenlic geond l:>isne middangeard winde biwaune weallas stondal:>, hrime bihrorene, hry3ge l:>a ederas. Woria3 l:>a winsalo, waldend licga3 dreame bidrorene; dugul:> eal gecronV wlonc bi wealle. (lines 62-63, 73-84) 5

The poet calls attention to the mutability of this world compared to the eternal one; but the choice of the mutability theme in much Anglo-Saxon literature may reflect a general pagan attitude that the cosmos is in decay, or as Bauschatz believes, in flux and confusion. Pagan Germanic ideas of time, he claims, recognize two aspects of time: past and nonpast. The past is stable, the "collector of events ... the most dominant, controlling portion of all time" (139). This, he believes, explains the emphasis on the Hebrew scriptures in German Christianity (154). TIME AND SPACE ON THE MANUSCRIPT PAGE

The kinds of spatially structured models we have been describing are given textual form in manuscript illustrations and layouts as well as in verbal materials. In addition to illustrating temporal space, they, like schemata, serve to classify both vertically-hierarchically-and horizontally-showing correspondences. Some information is presented in charts: Byrhtfero shows the symbolic properties of the number seven in a diagram shaped like a cross and demonstrates spatially four criteria for determining the date of Easter using overlapping circles. But figural illustrations also show spatial thinking. Jesse Gellrich describes how the use of space works in the Lindisfarne Gospels cross carpet page: The whole area inside the border is organized according to the axial symmetry of the cross, which is composed of five bell-shaped figures, four of which are also chalice figures created by the semicircle bases that compose the center of the cross. Circles and circular shapes dominate the other areas of the page, particularly the interwoven shapes of the mythological birds and serpentine animals, repeated within the last detail of concentric circles of their eyes .... As the whole page is divided into quadrants by the main cross, both upper quadrants are subdivided again into smaller quadrants by the cross of black spaces. The figures of bell, chalice, circle, rose window, birds, serpents, the numbers three and four are radiant with theological significance. (59-60)

In this illustration, spatial organization is used to express numerical relationships that are representations of spiritual and cosmic concepts-the trinity, the four compass points, the four elements. In addition, the shapes of circle, cross and chalice operate as coded images.

Inner Space, Outer Space, Graphic Space

S9

Another illustration that organizes space around a cross is the frontispiece of the New Minster Liber Vitae (Figure 2.8). King Cnut and Queen Emma present a cross to the New Minster. The space is structured around the central gift cross which is placed precisely in the middle of the page. Cnut and Emma stand on either side of the cross under hovering angels. Directly above it is Christ in a mandorla. To his left, directly above Emma is Mary, and Peter is positioned above Cnut. Below, the New Minster monks look up in prayerful gratitude. While this arrangement depicts the historical event, it also establishes a structure of vertical and horizontal correspondences. The form of the cross, Nichols claims, is a biaxial trope that places Christ at the nexus of history and expresses the "simultaneity of [his] participation in the historic and anagogic" (118). The arrangement of the figures around the cross places them in relationship to the physical and spiritual realms, to Christ, the saints, and other human beings. Time is shown to pass by several spatial methods. In Junius 11, the entire story of Cain and Abel (Figure 2.9), enclosed in one border, seems to

Figure 2.8 Cnut and Emma's cross, New Minster Liber Vitae

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Fair and Varied Forms

Figure 2.9 Cain and Abel, Junius Manuscript

show events occurring simultaneously. But if they are read in succession beginning in the middle and moving counter clockwise, they follow the events as described in the verbal text. In the same manuscript, Noah and his family both enter and sail the ark in the same image. An illustration in the Junius manuscript depicts creation as overlapping circles, each superseding by covering part of the one before. The experience of time need not be expressed as linear. As in the Aztec map chronicles of Chapter One, time can be either spatial or linear or both in the same illustration. An important aspect of the spatial characteristics of the graphic production is the layout of the page and the way its parts relate to one another. Pictures, words, diagrams, rubrics, frames, glosses, the shape and size of the parchment, are features which contribute to an experience of the page. In addition, the reader/viewer does not experience the page in isolation. Each is part of an opening which juxtaposes two pages side by side. As the reader/viewer turns the pages, images and words follow in succession, providing what Keith Smith calls "leaf flow" (101). The rhythm and tempo of leaf flow depend on the nature of the visual, mental, and emotional engagement with the graphai. Present-day printed pages generally allow even flow of information. Complex arrangements of type and/or pictures can arrest or slow the process, can cause attention to be focused on particular ideas or figures, working against the flow of verbal processing, producing

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tension between and among its parts as the viewer/reader glances back and forth between pictures and words. To read a book is in part to experience the interrelationship of its parts. "The act [of turning pages] does notreveal a collection of single pictures, but the total experience of the book, of which turning pages is an element. Turning pages helps determine the resulting imagery" (Keith Smith 177). Such features as size, color, position and complexity can hierarchize material. A non-verbal form of communication, "the manuscript layout functions as what Umberto Eco has called a 'hypercode,' a 'complex network of subcodes" (Eco 125 quoted in Withers 149). As with schematization, one result is that the material is placed in hierarchical categories. A value system is imposed upon the information by graphic elements that represent it. A narrative element or an idea in the verbal text may be reinforced by a picture or gloss. A picture may have augmented importance because of its size, placement, color, or frame. A frame may receive ornate decoration. All of these characteristics are subcodes that the reader/viewer uses in processing the material. Many seem to be related to cultural spatial schemes, as we shall see in subsequent chapters. The different aspects of page layout can enter into dialogue with one another, causing tension between or among contrasting or contradictory presentations of concepts; or they can support and reinforce one another. In the Anglo-Saxon period, there are several basic types of page layout that account for most of the manuscripts. In the first and most common, full page illustrations are placed at the beginning of the manuscript, or at division points. In the second, illustrations alternate on the page with verbal material. The third type is much less common; here the illustrations inhabit the margins, as though they were an afterthought. The Bury Psalter, for example, seems to have been planned and ruled without consideration of where illustrations might be placed. Glosses are interlinear rather than marginal. In some cases, later glosses are written in the picture space or within the double lines of the frame. In general, variant texts alternate rather than exist simultaneously. The different kinds of letter forms on a page can function in several ways. Verbal texts in manuscripts have a predominating or default script size and style. Initials that are larger than those of the main text, a different style, or colored, often act as dividing points breaking the material up into parts. Rubrics do the same, while providing commentary. Piicht has pointed to the practice of what he calls "fortissimo" incipits which diminuendo through stages to the default script size. In the opening page of the Tiberius manuscript of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, the initial B of Britania takes up almost one fourth of the text area. The smaller letters, "ritania oceane insula cui quandam albinon nomen fuit" are framed and feature animal heads at letter terminals. These three frames with their letters take up most of the rest of the left hand column. After this the script is the predominating size with initials at division points. The technique is somewhat like a funnel which gathers in and channels liquid. The large decorated let-

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ters attract attention; their forms are not easy to read and prevent the quick passage through the funnel neck. Such treatments suggest the importance that is placed on beginnings. The incipit pages of gospel books are often treated similarly. Gospel books also often begin with evangelist portraits and carpet pages. Mary Carruthers emphasizes the importance of beginnings in memorization techniques. Long texts allow easier retention if one breaks them down into segments and memorizes the beginning of each segment. This practice of divisio and compositio has a long history. Beginning at the beginning was an important aspect of the technique, and ordering often corresponded to a numerical or alphabetic code (Carruthers 243). The scribe imposed a page grid by pricking the margins and inscribing base lines for the script with a metal point. 5 9 Thus the character of the page was determined usually from the beginning in terms of column width, margin size, etc. However, neither scribe nor illustrator felt strictly bound by the grid. Initials, frames, decorative elements, or even words could occupy margin areas. Sometimes pictures became enmeshed with the verbal material. In these cases, the boundaries between word and picture are vague or nonexistent. Although the words are constrained spatially by grid lines. this is not true of pictures and initials. Their interaction produces tension and interest. Folio 78b of the Bury Psalter shows a portion of Psalm 71, traditionally seen by Christians as a prophecy of Christ. From the top of the illustration to the bottom, the verbal text reads: Et dominabitur a mari usq[ue] ad mari eta flumine usq[ue] ad terminos orb[is] terrar[um] Coram illo procident Aetyopes et inimici ei[us] terram lingent Reges tharsis et insule munera offerunt reges Arabum et saba dona adducent Et adorabunt eum omnes reges omnes gentes servient ei. (8-10) 60

A picture of the adoration of the magi flanks this passage. The architectural frame of the picture coincides on the right side with the initial letters of each line so that even though there is tension between picture and words because of the intrusion of the picture into the verbal space, there is also a kind of order and reinforcement. In contrast, in another illustration from the same Psalter (Psalm 78) the effect is a chaotic echoing of the subject matter. The verbal text bewails the persecution of Jews by heathen nations. The marginal illustrations depict the massacre of the innocents, the stoning of Stephen, and animals devouring body parts. People labeled "Synagoga Judeorum" stone Stephen across the page. Figures intrude into the verbal text, and a series of strong diagonal lines contrast with the vertical and horizontal orderliness of the magi illustration.

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63

Many illustrations have frames which contain them and separate them from the surrounding verbal graphai. 61 Some are constructed of single lines, some double. In the decorative art of the insular period, the frames are an important element of the design. As Herbert Broderick writes, " ... the frame is often part of the world it seeks to enclose, participating in the life of the field either through direct contact or a shared vocabulary of color, rhythm, and ornament" (31 ). The frame of the incipit page of the Gospel of John in the Lindisfarne Gospels shows how letter forms and frame can be conflated. The large letters INP of the In Principia dominate the page. The I and left leg of the N form a border for the left side of the page which is echoed at the right and bottom in width and interlace design. A later example from the same incipit page from the Kederminster Gospels features an elaborate acanthus-leaved frame with trumpeters. In this frame, the verbal material is separated from the pictorial. Frames inhabited by figures became common in the tenth and eleventh centuries (Broderick 131 ). Rather than echoing the form of the initials, the frame comments on it, heralding the incarnation with fanfares. The Bayeux tapestry narrative is bordered by a frame at top and bottom inhabited by figures which seem to comment on the events of the narrative. Broderick has shown how the frame can separate and order narrative events as in MS Junius 11: "The irregular framing elements, while at first glance disconcerting and irrational, actually work to unite, yet separate two distinct events in time" (38). Architectural frames are common, and in many cases make a statement about the figures that are framed within them, signifying for example civilization. The frames contain but do not limit the figures within them. Often heads, hands, or other elements break through the frame into the marginal or textual space. In the Psychomachia illustration of Patientia and Ira, Ira's sword extends deep into the margin and her foot and hair break the upper and lower borders, while Patientia is much more contained. In these ways, framing can enter into the metaphoric signification of a graphic production. Schemata, metaphor, and spatial representation of ideas provide ways of looking at graphic productions that suggest or reveal ways in which they interact with their cultural contexts, and their parts interact with each other. Ideas of time, the construction of the cosmos, the nature of being itself, inform approaches to manuscript production in a conceptual realization in words and pictures. In the following chapters we will use this approach to look more closely at some specific graphic productions from the medieval period, first from the Anglo-Saxon period and then from the late Middle Ages.

CHAPTER THREE

The Reading Subject and the Devotional Text

The Harley Psalter

This and the following chapters will examine a specific manuscripts in detail in terms of patterns of identification, interaction and substitution, and relationship. BL Ms Harley 603 (The Harley Psalter) is one of the most densely illustrated manuscripts to survive from the Anglo-Saxon period; it provides a wealth of material for studying the dynamic interaction of pictorial and verbal texts. I will begin with it, because it lends itself easily to the kind of approach to illustrated manuscripts outlined in the previous chapters. A study of this manuscript as a devotional text in terms of schema, metaphor, and space provides examples of the spatial construction of the cosmos and of the taxonomic structure of human society; it also opens up questions of the role of the Anglo-Saxon reader, revealing the pictorial text both as a primary site of tension in terms of the gendering of the reading subject, and also as a means of resolving ambiguous issues of gender inherent in the verbal text. Because it is a devotional work, the Psalter must speak to certain spiritual concerns of its audience. The received text is a collection of liturgical material written over a long period of time. It covers a broad range of genres, but the two most common types of psalms are praise psalms and petitions. Either the psalmist complains about persecution by enemies, or he thanks God for deliverance from them. The Christian scribes and illustrators have emphasized the congregational nature of the material, generalizing depictions of humanity as either good or evil, and constructing a cosmic framework in which people are situated between heaven and hell, angels and demons. Thus, the Harley Psalter offers a version of a state of affairs which is constant, but filled with tension. THE MANUSCRIPT

The Harley Psalter illustration cycle is unfinished. The verbal text was probably complete at one time, but some of the pages appear to have been 65

Fair and Varied Forms

66

lost from the end, so that the last psalm is now 143 (Backhouse "Harley" 98). Psalms 68 through 99 are not illustrated, and 67 has only a faint drawing. The psalter was begun during the early eleventh century, and the. latest illustrations were done in the early twelfth century. It is the first of three English copies based on the early ninth-century Utrecht Psalter, which was made at the abbey of Hautvillers near Rheims, and came to England by the late tenth century. 1 It cannot strictly be called a copy; some of the illustrations are very close to those of the exemplar, but others make significant departures. The illustrations as a whole differ in that they are rendered in color, while those of the Utrecht are done in sepia. This style of colored line drawing is, according to Gameson, an innovation of late Anglo-Saxon England ("Romanesque" 34). Except for a few psalms, the Harley verbal text is the Roman version of the Psalms (the version brought to England by Augustine) rather than the newer Gallican of the exemplar/ and the script is minuscule, unlike the Utrecht's rustic capitals. Many of the illustrations show updating of individual artifacts such as weapons, furniture, or architectural features. 3 Wormald calls the Harley style less "illusionistic" than the Utrecht style, in its emphasis on pattern over forms (English Drawings 31 ). One way this is manifested, as Miriam Schild Bunim indicates, is in the change in the background. The Carolingian background is somewhat three-dimensional, but in the tenth and eleventh centuries it takes on the aspect of a vertical plane (62-73 ). To the twentieth century eye, the compositions seem confused and arbitrary, but the spatial structures figure cosmic and human relationships-between God and humanity, people and creation, good and evil, Heaven and Hell. Rather than combining objects or individual figures in a compositional relationship, these structures combine framed groups of figures, which represent states of being. They reflect the temporal condition of the verbal text, a spiritual state rather than a movement in time. The process of Christianizing the Hebrew text, already begun with the translation into Latin, is carried further in the illustrations, providing what amounts to a Christian gloss. Most scholars seem to agree that the manuscript was probably made at Christ Church, Canterbury,4 and one of the scribes has been identified as Eadui Basan, known for his work on other manuscripts, such as the Eadui Psalter. The verbal text was written by two other scribes in addition to Eadui, and up to ten artists contributed to the illustration cycle (Noel 21, 207) 5 THE PSALMS IN ANGLO-SAXON LIFE

The Psalms were of primary importance in the liturgy of the medieval church, and as Andrew Hughes points out, liturgical practice affected everyone: Education began with the psalter, and readings and chants were carried into daily life to inspire love songs and epics: computation, formula, and

The Reading Subiect and the Devotional Text

67

calculation derive from work with problems of the calendar. From the need to explain and summarize the increasing complexity of the services, the principles of organization, abstraction, and generalization were worked out. Whether cloistered or not, man ordered his day by the services and the church bell signaling them, and his year by the succession of church feasts, and he examined all his actions and related them to his religion. (xxi)

Hughes writes of the medieval period as a whole, and most of his claims are true of the early medieval period, as well as the later. And for those in the religious houses which produced books like the Harley Psalter, the liturgy provided the substance of existence. It cannot be overemphasized how much the Psalms were a part of the fiber of daily life for monks and nuns. They form the basis for the daily office, which completes a circuit of the whole psalter in a week. All monks and nuns, both literate and nonliterate, would have memorized the psalter. In addition, psalms were recited at other times throughout the day. The following is a summer horarium for a Benedictine house from the Regularis concordia: 1:30 2:00

3:30

5:00 6:00

7:30 8:00

9:30 11:30 12:00 1:00 2:30

Rise. Trina Oratio (a series of three psalms) Gradual Psalms ( 15 Psalms) Nocturnes (Matins) (12- 14 psalms) Psalms for the Royal House (recited in pairs) Short interval Matins of the day (Lauds) (6-7 Psalms) Miserere Psalms for the Royal House Anthems of the cross Matins of All Saints Matins of the dead Interval (change shoes, wash or sleep if dark) Trina Oratio Lectio Prime (3 psalms) Four psalms Morrow Mass (for the king) Chapter Five psalms for the dead Work Tierce (3 psalms) Psalms for the Royal House Principal Mass Lectio Sext (1 - 3 psalms) Psalms for the Royal House Prandium Siesta None (1- 3 psalms) Psalms for the Royal House

68

Fair and Varied Forms

(drink) 3:00 Work Vespers of the day (3 - 4 psalms) Miserere Psalms for the Royal House Anthems Vespers of All Saints Vespers of the dead Cena (meal) Vigils of the dead 7:30 Change shoes Collatio 8:00 Compline (3 psalms) Miserere Psalms for the Royal House 8:15 Trina Oratio Retire (Compiled from Symons's introduction (xliv] and the text of the Regularis Concordia).

The winter schedule was similar but shorter, since it was based on the amount of daylight. Over 100 psalms would be recited in a typical day, some of them repeated several times. The secular office also used the Psalter as a vehicle for prayer, but fewer of the psalms were recited. 6 Monastic use followed Saint Benedict, while secular use was according to the Sarum breviary (Hughes 51). Psalms had other functions as well. The chanting of psalms for the royal house was a practice peculiar to AngloSaxon England (Roper 30), a result of the King Edgar's involvement in the tenth-century monastic revival. Barbara Raw likens the Psalms to church paintings whose function is devotional: [These paintings] served the faculties of understanding and of will as well as that of memory, first by causing those who saw them to reflect on the significance of what was remembered and secondly by inviting a response of faith or love. The decoration of Anglo-Saxon psalters functions in a similar way though it lays greater stress on the operation of the second faculty of the soul, the understanding, as might be expected in a prophetic text. (31)

Alongside these visual aids to understanding were commentaries on the Psalter by Augustine and Cassiodorus. The Psalter was the primary text for learning to read, and the most often used for private devotions and for acts of penitence (Openshaw 17 and 25). The "Dicti Sancti Augustini," found in some medieval Psalters, claims: Canticum psalmorum animas decorat, invitat angelos in adiutorium, effugat daemones, expellit tenebras, efficit sanctitatem homini peccatori. Refectio mentis est, delet peccata .... Dominum ostendit, diabolum offendit, voluntatem inlicitam extinguit .... Canticum psalmorum carmen eJectum est

The Reading Subject and the Deuotional Text

69

apud Deum, onme peccatum expellit ... Onme mallum occidit, perfectionem intruit, excelsa demonstrat, desiderium regni caelistis dar, pacem inter corpus et animam facit, ignem spiritalem in corde succendit, ab omnibus vitiis sollicitudo est, certamen bonum cotidie est, radices malorum omnium expellit, sicut lorica induit , sicut galea defendit, spes salutis est, consolatio dol oris refectio Ia boris .... Qui diligit canticum psalmorum assidue non postest peccatum agere. Qui habet laudem dei in corde suo, in postremo apud Deum gaudebit et animam suam in caelo magnificabit. (PL 131, 142-43, quoted in Openshaw 33) 7

While the Psalter as a liturgical object seems to have less substitutive power than the gospel book, it nevertheless is quite efficacious when translated into the spoken word, perhaps because it was revered as a book of messianic prophecy. Many psalters had illustrations of the crucifixion or other scenes from the life of Christ to encourage meditation on their messianic significance. The Tiberius Psalter's illustrations are of scenes from the life of Christ and of David, emphasizing the connection between them. There were, then, several types of Psalters for different uses. Those for teaching (class books) would not be as lavish as those for the private devotions of a rich person-a king, queen, or bishop. Those for liturgical use would probably also be less elaborate. PURPOSE OF THE HARLEY PSALTER

Much of the past and current criticism of the Harley Psalter which deals with the issue of the reader, centers around speculation about who the intended recipient might have been. The answer to this question might provide answers to, or at least insights into other questions as well: for example, why the illustrators deviated in certain ways from the exemplar, why the Psalm text is the Roman rather than the Gallican version, or why an illustrated version was chosen in the first place. However, not only will we perhaps never know the identity of the intended recipient, but that knowledge would not be of much help in understanding how this manuscript was actually used, because the Harley Psalter illustration cycle is unfinished. Because the psalter was never finished, the intended reader can be no more than a phantom, since he or she never received it. We have, therefore, to deal with at least two sets of hypothetical expectations: those of the writers and illustrators for an intended reader, and those of the actual readers. But the issue is complicated by the fact that work on the manuscript went on for decades; the political situation and the people involved changed during this time, so that the agenda of those who began the work may not have been the same as that of the later contributors. The use of the Roman version presents problems. Judith Duffy writes, "It has been established that the continued use of the Roman psalter at Christ Church after the Gallican version had been generally accepted elsewhere was a deliberately reactionary act" (32). The Gallican version was at

70

Fair and Varied Forms

this time in use at Winchester (the seat of political power in late AngloSaxon England) (Sisam and Sisam 49 Note 1 ). Noel sees in the choice of different translations, an indication that the Harley Psalter was conceived as a very different text, not as a copy of the Utrecht (10). The Harley Psalter retains some of the classical iconology of the Utrecht, but is more "modern" in appearance because of its minuscule script. The initial at the beginning of Psalm 1 shows an archbishop prostrate at the feet of Christ, causing conjecture that its recipient may have been an archbishop. Noel believes that it was intended for use by someone who already knew the Psalms and wanted to study the illustrations (201 ). Janet Backhouse suggests that beatus initial may date from 1020 when !Ethelnoth of Christ Church was consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury ("Harley Psalter" 109), and Noel confirms that the archbishop is a late feature (280). However, numerous similar examples from the period picture donors or producers of manuscripts, rather than recipients. 8 It is perhaps equally likely that the archbishop was involved with production of the manuscript, or intended giving it to someone. The fact that the archbishop was added after the first phase of the work was complete suggests an adjustment in the expected use of the psalter. Those who actually read the manuscript would not have done so for the same reasons. Any reader approaches a text with certain expectations and intentions. These expectations and intentions meet and interact with the attributes of the text itself, which are in turn the product of the writer's intentions, cultural milieu, and any number of other factors. If, as is believed, this text was not used liturgically, nor given to its intended recipient, it would have remained in the monastic scriptorium, and eventually in the library, from which it may have been read by the community's members and visitors, or it may have been lent to other monastic houses. Possible reader intentions may have been devotional reading, memorization, performance of a duty, alleviation of boredom, or reception of the interpretation provided by the illustrations. The primary use, however, was probably devotional. The Psalter was not merely read or recited, but appropriated by the reader for his or her own prayers. The reader became the psalmist. Cassiodorius, in his Explanation of the Psalms, quotes Bishop Athanasius on the subject: Quicumque psalmi uerba recitat, quasi propria uerba decantat et tamquam a semetipso conscripta unus psallit et non temquam alio dicente, aut de alio significante sumit et legit; sed tamquam ipse de semetipso loquens, sic huiusmode uerba profert et qualia sunt quae dicuntur talia relut ipse agens, ex semetipso loquens, Deo uidetur offerre sermones. (Expositio 97.22)9

All of the above-mentioned reader intentions could have engaged this kind of "entering-into" reading of the psalter which was undoubtedly prevalent in both secular as well as monastic areas of society. Readers could conceiv-

The Reading Subject and the Devotional Text

71

ably have included monastic and secular clergy, lay visitors, men, women, the literate, and the non-literate. Carol Gibson-Wood suggests that the Utrecht Psalter was made for a monastic or clerical school, and that the arrangement of the elements in its illustrations aided in the memorization of the Psalter (12 ). If this is indeed the case, while the Harley Psalter was probably made for a different purpose, those illustrations that closely imitate it would keep the characteristics that make memorizing easier. Certain figures can be seen as visual cues to specific verses. The student could picture the illustration and use it as a reminder of the material he or she was learning. Most approaches to reading the manuscript assume a verbal bias; the illustrations are subordinate to the verbal text. While this is a valid interpretation, it is not the only possible one. We might assume that the pre-existence of the biblical material guarantees it preeminence. However, some elements of the pictorial text are also pre-existing, having been borrowed from classical iconographic models. We could read the illustration material as an opaque text made transparent by the explanatory, subordinate verbal text. The most productive reading, however, is one that sees the two as interacting texts which comment reciprocally. As we shall see, this kind of reading of this particular Psalter produces an experience of reading that would have been problematic for women readers. This manuscript typifies the Anglo-Saxon penchant for conceptual illustration (see Raw 12-13, 26-27), and that mode of representing is in keeping with its intensely devotional nature. One apparent characteristic of the Harley Psalter illustrations is the high degree of schematization of its figures. Figure 3.1 shows typical examples of schematic types for a man, woman, child, soldier, king, angel, demon, the psalmist, and God. Men usually wear one of two types of garments, a long draped robe or a tunic that comes to just above the knee. The schematization for clothing is different from that found in manuscripts such as the Junius manuscript because its exemplar imitates classical iconography. Women in the Harley Psalter illustrations are less likely to adhere to the schematic model than are the other figures. This is because women are not default characters. They are not usually represented in the illustrations unless specific mention is made of them in the text, in which case they are particularized. Women are often depicted because they are used to highlight some aspect of the human (male) condition; that is, they exist only as they relate to men. Patrocinio Schweickart describes the universalization of the male reader: For the male reader, the text serves as the meeting ground of the personal and the universal. Whether or not the text approximates the particularities of his own experience, he is invited to validate the equation of maleness with humanity. The male reader feels his affinity with the universal, with the paradigmatic human being, precisely because he is male. (41)

Fair and Varied Forms

72

A close look at some of the individual psalms will show how the illustrations combine with the verbal text emphasize or refigure its meanings in terms of cosmic structures and the human condition as it is realized in the default (male) human being PSALM

33

Psalm 33 (Plate 1) is a praise psalm whose illustration is fairly typical of those that closely follow the exemplar. It is constituted of elements that are related to specific phrases in the verbal text. These elements are made up of highly schematized figures and objects, and separated by baselines indicating geographical features. Figure 3.2 shows the elements as graphic units. The picture space is divided into four general divisions: the meek and children at the upper left, God and angels at the upper right, the wicked falling into a hell pit at the lower right, and three saints being martyred at the lower left. These groups form compositional as well as ideological units (Berstl's "cubic groups" ).10 Cassiodorus divides this psalm into four parts whose themes are: blessing and praise (verses 3 and 4), conversion andreward (verses 6 and 12), warning against sin (verse 17), and the deliverance of the just (verses 10 and 23) (325). The composition elements appear to correspond in a general way to these four parts: blessing and praise to the scene where God is flanked by seven angels who are turned to face him, and the meek, guided by the psalmist, look toward heaven; conversion and

Figure 3.1 Schematic Types

al'eum . JfiNIII'I.uftl!

uaa. '"t'"" r•• ' .,..," '" Admodum fpnwnn?

nnn~-ur •"

enp«..mtOI"W'.tmffttlfl' CIPJ'Im:'~CIIi(n-t ~

)l

drac me.~nW

"0'"11Nl4aontltufmeif _CMP."~ "!e;

I nmta~Jc.a.ngeLurn dri" 111c:m:unu -ammaum

_ ~-~~eor __ .;

Plate 1 Harley Psalter, Psalm 33

Martyrs

l

Angels

l

Angels

~

Figure 3.2 Diagram of Psalm 33

Hell

74

Fair and Varied Forms

reward to the group of children whom the psalmist instructs; warning against sin to the group of wicked people falling into the pit; and deliverance of the just to the depiction of the martyrdom of three saints, Peter (reverse crucifixion), Paul (beheading), and Lawrence (roasted on a grill), for whose souls three angels wait with draped hands. Some of the other Harley illustrations, though not all, show Cassiodorus's divisions. Such divisions may have been helpful in memorization. The picture space, typical for Harley 603 illustration layouts, is divided by diagonal lines formed by the base lines and the shapes of the groups, particularly the ascending height of the martyred saints. Lawrence is the lowest at the left, and St. Peter on his cross pushes up into the upper regions and points to heaven. The psalmist stands at the crux of the composition. The central position of the psalmist reflects the language of the verbal text and the conceptual nature of the illustration. Rachel Crabtree has called attention to the role of the Psalmist as a link between heaven and earth as he looks up toward God, involving the reader/viewer in his act of communication (138). In a devotional reading, the reader/viewer identifies with the psalmist who speaks in the first person; it is this use of the first person combined with the central position of the psalmist in the illustration that causes the reader to be projected into the picture space. Mieke Bal uses the term "focalization" for the narrative viewpoint, a term which calls attention to the author as one who sees as distinguished from one who tells (Narrative 100-01 ). This term is also appropriate for an non-narrative illustrated text where the reader sees both words and pictures, even though the images seen are conceptual, rather than perceptual. Use of the first person is typical of the Psalms, and is one of the characteristics which make the book so useful for devotional purposes. The reader becomes the one who blesses the Lord at all times (verse 1) and who has sought the Lord for help from troubles (verse 5); 11 but this particular psalm also uses the second person to the same effect. The psalmist commands the readers, "Magnificate D[omi]n[u]m mecum & exaltemus nomen eius in invicem" (verse 3), and "Gustate & videte quo[niam] suavis est D[omi]n[u]s" (verse 9). 12 Cassiodorus connects this last phrase with the sacrament of communion. An awareness of this connection further involves the reader/viewer with the groups represented in the visual and verbal text. The depiction of time is different in a devotional text than in a narrative text. In representations of states of being, all parts of the picture space exist simultaneously. The Latin text uses verbs in the future, present and perfect tenses, and in indicative, imperative, and subjunctive moods, to express a timeless state of God's trustworthiness, a timelessness which is inclusive for the reader's present. Three cosmic levels are represented in the picture: heaven, hell, and this world (middangeard or middle earth in Old English). This three-part cosmic structure is not inherent in the verbal text, but like the depiction of the martyred saints, is a Christian gloss. Ancient Hebrew religion imagined

The Reading Subject and the Devotional Text

75

Sheol as a pit or the grave, but it was not associated with any type of punishment. Nor was there a belief in a heavenly reward. The deliverance mentioned in verse 8 (beatus vir qui sperat meum) 13 refers to physical deliverance from poverty, illness, and death. So although the Hebrew people of this time did picture a heaven above and Sheol below, one need not see these levels in the verbal text of this particular psalm, which could easily take place on only one (the middle) of the cosmic levels. The Hebrew text for verse 10 has "Y'ru et YHVH k'doshayv," 14 which is translated in the Roman version, "Timete Dominum omnes sancti eius." 15 The word "saints" has a specifically Christian connotation not present in the Hebrew, and is represented in the pictorial text by particular Christian saints. It is the situations of the saints which distinguishes them from the other characters in the illustration. The groups of children, meek and wicked people, and angels are homogenous groups made up of nearly identical individuals. They represent concepts which need not be particularized to generate meaning. In general, they are divided into categories of good and evil. The saints, however, communicate the identity of particular people by the manner of their deaths. An audience familiar with the stories of Saints Lawrence, Peter, and Paul will recognize them immediately. However, they still represent a category, and show no individual physical characteristics. All of the actors in this scene are male. This is typical of the Harley illustrations generally, although we will examine some illustrations which depict women. Their presence, as well as the presence of any figure that deviates from the standard schema, usually has special significance. Michael Camille has pointed to the correspondence between schemata in the pictorial text and oral formulaic words or phrases ("Seeing and Reading" 34-35). Robert Culley has studied the Hebrew psalms for formulaic material and has documented 87 formulas or formulaic systems (which have somewhat looser parallelism). A typical formula is his number two, which he gives the formula: DN impv n-s. In this particular formula, DN indicates a divine name, impv indicates an imperative, and n-s, a noun with a suffix. Some examples of the occurrence of this formula: Psalm 143.1 and 102.2: Yahweh, sh'mah tiflahti. (Yahweh, hear my prayer.) Psalm 84.2: Yahweh, [elohim tsvaote] sh'mah tiflahti. (Yahweh, [Lord of hosts] hear my prayer). Psalm 54.4: Elohim, sh'mah tiflahti. (God, hear my prayer.) (2)

These formulas correspond closely to the Roman translation which reads: "D[omin]e, audi orationem meam" (101.2). In Hebrew, possessive pronouns are suffixes added to the word they modify. Meam in the Latin corresponds to the noun suffix -i in the Hebrew. Not all of Culley's formulas, however, work in Latin. As he points out, the poetic structure and meter of a particular language determines the character of the formulaic phrases (26). It will be necessary to investigate the formulaic phrases of the Roman

76

Fair and Varied Forms

version apart from the Hebrew. The following examples are not taken from Culley, but from the Latin of the Harley Psalter. I depart here from other studies of formulaic poetry, because as far as I know, none of the others has dealt with a translation. Since such studies are based on the premise that these phrases at least derive from oral practices, the question arises as to whether we are dealing with the same phenomenon. However, since the point here is to draw a correspondence between formulaic phrases and systems in verbal texts and schematization in illustrations, it matters little whether or not we tie them to oral performance. Psalm 33 contains several formulaic phrases, all half lines. The first is found in the second half line of verse 6: "& ex omnibus tribulationibus eius liberavit eum." 16 A similar phrase occurs in the second half line of verse 19: "et ex omnibus tribulationibus eorum liberavit eos." They fit Culley's category of the formulaic system. Another example that comes very close to these two is Psalm 24.22: "Redime me d[eu]s israel ex omnibus angustiis meis." 17 The main clause comes before the prepositional phrase in this case, but the similarities are strong enough to be significant for our purposes. Another formulaic system occurs in verse 16: "deverte a malo et fac bonum." 18 Psalm 36.27 says: "declina a malo & fac bonu[m]." The final example is the second half line of verse 18: "ut p[er]dat de terra memoria[m] eoru[m]" 19 which is similar to 108.14: "et dispereat de terra memoria[m] eorum." Culley shows some examples of formulas from the Psalms which have correspondence to phrases in other parts of the Bible. However, most of his examples are from the Psalms, and the Psalms seem to have their own typical formulaic language. Except for Psalm 24.22 which comprises one verse, each formula or formula system occurs in the same half line of the verse in each occurrence. That is, some phrases seem to be used for the beginning of a verse and some for the conclusion. The most salient characteristic of Hebrew poetry is its parallelism; one means of constructing parallel half lines is to make use of formulaic phrases as formal units. In the case of Psalm 33.5 and 18, both second half line formulas, the first half lines are also similar in meaning, perhaps even close enough to be considered formulaic: "Iste pauper clamavit & d[omi]n[u]s exaudivit eum & ex omnibus tribulationibus eius leveravit eum" 20 (verse 6), and "Clamaverunt iusti & d[omi]nju]s exaudiunt eos & ex omnibus tribulationibus eoru[m]liberavit eos." 1 (verse18). But the parallel half lines of the other two examples are very different: "Deverte a malo & fac bonu[m]. inquire pacem & sequere eam." 22 (Psalm 33.141, and "Declina a malo & fac bonum et inhabita in saeculum saeculi"2 (Psalm 36.27). Compare "Vultus autem dJomi]ni super facientes mala ut p[er]dat de terra memoria[m] eoru[m]" 4 (Psalm 33.17), with "Fiant contra d[omi]n[u]m semp[er] & dispereat de terra memoria[m] 25 eoru[m]" (Psalm 108.14). Psalm 33 conveys a sense of confidence. The righteous (justi) often have to suffer, but God will not forget them; he will deliver them. The formulaic

The Reading Subject and the Devotional Text

77

phrases in this psalm emphasize this theme. The psalm, with its illustration, reinforces the idea of the duality of existence: the evil of this world is contrasted with the good of God and the rewards of heaven. The AngloSaxon and the Utrecht illustrators emphasized this aspect of the psalm. As Openshaw has demonstrated, duality in psalter illustrations reflects a monastic tendency to see things in terms of an ongoing battle with the forces of evil. The verbal text is full of metaphoric expressions. The illustration participates in some but not all of these metaphors. The most striking metaphor which appears only in the verbal text is, "Gustate & videte quo[niam] suavis est d[omi]n[u]s" (8). 26 Beardsley explains the operation of meaning production in terms of the way the reader narrows the range of meanings, and at the same time, includes all those which are possible. Ricoeur describes this process of "selection" and "plenitude:" As we read a poetic sentence, we progressively restrict the breadth of the range of connotations, until we are left with just those secondary meanings capable of surviving in the total context. The second principle counterbalances the first .... AII the connotations that can 'go with' the rest of the context must be attributed to the poem, which means 'all it can mean.' (Beardsley 144 quoted in Ricoeur Law of Metaphor 96)

This metaphor calls on all the sensual associations of eating which include not only the pleasures of taste, but also those of repletion. This metaphor, while not primarily visual, could have easily been illustrated in a Christian context. Cassiodorus interprets this phrase as a reference to the Eucharist. God, he says, is sweet not to the palate, "sed ad anime suauissimum sensum qui divina contemptatione saginatur" 27 (Expositio Psalmorum 297). The illustrator, following the Utrecht illustrator, chose not to show the Eucharist. Perhaps this is because this image does not participate in the emphasis on expressing the theme of reward for faithfulness and punishment for wickedness. The most striking visual trope is one that does reiterate this theme: the deaths of the three martyrs. This trope is a synecdochic representation of God's redemption of faithful souls: "Redimet D[omi]n[u]s animas servoru[m] suorum" (verse 22) 28 and "lnmittet angelum d[omi]n[u]s in circuitu timentium eum & eripiet eos." (verse 7) 29 The reader/viewer is invited to experience the confidence in deliverance from death that Peter, Paul, and Lawrence would be expected to have felt. Once again, the verbal and pictorial texts work together to project the reader/viewer into the picture space and into the verbal space as well. A trope shared by both verbal and pictorial texts is the use of the term "children" ("Venite filii, audite me" 30 ) in verse 12. Children here are those who are ignorant of how they must behave in relation to God. In the terms of Cassiodorus, they are new in the faith (12). They need the psalmist's instruction: "Timorem D[omi]ni docebo vos." 31 (verse 11) The illustration shows the psalmist teaching a group of children. Their schema shows a

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person which is very much like an adult, but smaller. Again, they are all male. The closest verse in the verbal text to the group of people falling into the pit of Hell is verse 16: "Vultus autem dJomi]ni super facientes mala ut p[er]dat de terra memoria[m] eoru[m]. " 3 While some illustrations show devils pushing the wicked into the pit, the psalm has angels doing the shoving. As verse 17 indicates, it is God who cuts off their memory because of their evil acts. Again the potential exists for the reader/viewer to become part of the depicted scene, to scrutinize his or her own actions, to imagine being thrust into the pit of Hell. The metaphoric cutting off of the memory is translated into a trope that is more visual as well as more in keeping with Christian version of what happens to the unrighteous. The interaction between verbal and pictorial modes produces movement between the two. The initials at the beginning of each verse are placed outside the column of text so that the reader/viewer can move from one to the other without losing the place. The rubric, placed between the verbal and pictorial texts, expands the context of the psalm. It says: "Psalmus D[avi]d cum mutavit faciem suam coram Abimeleh," 33 recalling the episode in David's life when he was an outlaw pursued by Saul. David was forced to feign madness when he encountered the Philistine leader, but God eventually "delivered him from his tribulations." His deliverance took place in this world, but resonates with the deliverance of the three martyrs' souls into heaven. PSALM

1

Another psalm that merits close examination is Psalm 1 (Plate 2). Like Psalm 33, it is dualistic. The message, in fact is quite similar to that of Psalm 33, but the visual and verbal means of representing that idea are very different. The picture space is divided into two vertical halves (Figure 3.3). The righteous man is placed opposite the ungodly, and the composition moves from top to bottom as it follows the words of the psalm. At the top left the righteous man is seen framed by a columned building, meditating on a book: "sed in lege D[omi]ni fuit voluntas eius & in lege eius meditabitur die ac nocte" (verse 2). 34 An angel stands behind him. At the top right the corresponding figure also has an architectural framework. He sits on a throne-like chair and is surrounded by retainers and a demon. In between these figures, two men stand in discussion, each gesturing toward one of the figures. It is not clear what these men represent. Perhaps the reader/viewer is again being interjected into the picture space and invited to evaluate the two position from a subjective viewpoint, although the language of the psalm remains more objective, using the third person, unlike Psalm 33. The author maintains a distance from the subject and from the reader. Below the left hand figure are a tree and a river personification. The tree is, of course, the righteous man who flourishes and bears fruit, which

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is visible on the tree (verse 3). At the lower right, the wicked are being pulled down by demons with pitchforks and hooks. The pit of Hell is at the extreme lower right, outside the inner border of the picture space. While the upper part of the picture is balanced between the two framed figures representing good and evil people, this is not the case for the lower part of the illustration. The line formed by the course of the river and the downward movement of the wicked creates a strong pull toward the pit. The tree with its narrowing trunk and crown of leaves counters this force, creating an upward pull. The inner frame bounds the physical world. Hell is outside these boundaries, but within the outer frame, which bounds a larger spiritual area. Only two levels, this world and Hell, are represented in this illustration, emphasizing the duality of the psalm. A number of the verbal metaphors also appear in the illustration. The opening series of statements uses the words "walk," "stand," and "sit" in a metaphoric idea of progression. According to Augustine, this progression shows the increasing immobility of the ungodly (St. Augustine on the Psalms vol. 1 21 ). The illustrator chooses only one of these positions, sit-

-

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Plate 2 Psalm 1

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80

GoodMan

Cathedra Pestilentia

Figure 3.3 Diagram of Psalm 1

ting. Sitting is appropriate for showing a static condition. Both the godly and the ungodly man are entrenched in their prospective attitudes. Their states are indicated by their companions and activities. The godly man reads God's law, while the ungodly man is surrounded by soldiers with weapons and a demon holding serpents. Serpents also issue from his head and clothing. The cathedra pestilentia is a throne-like chair suggesting worldly power, while the godly man's chair is a low stool without back or arms. Illustrating the hyperbolic trope, "in lege eius meditabitur die ac nocte" (verse 2), a sun personification, moon, and stars occupy the sky over the two buildings. The tree with its river ("decursus aquarum") is also metaphoric; its leaves and fruit indicate the manifestations of godliness. Cassiodorus finds here a reference to the tree of life and the four rivers of paradise, as well as the cross (1.51-52). The tree's deep roots contrast with the shallowness of the ungodly, who sit precariously on the face of the earth. They are not pictured as dust ("non sic impii non sic; sed tamquam pulvis quem proicit ventus a facie terrae" [verse 4]) ;35 however, a wind personification with wings blows on them as they are pulled into the pit. This particular trope is useful for demonstrating how pictorial metaphor, simile or allegory can be expressed in ways that parallel the verbal tropes. There are three possible ways of representing the juxtaposition of the just man and the tree. First, the man and tree could exist in the same space. This is what the illustrator has done. It is very like a verbal simile,

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where all terms are expressed literally (He is like a tree). The second possibility would be to combine man and tree in a metaphoric statement-a man-like tree or a tree-like man (He is a tree). The third method would be to depict only the tree (There is a tree), an allegorical move. While there is correspondence in method between verbal and pictorial versions of these tropes, the effects are not identical. A drawing of a tree-man would, unlike the verbal metaphor, have a certain comic aspect (although the strategy is used with some success in the hill/ram metaphor by the illustrator of Psalm 113 discussed below). Ricoeur claims that, like the pictorial schemata we have examined above, metaphors categorize (Rule of Metaphor 107). In fact, they work together as this Psalm shows. Schematic representations depict all the characters in this scene, with some particularization. Only the figures in the group of the ungodly are non-particularized. The two figures at the center top are almost mirror images of one another, differing only in their hair. The profile of the right hand figure echoes the profile of the ungodly man, and in fact resembles him. The three-quarter head of the left hand figure echoes that of the godly man, but is not bearded. 36 Because of the schematic categorization, I believe that the two figures are also associated with good and evil. Because they are placed at the top of an illustration that has a downward movement, I believe they go with the first section of the psalm. Perhaps they represent the "stand" position, or as I suggested above, they may be advocates for each kind of life, inviting the reader/ viewer to choose his or her own way. The illustration is opposite the verbal text in the opening of f.1 v and f.2r. The verbal text has a large beatus initial and three lines of text in descending size. Christ in a mandorla is situated at the left side of the initial, the archbishop prostrate at his feet. This is the largest and most elaborate initial in the psalter. The illustration and psalm with initial form the entryway into the text. The two buildings with the godly and ungodly men are like two gateposts through which the viewer/reader passes on entering, as well as metonymic tropes for the duality of the entire Harley Psalter. This psalm was recited at Matins and Prime on Monday in the monastic office and at Matins on Sunday in the secular office. It stands at the beginning of the week of psalm recitation as well as at the beginning of the Psalter itself.J? PSALM

113

Psalm 113 differs from Psalms 33 and Psalm 1 in several ways. First, its illustration deviates from the exemplar; it is simpler, and its emphasis is different. Second, its illustration is separated from its verbal text. Not only is it not on the same page, it is not even in the same opening, but rather is drawn at the bottom of the page that contains the illustration and verbal text of Psalm 112. To experience both verbal and pictorial texts at once,

82

Fair and Varied Forms

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Plate 3 Psalm 113

the reader/viewer must flip back and forth between the two pages, or must hold the illustration in mind while reading the words. This task is performed more easily with the simpler Harley illustration than with that of the Utrecht. The theme of this psalm is God's help and protection for his people. The theme is supported in two ways: first by the remembrance of deliverance from Egypt, and second by comparing God with the "simulacra gentiu[m)" (verse 12). 38 The illustration concentrates on the first of these (Plate 3 ). The Utrecht illustration has the same emphasis, but depicts more aspects of the exodus, including a city from which the Israelites exit, work being done on the city walls (presumably by Israelite slaves), and a procession with the ark. It also illustrates verse 24 with coffins and a Hell pit: " Non mortui laudeunt te, D[omi]ne neq[uel om[ne]s qui descendunt in infernum. " 39 The Harley illustration shows only the Israelites about to cross the Red Sea. Moses and Aaron are central in this illustration. The diagonal lines of the sea and the group of people point to them (Figure 3.4). Attention is concentrated on Moses's staff, which is about to cause the sea to part. The Utrecht illustration also depicts a group of women, but only one man instead of the group. People are hierarchized by their position on the page. Moses is the primary figure farthest to the right. Aaron stands to the left of Moses, next the Israelite men, and last the Israelite women, so that although the women function in a generalized way, their graphic position emphasizes their social position. The picture is also unusual in showing only one cosmic level. The hand of God protrudes from the clouds, indicating his involvement in the events taking place, but also suggesting the unseen presence of the heavenly realm. Also less typical is the use of the third person. Although it is one of the few Psalms with narrative content, it has one of the most static illustrations in the Psalter. But, as with Psalm 33, the purpose of this narrative is not to

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Figure 3.4 Diagram of Psalm 113

tell a story, but to express a state of being. Because of the events of the exodus, those who believe themselves to be God's people are able to live in a state of trust. Therefore, the illustrated event becomes, as in Mieke Bal's example of Rembrandt's etchings illustrating the book of Tobias, a synecdoche for a whole series of events (Reading Rembrandt 70, 81 ). The reader is invited to participate in the event itself, not as a series of actions, but as a state of being delivered from troubles. The hand of God reaching down from the sky represents this state of his continual involvement with humanity. Another change from the Utrecht illustration is the way the verbal metaphor "Montes exultaverunt ut arietes & colles velut agni ovium" (verse 4 )40 operates in the illustration. The Utrecht illustrator shows four sheep cavorting on a hill, but in the Harley illustration, the number of sheep has been reduced to one, whose head is the only partly visible. The hill and the ram have become conflated, so that the verbal simile is a visual metaphor. We have seen how the strategies of reading schemata, metaphor, and spatial representations work in three particular psalms. The premise that the reading strategies work for both verbal and pictorial texts seems so far to be borne out by our investigation. It remains to be seen how they function when we look at a broader sampling of material from this manuscript. PATTERNS OF RELATIONSHIP: COSMIC SPACE

The interpenetration of the cosmic realms is a subject addressed by several of the illustrations in interesting ways. God's customary place is as Psalm 33 shows him, in an area designated as heaven by clouds or some other such dividing line. He usually occupies a mandorla and is surrounded by angels. His most frequent means of interacting with human beings is through the agency of angels, or by his hand which protrudes downward

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through the clouds. However, sometimes he intervenes more directly in the affairs of humanity. The illustration for Psalm 114 (Plate 4) shows God bending down out of his mandorla to embrace the psalmist. In his left hand the psalmist holds a small figure, probably representing his soul. The soul figure reaches up to touch God's cross nimbus. The psalmist says, "exaudivi d[omi)n[u]s voce[m] orationis mea::, quia inclinavit aure[m] suam mihi" 41 (verses 1-2). In Psalm 11, the mandorla is left empty while God goes about answering the prayer of the psalmist who asks, "Salvum me fac d[omi]ne q[uonia]m defecit s[an]c[tu)s" (1) 42 and "dissperdat d[omi]n[u]s universa labia dolosa & linguam magni loquam" (verse 4 )43 In the illustration God steps out of his mandorla to hand a spear to an angel. Another angel, using a spear, strikes the mouth of one of a group of people at the lower right. Psalm 12 shows the psalmist sitting under a tree. God, standing at the upper right, holds out a torch whose rays strike the psalmist in the face, illustrating the phrase "Inlumina oculos meos" (verse 4). 44 In this case, God acts directly without leaving his customary position. In some cases he appears physically present with human beings. In Psalm 115 the psalmist says, "Vota mea d[omi]no reddam in conspectu omnis populi ei[us] in media tui Hier[usal]in" (verse 8).45 And in verse 4, "Calicem salutaris accipia[m] & nomen d[omi]ni invocabo." 46 The illustration shows Christ standing with the psalmist and two groups of men with spears inside a walled enclosure. He bends down as the psalmist holds up a cup. All of these examples show the interpenetration of heaven with earth. We have also seen demons invading the earthly realm to drag sinners down to the pit of hell. In one case, however, we see God entering the realm of the dead. This is in Psalm 29 where the psalmist says, "D[omi]ne abstraxisti ab infernis anima[m] mea[m]; salvasti me a descendentibus in lacum"

.

Tnbul.monrm «dolorrm mum1 , __ _ ...._.d(:nornendrii m

Plate 4 Psalm 114

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(verse 2). 47 The illustration shows Christ, accompanied by angels, helping a figure to rise from a coffin. The structure of the cosmos and the relationships between and among its parts is represented spatially. Invisible boundaries circumscribe the actions of the characters in the cosmic drama. God is always higher than human beings, even when he enters their spatial realm. Hell is represented by a pit, but in Psalm 29 the psalmist is not in the pit. His coffin is on a hill above it, so that God can reach down to him and still remain above the people at the lower right. Angels can occupy any position in the earthly realm, although they are usually above humans. Neither god nor the angels actually enters the pit. Angels who attack people to force them down, do so from above, while demons usually pull them down from below. Position on the page also seems to reflect the social structure. When agricultural workers are shown, they usually occupy the lower level of the earthly realm. Everywhere the tension that exists between good and evil, righteousness and impiety, is evident in the lines of force, frequently strong diagonals, and the positioning of opposing groups of people, angel, and demons. PATTERNS OF IDENTIFICATION: SCHEMATIZATION AND THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN

I mentioned above that figures that depart from the schema usually have marked significance. A good example of this is the way women are depicted. There are several predominant types of women in the Harley Psalter: personifications, women as victims of wicked characters (who are all men), women as nursing or nurturing mothers, and women as authority figures. There are also in Psalm 44, women as daughters, representing anation paying tribute, and one female demon. Psalm 44 (Plate 5) has more women in more different roles than any other psalm, in both the verbal and pictorial texts. The psalm is a love song for the wedding of a king. It begins with praise of the beauty and strength of the king, who is shown in front of his palace wearing a sword and trampling a demon underfoot (verse 6: "populi sub te cadent"). 48 The psalmist praises the king's virtues: "intende prospere procede et regne. Propter veritatem & mansuetudinem & justitiam & deducet te mirabiliter dextera tua" (verse 6). 49 The virtues Truth, Gentleness, and Justice are depicted as personification figures to the right, in front of the palace (Figure 3.5). Personifications are usually female, a practice which shows the influence of classical literature. Abstract nouns in Latin are usually gendered female, and are represented as females in classical art. But these nouns are also feminine in Old English: sofmes, eafmes and rihtnes. Verses 10-16 refer to the queen and her female retainers: te delectaverunt filiae regum in honore tuo Adstitit regina a dextris tuis in vestitu de aurato circumamicta varietate Audi filiae& uide & inclina aurem tuam

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Fair and Varied Forms

& obliviscere populum tuum & domu[m) parris tui Quo[niam) concupivit rex specie[m] tuam quia ipse est d[omi)n[u)s tuus & adorabunt eum filix Tyri in muneribus Uultum tuum deprecabuntur omnes divites plebis omnis gloria eius filix regum ab intus In fimbriis aureis circumamicta varietate Adducentur regi virgines post ea[m) proxima: eius afferentur tibi in lxtitia & exultatione adducentur in templum regis. 5°

The queen stands to the left of the king, wearing a crown, and accompanied by another woman who holds a box (verse 10). She is in "gilded clothing surrounded with colored attire" (verse 10) and "within golden borders

Queen King Personifications Virgins Archer Daughters of Tyre Princes

Figure 3.5 Diagram of Psalm 44

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clothed round about with colored attire" (verse 14). The queen's robe in the illustration has a decorative pattern. She is encouraged to forget her father's house now that she is the bride of the king. More women, perhaps the virgins of verse 15, stand in another part of the building to the far left. Below the personifications, the daughters of Tyre bring gifts, and below them princes. The queen, her retainers, and the personifications are in the highest register of the illustration. The daughters of Tyre are above the princes. The queen is one of the female authority figures in the Harley Psalter. Cassiodorus explains that Christians understand this psalm in the same way that they understand the Song of Songs, that is, that the bridegroom is Christ and the bride is the church (1.439-40). The gold of her garments is love and the colors of her garments are the many tongues spoken by Christians (1.44 7). She is the only figure firmly identified as a queen in any of the illustrations. Another example of a female authority figure is in Psalm 122 (on the left in Figure 3.6). The verbal text says: "Ecce sicut oculi servoru[m] in manibus dominoru[m] suorum Et sicut oculi ancillre in manibus d[omi]nresure, ita oculi nJost]ri ad d[omi]n[u]m d[eu]m n[ost]r[u]m donee misereatur nobis" (2). 1 The three situations proposed in the psalm are presented side by side in the illustration. To the left are the master and his servant, then the mistress and her servant. Each is placed in an architectural frame. The master and mistress sit in identical positions, showing the parallelism of the phrases. In the center of the picture, the psalmist, who is being hooked by a demon, reaches up to take a spear that God hands him. Schematically, the mistress is very similar to the woman in Psalm 130 (on the right in Figure 3.6), who gives a ring to a young man. This scene depicts verse 4, "Sicut ablactatus est sup[er] matre[m] sua[m] ita retribues in animam

Figure 3.6 Psalm 122, detail and Psalm 130, detail

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Plate 6 Psalm 132

meam. " 52 The Utrecht illustration shows an infant here. Judith Duffy believes that the woman giving the ring may represent Queen Emma and one of her sons, perhaps Harthacnut, and that the ring-giving represents some kind of ceremonial or legal act, perhaps signifying Harthacnut's departure for Denmark (162-67). Neither figure wears a crown as does the queen in Psalm 44, but hers may be an attribute made necessary by the fact that she is standing, or an illustration of the verbal reference to gold, or an emphasized indication of royalty because she represents the church. Another psalm illustration believed by Duffy to represent Queen Emma is that of Psalm 132 (Plate 6). The psalm opens, "Ecce quam bonum & quam iocundum habitare fratres in unum" (verse 1).53 The Utrecht has a group of cowled men, probably meant to be monks, sitting together on a bench. The Harley illustrator has made one of them a woman. She wears a headdress and sits next to a central figure who holds a chalice. Duffy's premise is that Emma is included with the "brothers" because of her patronage of the monastery which produced the manuscript (168-69). Women as victims appear in several of the Harley illustrations. One is Psalm 13, which begins with a complaint about the corruption of humanity. At the lower left, two men are attempting to saw a woman in half (the saw is a bar in the Utrecht illustration) (on the left in Figure 3. 7). At the right a group of women with children, pursued by horsemen, climbs a hill toward a soldier who holds his hand to them. Attacks upon women and children may be an indication of the depth of the depravity of those the

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Figure 3. 7 Psalm 13, detail and Psalm 108, detail

psalmist describes. Psalm 108 shows another female victim (on the right in Figure 3. 7). Half-naked, she tears at her hair and clothing. The psalmist curses those wicked and deceitful men who have oppressed him: "[Fi]ant filii eius orfani & uxor eius vidua" (verse 9). 54 Next to the hill on which the grieving widow kneels, three naked children reach up to her. The role of woman as nurturer can be seen in Psalm 21. A lament seen as a reference to Christ's passion, it contains the lines, "diviserunt sibi vestimenta mea et super vestem meam miserunt sortem" (verse 19). 55 The psalmist lists a number of his afflictions. He stands in a coffin at the right, surrounded by metonymic depictions of his sufferings. They include a lion, dogs, a unicorn, a cross, a device for casting lots, two men fighting over a garment, and a woman with bare breasts seated in a chair. Verse 10 says, "Quoniam tu es qui abtraxisti me de ventre spes mea ab uberibus matris mex. " 56 She appears as an attribute of the psalmist, a womb and breasts representing the beginning of his life. At the lower left are several women with babies, illustrating perhaps "Timeat eum omne semen Israhel" (verse 25). 57 Offspring are indicated verbally by the masculine seed, but depicted in the illustration as nursing infants with their mothers. Psalm 7 presents a variation on the schema of nursing mother. One of the figures is a demon nursing three babies whose interpretation in terms of gender seems to be confused and ambiguous. It illustrates verse 14, which says: "ecce parturiit iniustitiam & concepit dolorem & peperit iniquitatem. " 58 The Latin verbs can be either masculine or feminine, although the referent is the masculine ilium (him, the evildoer). The Utrecht Psalter illustration has a male demon; and indeed, the Hebrew uses male verb forms, although the three verbs habet, harah, and yalad, connote the same female activities that the modern English terms do (as do the Latin words, concepit and parturit. The Latin peperit can also mean beget). Another psalter which uses the Utrecht as an exemplar, the Eadwine Psalter, has an

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Old English gloss with the pronoun he. The illustrator, presented with the problem of how to represent the ambiguity, is forced to resolve it. The common reading seems to have been to use the default male value, even though the activities described are female; only the Harley Psalter illustrator has thought of the person as a woman. Although the metaphoric use of conception, labor, and birth is applicable to both men and women, this artist has deviated from the exemplar and avoided the ambiguity proposed by the verbal text. We need not, however, see this as a deviation from the predominately androcentric bias of the work as a whole. The referent is still male; the visual as well as the verbal text have appropriated a female metaphoric trope to figure male transgression. Most schematic people are indistinguishable members of categories, functioning to represent a concept as well as to form a compositional unit. In these illustrations, the default male person corresponds in a way to the use of generic "man" in present-day English. 59 The default male schema would have the same effect on the female reader/viewer. Male readers could have placed themselves in the center of the scene with the psalmist, but for women readers, the process is more complex. Three possibilities present themselves. Either the female reader could identify herself with the less gender-specific verbal text but not the illustration, or she could regender herself as male so as to identify with the pictured psalmist figure, or she could undo the male subject in the center of the page and replace him with a subject more like herself. Any of these strategies results in either partial alienation from the text or a double operation of reading. Recent feminist criticism supports the contention that most women learn to read as men. Judith Fetterly's term for the process of the male gendering of the female reader is immasculation: "The cultural reality is not the emasculation of men by women, but the immasculation of women by men. As readers, teachers and scholars, women are taught to think as men, to identify with a male point of view, and to accept as normal and legitimate a male system of values" (xx). Schweickart comments: "The process of immasculation is latent in the text, but finds its actualization only through the reader's activity. In effect, the woman reader is the agent of her own immasculation" (49).

Writing about issues of female sexuality in the Middle Ages, Shari Horner claims that: ... medieval literary theory correlates "good" reading, that is, spiritual reading of an allegorical text, with masculinity. Texts themselves are figured female; the masculine reader must penetrate the literal text to access its spiritual truth. Perhaps the poem's readerly pleasure, then, lies in its construction of a masculine reader, one who reads allegorically-that is, spiritually-and thus derives pleasure from the text. In medieval theories of reading, the act of interpretation was perceived as pleasurable because this act enabled readers to "master" the text in question. Reading spiritually allowed female readers to assume a masculine perspective, a gender

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position outside of the one that placed them in both physical and spiritual danger. (662)

We can probably assume that at least some of the time, women readers immasculated themselves in their reading, and this text is one where the operation seems reasonable and likely, given the male default schema of the illustrations. Evidence that medieval women were expected to adapt themselves to male texts in a more practical sense is found in Heloise's complaint about the Benedictine Rule: "At present the one Rule of Saint Benedict is professed in the Latin church by women equally with men, although, as it was clearly written for men alone, it can only be obeyed by men, whether subordinates or superiors" (Letter Six, p. 11 0). If women were expected to adapt to an androcentric text where physical differences need to be considered, how much more so for those where this is not a consideration. In addition, the female reader faces further limitations if she accepts the readerly model proposed by Jerome and Augustine. Carolyn Dinshaw explains, "Taking pleasure of the text is analogous to taking carnal pleasure of a woman: 'letter' and 'bele chose' are the site of that illicit bliss. Woman, in this Pauline model of reading, is not the 'hidden truth' but is dangerous cupidity; she is what must be passed through, gone beyond, left, discarded, to get to the truth, the spirit of the text" (21-22). There is no indication that medieval illustrated texts were different in any way. The illustrations of the Harley Psalter reveal spirituality as a masculine pursuit. Women's roles exist only in relation to the men in the situation: the woman victim shows the depravity of her male oppressor, the nurturing mother nurses male children, the queen's function is that of consort to the king. All interaction with God-prayer, sacrificing, embracing-is experienced or undertaken by men. The presence of the pictorial text, in most cases, reinforces the masculine paradigm of reader and of spiritual being. One exception is the frontispiece. This illustration of the Trinity (Plate 7) is not found in the Utrecht Psalter. The schematic pose is that of a nursing mother, but God, not Mary, holds the child Jesus. He presses his face against the child's so that they seem to mirror one another, a metaphoric representation of the spiritual likeness (oneness) of the Father and Son. The head of the dove, which represents the Holy Spirit, is juxtaposed against the other two. This illustration is by the scribe Wormald calls hand B. This is a different artist from the one who made the illustration of the female demon. He has conflated two schemata to produce an image that crosses gender boundaries. In this case the persona remains male, but the schematic pose is female. Two ideas-the male Trinity and the nurturing mother with her child-interact on the page. There is no direct correlation between pictorial and verbal texts here; the frontispiece acts as an introduction to the Psalter as a whole without illustrating any specific material.

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Plate 7 The Trinity

The Bible contains some mother imagery for God, and Carolyn Walker Bynum's well-known work jesus as Mother traces the increase in popularity of this image in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This illustrations gives evidence that this trope was present in the early medieval period as well. It serves to mitigate, in a small way, the predominantly patriarchal nature of the rest of the manuscript, and to distance it somewhat from its exemplar. Schematic types reveal scribal attitudes about people as members of groups, or as those who fulfill certain functions in society. Their coded nature suggests an assumption of a predictable reaction and recognition. What these reactions may have been, or whether they approximated the expectations of their creators, is difficult to tell from outside the culture. But reaction to illustrations of royalty, women, demons, or other schematic types was at least that of recognition. Familiarity with the Psalter would have aided in interpreting visual schemata; but what is more important, immersion in the culture would bring knowledge of its different codes of communication of all types, particularly the highly codified schemata of the Harley Psalter.

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THE POLITICAL NATURE OF THE PSALTER

We have already made some reference to the political overtones of some of the illustrations. The Psalter as a whole had certain political connotations because of the connection between the monasteries and the kingship. As mentioned above, Edgar's role in the monastic revival of the tenth century was a major one. The monasteries had been devastated by the Viking invasions, and many houses had ceased to function as a result. The revival saw the founding of many new establishments, especially in the southeast. One chronicler writes: hwa is monna on angelcynne wuniende p[ret] nyte hu he godes rice. p[ret] is godes cyricean. regper ge mid gastlicum gode. ge mid woroldcundum eallum mrege fyrprode 7 fripode .... refter pam pe he sylf geriht wear3. began georne mynstera wide geond his cynerice to rihtlrecynne. 7 godes peowdom to arrerenne .... An sumum stowum eac swilce he mynecrena gestapolode and pa re[l]fpripe his gebeddan betrehte. I>[ ret] heo ret relcere neode hyra gehulpe. He sylf wres a smeagende ymb muneca gesundfulnesse. 7 wei willende hi to pam myngode p[ret] heo hine geefenlrecende on pa ilcan wisan ymbe mynecrene hogode. ("Edgar's Establishment of Monasteries" 440) 60

The king, on the one hand, had sovereign power over the monasteries (the queen also seems to have had some power, although how much is not clear). Abbots and abbesses, on the other hand, were guaranteed access to the king. Archbishops and close advisors to the king were often monks. The intertwining of church and state was profound. The practice of saying daily prayers, psalms and masses for the royal house was one of the unique characteristics of the English version of Benedictine liturgy. It would not be surprising if Queen Emma were indeed pictured in' the psalm illustrations; however, the connection may be even stronger. Other illustrations may also have specific reference to the royal house. Psalm 112 shows four kings. Duffy believes that one is Cnut and the others are his subordinates (16263). Illustrations such as that for Psalm 19 which follow the Utrecht Psalter closely take on new meaning when placed in an English context. Psalm 19 is a kingship psalm whose purpose is to ask God's blessing on the king of Israel. Christians have interpreted these psalms as Christ/Messiah psalms, but this one was among those said daily in Anglo-Saxon Benedictine houses for the king of England. In the illustration, the king presents sacrificial animals at a temple. The illustration is a close copy of the Utrecht picture. De Wald identifies the crowned figure as the another version of the psalmist, but I see no indication that it represents anyone other than the king. The psalmist prays on behalf of the king: "Memor sit d[omi]n[u]s omnis sacrificii tui & holocaustum tuum pingue fiat" (verse 4), 61 and in verse 9 he says, "D[omi]ne saluum fac regem." 62 Whether the makers of the Utrecht Psalter would have seen the crowned figure as a temporal king or Christ, the fact that in England this psalm was recited on be-

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half of the king would have determined that at least monastic readers or illustrators saw him as the king of England. The soldiers at the far left seem to be the king's retainers, balancing the group of men falling from their horses on the far right. Together they represent verses 8 and 9: "Hi in curribus et hi in equis nos autem in nomine d[omi]ni d[e]i n[ost]ri magnificabimus; ipsi obligati sunt & ceciderunt; nos vero surreximus & erecti sum us. " 63 The psalmist, standing on a hill, represents those who are standing upright. Schematically, he is like the other soldiers, except that he has a shield and stands apart. The reader/viewer is again interjected into the psalm by the 'we' of verse 8, and included with the king's retainers by the illustration. The cultural conditions change the reception of the psalm. They do not erase the interpretation of Christ as the king, but they shift the emphasis. Duffy, describing the inventive illustrations of hand F, writes: While it can. never be certain that definite references were intended, it seems apparent that at the forefront of the concerns of the designer of these unique images were the issues of.relationships among royalty, within the royal family itself, seen in a milieu of newly powerful monastic institutions, interpreted in terms of symbolic ceremonial form. (173)

If these references to royalty are as specific as Duffy suggests, perhaps Emma herself was the intended recipient of this manuscript. According to T.A. Heslop, both Cnut and Emma were generous patrons of monastic houses, who often ordered the production of lavish books as gifts (15861). If Duffy is correct in identifying the female figures of Psalms 122, 139, and 132 as Emma, then a new reader position suggests itself. Despite the general androcentric bias, the female reader, Emma, would be projected into the text in specific roles, not as the psalmist, but as a kind of ever-present benign authority figure. The basic androcentricity of the exemplar receives a partial reworking in the Harley version. This may reflect a difference in Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward women. Jane Schulenburg's study of monastic houses in England and France from 500-1100 reveals a marked difference in attitudes towards women's monasticism in the two countries. While support of women's establishments declined significantly toward the end of the period in both places, the decline was greater in France. For example, women (abbesses, nuns, and the queen) attended the synod at Winchester in 970, where the Regularis concordia was drafted (280), and aristocratic women in England continued to provide financial support, although to a reduced degree, for nunneries (288). Another explanation for the reworked illustrations may be that the producers of the manuscript wanted to influence Emma's dealings with the monastic community. If this is the case, then the role of illustrations in manuscript production assumes a politically motivated, manipulative function. Rather than providing a subtext to the dominant and obvious theological and devotional agenda, the political material is inseparable from it;

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the religious and political issues are the same issues. The patronage of the king, queen, and their household are absolutely necessary for the existence of religious houses and religious vocations. Archbishop JEthelnoth, according to William of Malmesbury, was a close personal friend of Cnut and his private chaplain (Duffy 171 ). If he is indeed the donor figure of the Beatus initial, it is possible as Rolf Hassler suggests that he could have had the manuscript made for presentation to the queen at the very scriptorium where he was formerly dean. The possibility that Emma is the planned recipient is speculation; but it serves the purpose of changing the dynamics of the role of the reader/viewer. The female reader can make the shift to identification with the male reader position, but if the reading subject is herself depicted separately from the psalmist, then she is split into two entities in the text, and is projected into two different roles. Her position of relative political power provides her with more options as a reader/viewer of texts. PATTERNS OF INTERACTION AND SUBSTITUTION: MORE ON METAPHOR

We have already seen several metaphors operating in both the verbal and pictorial texts. Perhaps the most notable is the ram/mountain metaphor of Psalm 113. Some formulaic phrases are also metaphoric tropes, for example to incline the ear (to listen to a prayer), as in Psalms 114 and 44, or to lift up the eyes (to pray), as in Psalm 120, and Jeremiah 13.20. These formulas all produce spatial as well as perceptual metaphors; the psalmist must look upwards, that is, permeate the boundary between the physical and spiritual, and God must bend down to receive the prayer. Some pictorial schemata are metonymic or synecdochic as well, such as the nursing mother who represents nurturing. Spatial arrangements can be metaphoric; opposites are indicated by opposing positions in the graphic field. Distance can refer to other kinds of extensiveness than spatial. For example, Psalm 102 says: "Q[uiaj in secundum altitudine[m] caeli a terra, corroborauit misericordiam suam super timentes se; Quantum distat ortus ab occidente Ionge fecit a nobis iniquitates nostras" (verses 11-12). 64 As explained above, whether we call a certain feature of the verbal or pictorial text a metaphoric trope, schema, or spatial realization, depends on how we decide to approach it, not on any innate property of the feature itself. The following examples we will examine for their functions as tropes: metaphor, simile, hyperbole, metonymy or synecdoche. We have seen that in simile, both elements are present and separate, while in metaphor, the two terms are conflated, but both present in a dialogic interaction that owes its effectiveness to likeness and unlikeness. We saw an example of verbal and visual simile in the just man/tree figure of Psalm 1. The same thing occurs in the bird similes in Psalm 101: "Similis factus sum pellicano in solitudine; factus sum sicut nocticorax in domicilio; Vigilaui factus sum sicut passer unicus in redificio" (verses 7-8). 65 The

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psalmist is present as usual in the center of the illustration as a man, as well as on the left as three different birds. While the purpose of these similes is to express the psalmist's feeling of abandonment and loneliness, the picture does not express this, because the graphic space is so crowded. The simile is an emotional one, but the illustration presents only the literal information without the emotional impact. Psalm 101 is one of seven penitential psalms. These psalms were recited frequently as part of the trina oratio, during the penitential seasons, and for the Royal House. In Psalm 101, the psalmist laments for verse after verse about his troubles. The illustration's emphasis seems to be the act of beseeching. All of the human figures look up at God in his mandorla. Some have their arms raised. The bird simile is peripheral; it provides a recognizable representation of the reason for the beseeching prayer-the psalmist's feeling of abandonment-but it does not detract from the main emphasis of the illustration. A metaphor in Psalm 139 shows a different way of dealing with the problem. Again, the psalmist is asking for help against enemies. Verse 3 says: "Acuerunt linguas suas sicut serpentes; venenum aspidum sub labiis eorum." 66 The tongues of the men in the illustration are indeed serpents. This illustration is by Hand F, an illustrator who deviated significantly from the Utrecht illustrations, where the serpents do not appear. This metaphor has much more emotional potency than many of the others. The serpent is a strong symbolic image, and the bizarre picture of people with snakes issuing from their mouths is arresting. The burning coals that fall on their heads (verse 11 ), a metaphoric representation of their destruction at God's hand, on the other hand, do not carry much impact; they seem to float in the air in orderly rows. Psalm 140, by the same artist, has a very similar layout. The stars take the place of the burning coals, but the base line is similar, the pit of Hell is in the same position, and the general thrust of the picture is from lower left to upper right. In both pictures the illustrator makes use of a horn-like container. In Psalm 139, God pours its contents onto the psalmist: "obumbra capud meum in die belli" (verse 8) 67 In the other, the psalmist holds a horn of incense, whose smoke separates itself into little pellets, which bombard God and the angels: "Dirigatur oratio mea sicut incensum in conspectu tuo. Elevatio manuu[m] mearu[m] sacrificium vespertinu[m]." (verse 2). 68 These horns are objects favored by Hand F; they do not appear in the Utrecht illustrations. In both cases, the horn and its contents have a function as a vehicle of exchange between heavenly and earthly realms. They provide a correspondence to the verbal text which is less direct than the others we have seen. Even less direct correspondence is found in the figures at the lower center of the Psalm 140 illustration. Verse 9 says: "Dissipata sunt ossa n[ost]ra secus infernum. " 69 The Utrecht illustration has a pile of corpses lying around a Hell pit. In the Harley Psalter, these figures, whose cut off feet lie on the ground beside them, are not corpses. Some of them raise their hands to heaven. One holds up a small figure which may be a

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child. They may also refer to the second half line of verse two (see above), but since that is already illustrated by the picture of the psalmist, this explanation is unlikely. The pile of corpses presents a more direct correspondence to the verbal metaphor, which suggests the psalmist feels like one dead. However, the illustrator conflates the two terms (the living psalmist and the dead one), creating a visual metaphor, and depicts people who are maimed, but still able to look to God for help. Another example is found in Psalm 8. In verse 2, we read, "Ex ore infantium et lactantium perfecisti laudem. " 70 The illustration, however does not show infants, but a group of adults. The verbal trope, which uses the hyperbole of the praise of infants, has been changed by the illustrator. But for what reason? Cassiodorus's commentary on this verse connects it to I Peter 2.2: "Crave as newborn babies spiritual milk that by it you may grow to salvation." He writes, Vnde infantes et lactentes illi intellegendi sunt, qui propter rudimenta et infantiam fidei escam non capiunt fortiorem, sed doctrina teneriori nutriuntur. Vt iste sit sensus: non solum a perfectis, qui te omnino intellegunt, es laudabilis, sed etiam ab incipientium et paruulorum ore praedicaris. (Ex{wsitio Psalmorum 90) 71

There is here, then, a four-way intertextual relationship among the verbal and pictorial texts of the Psalter, I Peter, and Cassiodorus. The Harley Psalter exhibits vivid and arresting metaphoric expressions in both verbal and visual forms of the graphic production. Its schematic images reveal predominant social, religious, and political categories, including a default male human being. Its devotional character is one of its most salient features. Because of this, while its depictions of relationships are dynamic and dramatic, its representation of time is fairly static. Its compositional units, composed of homogeneous groups of people, seem particularly suited to the portrayal of a somewhat contradictory state of affairs-the perpetual battle between good and evil, the Psalmist suspended between heaven and earth, the continuous fall of the wicked into the abyss, the perpetual availability of God's help for the righteous. Next we turn to a narrative text, to explore the ways in which the production of meaning is manifested there. We will find many similarities with the Harley Psalter, but our particular concern will be spatial manifestations of narrative time.

CHAPTER FOUR

Narrative Time in Graphic Space

The Illustrated Hexateuch

The Harley Psalter, as a devotional text, encompasses the whole cosmic scheme, including heaven and hell. The Hexateuch, on the other hand, is narrative, and as such is profoundly concerned with representations of specific events in time. The illustrations are less complex and more intimate than those of the Harley Psalter. The vernacular text contrasts with the Latin of the Psalter, making it more accessible for the lay person or non-literate monastic. The realm of heaven is, in most cases, where it is depicted, represented by the hand of God reaching down through the clouds. The stories of the Hexateuch, especially those of Genesis, are stories of family interactions punctuated by moments of theophany. Paradoxically, the Psalter is both more inclusive of the reader and more distancing. The intimacy of the first person voice, and the emotional nature of the verbal material as well as the positioning of the psalmist in the illustrations, bring the reader/viewer of the Psalter into the textual space. At the same time, the panoramic scenes place him or her in a position of objective distance. In the Hexateuch, the reader/viewer is given a close-up view of the lives of the characters, but the third person narrative does not include the reader in the events in the same way the Psalter text does. We shall see how this difference in genre and voice results in some shifts in the functioning of the verbal and pictorial texts, especially in the flow of information. In this chapter, following a description of the manuscript itself, we will again examine the material in terms of schemata, metaphor, and spatial realizations. This third avenue of exploration will continue the investigation begun in chapter two and further consider medieval notions of time. We will look at the idea of time as it is manifested in narrative. Paul Ricoeur says, in fact, "There can be no thought about time without narrated time. (Time and Narrative 3.241). Beginning with the notion that time and narrative are inseparable, we will look at some contemporary theories regarding time and its relationship to narrative; we will be especially concerned

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with how time is represented spatially in words and pictures, and how these representations combine to complement or resist one another. We will examine four ways in which narrative temporality is represented in the graphic space of the illustrations: duration, repetition, simultaneity, and order. But first, a word about the manuscript that will serve as an example of narrative. THE MANUSCRIPT

Cotton Claudius B.iv. contains an Old English paraphrase of Genesis through Joshua, and a preface in the form of a letter from JE.Ifric, later Abbot of Eynsham and Archbishop of York, to the Ealdorman, JE.oelweard. JE.Ifric translated parts of the text which were later combined with the work of an anonymous translator as a Heptateuch (Dodwell and Clemoes suggest Byrtfero of Ramsey). 1 The illustrated version, however, does not contain Judges. The text has almost 400 illustrations which are more concentrated toward the beginning of the manuscript and feature both outline drawing and full color. Many of them, especially after Exodus, are unfinished. Most scholars agree on a date some time in the first half of the eleventh century.2 Because the manuscript was at St. Augustine's Canterbury late in the Middle Ages, speculation is that it originated there. There is no real evidence that this is the case, however. The verbal text is the work of two scribes, written in a minuscule hand with larger colored intitials (Dodwell and Clemoes 17). Most pages have pictorial text, as well as verbal. The illustrations are one, two, or three on a page, alternating with verbal text, with full-page illustrations at significant narrative nodes. Style varies; some are colored outline drawings, some have colored washes, and some use opaque color. Dodwell and Clemoes believe that in spite of the variation in style, one illustrator is responsible for all of the illustrations, with the exception of a few finishing touches added by a later hand (64). The pictures are mostly horizontal rectangles; sometimes they are divided by a secondary frame element, sometimes the framed space has empty areas because one or two vertical figures do not fill up the space. In most, however, the framed space is filled with figures, sometimes in a lively and dynamic composition. The pictures alternate with the verbal text, but, like the Harley Psalter illustrations, they draw the viewer's first attention. The rhythm of reading probably is interrupted every time a leaf is turned over, while the reader stops to look at the pictures before continuing with the reading. A twelfth-century gloss in Latin (largely patristic commentary) in some cases fills up the blank space in the illustrations; sometimes it is written inside the frame, sometimes on the frame itself, and sometimes in the margins.

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We do not know for what purpose the manuscript was made. Some have argued that it was intended for the use of a lay person or persons.J In any case, it was never finished. Much controversy surrounds the question of an exemplar. Dodwell and Clemoes point out the many instances where the illustrations reflect the particular Old English text (65-72), but others point to similarities between the illustrations and those of other manuscripts.4 The illustrations probably draw from a number of sources with no one exemplar. PATTERNS OF IDENTIFICATION: SCHEMATA

In examining the role of schemata in the Harley Psalter illustrations, we saw that they function as signs in a code of identification. they indicate taxonomic categories of gender, moral value, or social position, with variations which serve to particularize according to the verbal text. A similar process occurs in the Illustrated Hexateuch. For example, the usual schema for a man is particularized for Joseph because of his hringfage tunecan (ring-decorated tunic) (Figure 4.1). This tunic appears in several illustrations and has, as we shall see, enhanced significance as a metonym beyond its function as a particularizing element. Another such example is the horned hat worn by Moses (Figure 4.2). This is the first instance of a horned Moses in art (see below, page 105), and once again, it has enhanced significance. However, again, its function as an identifier is no less important than its metonymic function. It categorizes Moses as a man who is set apart from other men in the narrative. Before he receives the tablets of the law, Moses is always depicted with another attribute, his staff, identifiable by its serpentine form. Joseph and Moses thus differ from Abraham and Noah, the two other patriarchs singled out in the illustrations by large capitals (see below pp. 125-26). Considering that a narrative deals with specific named persons, the illustrations seem to include surprisingly few identifying schematic elements. The twelfth-century glossator, consequently, has labeled a number of figures by name. One result of the similarity of figures is to conflate them, especially those named in the genealogical lists, regularizing them as parts of an ordered sequence. In fact, as Ben Withers has indicated, the schemata in the genealogy sections reflect the formulaic nature of the verbal text: "x begat y; then x died" (161). A series of pictures shows a family group in the left half of the frame, and in the right half, the shrouded figure of the dead person being carried away for burial (Plate 8). This death schema is repeated throughout the manuscript. In each example the shrouded body appears peculiarly weightless, as though death had robbed it of substance as well as spirit. The repetition of schematic figures creates a sense of continuity from one generation to another, emphasizing the connection between Noah and Abraham, Abraham and Joseph, between the patriarchs and Christ, and ultimately between them and the Anglo-Saxon Christian. Another instance of this kind of re-

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peated scene is found in Judges. The Israelites fight and win a number of battles with Canaanite nations. The illustrator has provided eight very similar battle scenes, and several others that are less like, but which also have characteristics in common. The narrative account of this series of battles, described in Joshua 10.28-43, uses language that is not as repetitive as the genealogical sections, but still formulaic: Fram lebna he ferde mid his fyrde to lachis. 7 Drihten him sealde on oone ooerne da:g oa buruh on his handa 7 oa buruhwara samod, 7 he cwealde hi ealle 7 oone ooerne cyningc, Hiram gehaten, oe onette to oa:re burig him to fultume .... He ferde oa to eglon, 7 ymbsa:t oa buruh. 7 on oam ylcan da:ge he geeode oa burh, 7 mid wa:pnum acwealde oa oe wunedon on hyre. Fram Eglon he ferdon 7 fuhton on Ebron, 7 oa buruh oferwunnon, 7 mid wige acwealdon eal oa:t he oa:r fundon oxs earman folces. Fram Hebron he gecyrde to dabira oa:re byrig 7 hi aweste, 7 oferwan oone cyningc 7 his folc ofsloh mid swurdes ecg, 7 ne let oa:r to lafe nan oing libbende. ( 10.31-38)5

The Israelites win these battles according to God's promise to give land to them; the repeated schema illustrates the consistency with which God fulfills his promise. Because the Psalms present a state of affairs, a way of being in the world and with God, the categorizations of good and evil are particularly important in the Harley Psalter illustrations. The categories are pervasive in the verbal text, and if the Psalms were seen as weapons for monks and nuns in the daily combat between good and evil, it is not surprising that the illustrations reflect this opposition. The polarization is less evident in the I/lus-

Figure 4.1 Joseph's Coat

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Figure 4.2 Horned Moses

trated Hexateuch. The difference may be a function of the idiosyncrasies of a particular illustrator; but the fact that the text is narrative also affects the way people and events are depicted. The characters in the narrative position themselves in concord with or in opposition to God by their actions or responses. Pharaoh's schema is the typical king schema that we see in the Harley Psalter, but with a slightly different crown. The other Egyptian men wear conical hats to differentiate them from the Israelites who wear no hats. There seems to be no indication in the schematization that they are categorized as evil, just different, although allegorical and anagogical readings identify Pharaoh with Satan. 6 There is one illustration featuring a demon (folio 23v. He is labeled diabolus by the glossator), and the angels who fall with Satan have turned to demons with a typical schematic representation-sparse occurrences of demons compared to those in the Harley Psalter. The characters as they are presented in the verbal text are not as generalized as are those in the Psalter, where people are referred to by such terms as "the righteous," "the ungodly," or "those who hate you." The Hebrew source is less generalizing than most Anglo-Saxon narratives. The

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paradigms of saintly behavior inform the hagiographic stories such as judith and juliana, while heroic virtues characterize Beowulf and Byrhtnoo. In the Hexateuch, even the most negative characters such as Pharaoh are not completely evil (It was God who hardened Pharaoh's heart), and none of the good characters is completely without flaws. The illustrator seems to rely more on the verbal text and its proximity to the pictures for categorization than on a schematic code. Thus, we see the schemata functioning in the same way as in the Harley Psalter for general types but with less specific indications of good and evil. Where the characters are individualized in the verbal text, there is less need for supplemental information in the illustration. As a whole, the text is less androcentric than the Harley Psalter. This is also a function of the genre. A narrative is usually much more about specific characters, and less about hypothetical people. There are fewer occasions to call upon default figures to illustrate general references to "the righteous," or "the ungodly," or "the people of Israel." Since many of the characters in the biblical narratives are women, it is not surprising that many more women are represented in the Hexateuch illustrations than in those of the Harley Psalter. And some specific references are to groups of women. For example, after Pharaoh and his army have drowned, Miriam and the Israelite women sing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to God: "Maria wres gehaten Moyses swustor. Heo gesamnode ealle pa wifman togredere on israhela cynne 7 namon heora hearpan him on hand 7 heredon god" 7 (Exodus 15.19). Figure 4.3 shows this group of women harping. A common schema of a seated figure is used here, with the harp added. Because of the harp and the seated position, the women bear a general resemblance to the schema for David. The greater number of women is not due to the genre alone, however. While some scenes of crowds of people depict only men, several contain both men and women. One is the destruction of Sodom. The illustration of the exodus from Egypt has a similar group. Whether this is because of ad-

Figure 4.3 Israelite women harping

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herence to an exemplar, or a different system of codes in use by the AngloSaxon illustrator, we cannot tell, but the result is much greater particularity. PATTERNS OF INTERACTION AND SUBSTITUTION: METAPHORIC TROPES

The kinds of visual tropes which appear in this manuscript are generally more traditional and more iconographically oriented than those in the Harley Psalter. The majority are metonymic or synecdochic rather than metaphoric; as such their function is more substitutive than interactive. Because they have become part of the schematic code, they are not interactive, but have more in common with frozen or dead metaphors. However, in our discussion of schemata, we have looked at two innovative examples: Joseph's ringed tunic and Moses's horns. It is commonly known that the word cornuta in the vulgate (translated gehyrned in the Old English ) is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word for rays of light (qeren). These rays are a sign of Moses's particular relationship with God. He appears with them after he receives the law tablets on Mount Sinai. The horns, then, also function metonymically as a sign of God's favor toward Moses, but the incongruity of the terms makes the trope interactive. The same is true of the decorated tunic. Called tunicam polymitam in the Vulgate (a tunic woven of many different kinds of threads, usually translated variegated), it represents Joseph's special status as his father's favorite. Again interaction between the concepts of garment and favor shows that metonymic tropes need not be substitutive only. The particular form this favoritism takes is peculiar to this manuscript, since the ring-shaped markings reflect the Old English translation and not the Vulgate. Most of the tropes, however, reflect the traditional iconographic forms. They stand in several different relationships to the verbal text, doubling, complementing, resisting, or extending meanings. One example of a visual trope that exists in tension with the verbal is the recurring representation of death. As we saw in Figure 4.1, the schematic figure for death is the carried, shrouded body. This schema functions as a metonym for the idea of death as a regularly recurring part of the genealogical chain. The Old English word forofaran (literally, go forth) suggests a journey or departure undertaken under one's own power. However, people do not fare forth in these illustrations; they are carried away. Ironically, the only individual shown leaving life on his own (he climbs a ladder to heaven) is Enoch, who does not go forth (die) in the usual way, but is taken by God (Figure 4.4). The verbal text has: "He ferde mid Gode, 7 hine nan man syooan ne geseah, for oam oe Drihten genam hine mid sawle 7 mid lichaman" (5.24).8 Thus, the passive mode of the images (the carried, shrouded figures) is represented by an active verb (forOferde), and the active image of Enoch climbing the ladder is described passively (oe Dryhten genam hine). In a second type of relationship, the trope occurs in one mode (verbal or pictorial) and not the other. An example is the extensive use of scrolls and

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Figure 4.4 Enoch ascends to heaven

books to indicate some kind of communication with God. These are common iconographic conventions. A book is the most recognizable attribute of God, and a scroll is also often an attribute of God, as well as of other divine or supernatural beings. 9 These images are more than iconographic conventions, however. Interaction between heaven and earth is probably the most metaphorized activity in the illustrations, and it is frequently represented by some kind of written communication. For example, the angel, holding a scroll, speaks to Hagar in the wilderness (Figure 4.5), God holding a book tells Noah to build the ark (Figure 4.6), and an angel with a book tells Abraham to sacrifice the ram instead of Isaac (Plate 8). There is no mention of scrolls (a word not common in Anglo-Saxon texts), books, or writing in the verbal text. In each case, the communication is oral. The scroll icon is a legacy from classical times and the codex from a later period when a revered canon of holy writing provided a model for the trope. This veneration is reinforced in a situation where readers are familiar with other biblical accounts in which writing is connected to communication from God, such as the law-giving episode where God writes the ten commandments with his own finger, the law code which Moses writes at God's direction, or the warning to Belshazzar written on the wall in Daniel (5.5). Although the word for scroll (ymele) is found only a few extant Old English manuscripts, readers of the Vulgate know the concept from Ezekiel 2.9

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Plate 8 Death schema

where God gives a scroll (fiber involutus) with the words of prophecy written on it, and the prophet is instructed to eat the scroll. These books and scrolls have a metonymic function representing communication, especially from God. The metonym may also have application for a larger cultural attitude toward writing as more permanent, authoritative, or mysterious than speaking, or even images. A less common, but still important metonym is the right hand of God, which protrudes downward from the clouds, often with two fingers extended. According to Camille, this represents the voice of God ("Seeing

Figure 4.5 The angel's message to Hagar

Figure 4.6 God and Noah

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and Reading") but in the Hexateuch it appears where God does not speak and seems to convey a general idea of attention, blessing, or care. On folio lr, the scribe has placed a full-page illustration of the fall of the angels (Plate 9). This event is not described or even mentioned in the verbal text. Traditionally, angels were believed to have been created along with the universe, before human beings. Augustine explains that the light created before the heavenly bodies were made "non corporalis sed spiritualis est" (De Genesi ad Litteram 311-12),10 because "jam erat creatura spirituales quae nomine coeli significata est, in eo quod scriptum est, In principia fecit deus caelum et terram" (Ibid. 259). 11 Bede echoes this idea in In Pentateuchem commentarii: "Quod ergo dictum est: In pricipio creavit deus caelum et terram, materiam totius creaturae ostendit, rationalis et corporalis, id est, angelorum et hujus munde: (91). 12 Dodwell and Clemoes state that the picture illustrates verse three: "god cw[xo] oa: Gewuroe leoht, 7 leoht wxro geworht." 13 The illustration, however, depicts not the creation of angels, but their separation, corresponding to the separation of light from darkness in verse 4: "7 he todxlde pxt leoht fram oam oystrum." 14 We have, then, an expansion of the verbal text that encompasses the idea of the creation of the angels and the fall of some of their number as an expansion of verses one through four. Moreover, the story of the fall of the angels is related in Genesis Bin the Junius 11 manuscript, a text contemporary with the Hexateuch. These intertextual references add a narrative node, and change the shape of the creation narrative. The illustration presents an interesting problem in terms of narrative time. while Augustine claims that time begins with the creation of the world, the sun and moon did not measure time before they were created. Therefore, the term "day" did not mean a day as measured by the celestial bodies, but rather, each day of creation is the one day, repeated to complete the number of six or seven (De Genesi ad Litteram 460). To complicate matters even further, the angels themselves are called "days" in a play on words between dies and Dei: "Ut ea luce inluminati qua creati, fierent lux et vocarentur dies participatione incommutabilis lucis et diei, quod est verbum Dei, per quod et ipse et omnia facta sunt" (De Genesi ad Letteram 462). 15 As the illustration of the fall of the angels is extraneous to the verbal text of Genesis, so the event occurs in a mode of time that lies outside of that measured by human beings. In a third type of relationship, the trope expressed in the verbal text is directly reflected in the illustration. I have used the term doubling, but the repetition of this trope is more like a translation. The pictorial recreates the verbal in a different form. The most striking example is the ladder to heaven that Jacob sees in his dream (Plate 10). This ladder is described in detail in the verbal text: "oa geseah he on swefne standan ane hlxddre fra eorpan to heofonan 7 Godes englas upp stigende 7 nyoer stigende on pxre. 7 he geseah driht[en] on ufeweardre pxre hlxddre"(Genesis 28.12-13). 16 This metaphoric representation (one of the few interactive tropes in the

Plate 9 The fall of the angels

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text) of a point of communication between heaven and earth, between God and Jacob, is illustrated just as it is described in the verbal text. It occurs at a major node in the narrative, and is given a full page illustration. Here God renews the covenant he made with Abraham; he promises Jacob that he will have land where he now sleeps, and that the earth will be blessed through his progeny (Genesis 28.13-14). Another indication of the importance which the illustrator finds in this image is a phenomenon which exemplifies the fourth type of relationship. The illustrator extends the ladder metaphor to cover a number of other instances of interaction between God and humanity. In the other instances, the text does not mention ladders, but they are present in the illustrations. We have already seen Enoch's ascent to heaven. the others are God's covenant with Abraham and the building of the tower of Babel. The connection between Jacob and Abraham is a natural one, because the event parallels Jacob's dream. God appears to Abraham and establishes the original covenant between himself and the Israelites (Genesis 17.1-22). Theillustration shows a ladder to heaven much like the one in Jacob's dream. The same word appears in the tower of Babel episode; "Witodlice, Drihten astah nyoer to oam oret he gesawe oa burh 7 oone stypel oe Adames bearn getimbrodon" (Genesis 11.5). 18 The word (a)stigan is used in almost every instance of the word hlceddre in other Old English texts. In the Tower of Babel illustration, God stands at the top of a ladder observing the building process and gesturing toward it with his open hand. His position and the position of the ladder are very similar to those in the Jacob and Abraham illustrations. An angel holding a scroll hovers at his shoulder. In all of the ladder illustrations, God makes contact with humanity. This is not the only way of showing such contact, but it is a prominent one in this manuscript. God comes down or goes up his ladder (stigan can mean either, astigan usually is accompanied by a directional adverb) to interact with his people. As in the Harley Psalter illustrations, we have here an interpenetration of spatial domains-God leaves his proper place in heaven to interact with people. The ladder is the means by which he moves from one domain to the other. The story of Jacob's ladder serves as an informing episode by which a metaphoric relationship is extended to other episodes, and the four events are tied together inviting the reader to speculate on their common significance. The ladder metaphor is not uncommon in written texts of the period. In an Ascension homily (Tristan 162-72), the Ascension is described in terms very similar to those used to describe Jacob's dream: "):>res hrelendes leorningcnihtas gesawon on J:>ysum drege ane lange hlreddre betweonan heofonum and eo roan ):>a he hine gesawon to heofonum stigan .... and hi sawon englas regoer ge up ge nyoer on orere hlreddre faran on hwitum gegryrelan" 19 ( 130 ). JElfric likens climbing a ladder to searching for the meaning of creation (Lives of the Saints 12) and the Benedictine Rule uses the metaphor of two sides of a ladder to represent the soul and body as the way to

Plate 10 Jacob's dream

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reach spiritual perfection (Rule of St. Benedict, Ed. Schroer 7.21 ). Genesis A places a ladder at the tower of Babel (although perhaps here it means a stair; there is no ladder in the illustration). When we add to these examples the influence of the use of the word stiganlastigan often associated with ladder climbing, it is not surprising that the Hexateuch illustrator chooses to extend this metaphor. Visual tropes are based not only on the verbal text, but on other cultural manifestations as well. In this text, we see the use of certain visual and verbal tropes repeated through the narrative in a strategy that not only communicates through a code, but categorizes the events by setting up correspondences. If the same ladder metaphor is used for several events, for example, the reader's attention is drawn to the similarities between the events, and he or she interprets them in a similar way. Verbal tropes are not nearly as concentrated in the Hexateuch as they are in the Psalter. The salient characteristics of Hebrew poetry are parallelism and metaphoric language (this is true of the translations into Latin and Old English as well as the Hebrew). The dynamic aspect of narrative genres, however, comes from the movement of events and the interactions between and among characters. The same is true for the illustrations. The illustration of Jacob wrestling with the angel, or of Potiphar's wife holding Joseph's garment have the same dynamic impact as that of the psalmist of the Bury Psalter wrestling with a metaphorical lion. PATTERNS OF RELATIONSHIP: MOVEMENT IN NARRATIVE SPACE

We have seen in Chapter Two how Augustine's theory of time posits a threefold present where past, present, and future exist simultaneously in the mind: the past as memory and the future as expectation. Paul Ricoeur sees this theory as incomplete because it does not account for physical time. In Time and Narrative he writes: Our narrative poetics needs the complicity as well as the contrast between internal time-consciousness and objective succession, making all the more urgent the search for narrative mediations between the discordant concordance of phenomenological time and the simple succession of physical time. (3:22)

He balances Augustine's ideas with those of Aristotle in the Physics. Aristotle, he believes, neglects a subjective concept of time in favor of the physical. One project of Time and Narrative is to reconcile opposing pairs of time theories and find a model which allows for both ways of understanding time (III.22). Ricoeur also examines the ideas of Kant in conjunction with those of Husser! and Hegel's ideas with Heidegger's. However, study of the Augustine/Aristotle dichotomy seems the most fruitful for this investigation. Aristotle's analysis of time is found in Book IV of the Physics (219a.34-35). Here he claims that there is a relationship between time and movement (change), but that they are not identical As Ricoeur explains,

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Fair and Varied Forms Change (movement) is in every case in the thing that changes (moves), whereas time is everywhere in everything equally. Change can be rapid or slow, whereas time cannot include speed, under the threat of having to be defined in terms of itself since speed implies time." (Time and Narrative 3:14-15)

The perception of time is based on the perception of movement. There must be, then, some understanding of time related to physical movement. While we are here concerned with the ways in which time is realized in narrative in both pictorial and verbal texts, and while we recognize that in these cases the realizations are spatial and subjective, we must at the same time emphasize that for the creators of these texts, as Byrhtfero's Enchiridion shows, there is a physical basis to time which underlies the variable and subjective notions of temporality; and that even in terms of expectation or memory, time cannot be measured without some reference to a concept of physical motion in space. It is narrative, according to Ricoeur, that mediates between these ways of understanding. Much narrative theory is concerned with the ways in which remembered or imagined events are shaped and made significant by their integration into a narrative structure. Hayden White writes: "The reality of events is not that they happened, but they were remembered and are capable of finding a place in a chronologically ordered sequence" (19). Sequence is not enough for narration to take place, however. "A narration," says Robert Scholes, "is the symbolic presentation of a sequence of events connected by subject matter and related by time. Without temporal relation we have only a list. Without continuity of subject matter, we have another kind of list" (205). Scholes points out that narrative is always in the past. Science fiction stories are written in the past tense. Drama, however, is in the present tense. "To speak of the future is to prophesy or predict or speculate-never to narrate" (206). Remembered or imagined events must be selected, interpreted, and shaped to work in the narrative. Barbara Herrnstein Smith writes: For any particular narrative, there is no single basically basic story subsisting beneath it but, rather, an unlimited number of other narratives that can be constructed in response to it or perceived as related to it .... The form and features of any 'version' of a narrative will be a function of, among other things, the particular motives that elicited it and the particular interests and functions it was designed to serve. (217)

The Anglo-Saxon translators, scribes, and illustrator, no less than the multiple authors of the Hebrew version, have shaped the material according to particular motives and interests. What also occurs when events are made into a narrative, making in Ricoeur's words "a configuration from a succession" ("Narrative Time" 174), is that time is configured as well; the story becomes shaped by its ending ("Narrative Time" 175). This shaping

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would not have significance without measurement against a notion of regularly proceeding physical time. A narrative may have several episodes, each with its own shape. At least each episode has a gravitational center or node that shapes narrative time, and many also have an overarching form that encompasses the entire narrative. Jonathan Evans argues that for medieval narrative, the episode is the "central structural unit" of narrative rather than the plot (130). In either case, illustrators tend to focus on nodes, making them synecdochic tropes for the entire episode; however, an illustrator can create new nodes for the story. This is the case with the illustration of the fall of the angels which we have already seen (Plate 9), the first illustration in Cotton Claudius B.iv. The illustration is an expansion of the verbal text, which provides a more Christian mode for reading the Pentateuch. It establishes the idea of a dualistic universe, conditioning the reading of the rest of the text. The shaping of this material had already been going on for thousands of years (if one considers the oral tradition behind the text) when it reached the Anglo-Saxon scribe and illustrator. A redactor in the sixth century B.C.E. combined material from various texts, themselves configurations of earlier written o~ oral material. Beginning with Abraham, the narrative is concerned with this particular family and their sense of destiny, not the least important aspect of which involves land acquisition. The attraction toward the time when they are able to enjoy the land that God promises them is very strong. The choice of the first six books of the Bible for inclusion in this manuscript makes use of just this part of the history of Israel and her patriarchs. Throughout the narrative, God makes choices of particular people as bearers of Israel's destiny: Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Rebecca, Joseph, Moses and Joshua. The promise of blessing to come is repeated often. It is not until Joshua leads the Israelites in battle against the people of Canaan that the promise seems to be fulfilled. The story of the fortunes of a nomadic family has been shaped to figure a destiny that eventually becomes international in scope. The Christian translators of the text-Jerome, !Elfric, and the other Anglo-Saxon translator-again reconfigure the narrative to look forward to a more distant fulfillment, the Incarnation. for them every prophecy of blessing, every genealogical list is heavy with significance for its foreshadowing of the moment when God puts on human flesh and the eternal and the temporal spheres intersect. The sense of time becomes stretched toward a cosmic event. In the following section we shall be concerned with two ways of looking at the representation of temporality in the texts. The first is the spatial representations of time in the pictures and verbal text. The second is in the terms of the four-fold allegorical exegesis of scripture.

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SPATIAL TIME

Narrative provides a succession of events by which one may understand a motion, a movement through a sequence. Oral narrative can use temporality itself to accomplish this, but written and pictured narrative do it spatially. One schema for spatial underst~nding of time is the line. Kant calls it "the transcendental schema" (Castoriadis 47). The model of linearity is used to represent that quality of temporality that separates it from spatiality. However, the line itself is spatial; there can be no real motion in a graphic representation; it must be expressed by means of the spatial. Time is shown to pass in several different ways. We shall look at four ideas associated with time and at the ways in which they are manifested in the verbal and pictorial texts of the Hexateuch: they are duration, repetition, simultaneity, and causality.zo I have chosen these temporal concepts, because they seem to be the most common ways of showing temporality in this manuscript, and the most easily representable by graphic means. Although order and causality are not synonymous, they are often closely related in texts, and I will consider the two together. All have something to do the with idea of motion. These do not correspond exactly with other writers' categories of narrative temporality. For example Genette, in Narrative Discourse, devotes chapters to order, duration, and frequency. However, later in Narrative Discourse Revisited, he changes "duration" (which he uses to refer to the time of reading) to "speed." I use the term to indicate the representation of the length of an event, action, or condition within the narrative itself. Neither is my "repetition" quite like Genette's "frequency;" he is concerned with repeated acts as habitual as opposed to and subordinate to "singulative" acts, which are significant because they deviate from the habitual. As we will see, however, repeated acts can also be significant because of the repetition. I use "causality" rather than Genette's "order." He is concerned with the double order of "real" versus narrative time, whereas I am interested in the way causality is indicated by order. Verbal codes indicate duration in several ways; one is by naming a period of time over which an action takes place. For example, in Exodus 16.35: "Israhela bearn reton hefonlice mete feowertig wintra oo he common to Chanaan lande." 21 The past tense is combined with an adverbial phrase to indicate duration, as opposed to the perfect tense which indicates a completed action. Fleischman makes the distinction between background actions (imperfect aspect) and foregrounded actions (perfective aspects). Verb tense itself can also show duration. The imperfect tense in Latin, for example, indicates an action which took place over a period of time in the past. Old English has no imperfect tense, but accomplishes the same effect by the use of periphrastic forms or other combination verbal forms. We see both of these techniques used in the ark story. Here we find a number of conditions which endure for specified periods of time: the rain, the time the

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ark floated on the waters, and the subsiding of the waters. The following sentences use adverbial expressions of duration: "7 hit rinde oa ofer eoroan feowertig dage 7 feowertig nihta on an" (Genesis 7.12),22 and "Dret flod stod oa swa anhund daga 7 fiftig daga" (7.24), 23 and "7 abad swa oeah seofan dagas 7 asende ut culfran" (8.12). 24 Genesis 8.3 uses periphrastic forms to show that the receding of the waters was not accomplished all at once: "Da wreteru oa gecyrdon of orere eoroan ongean farende 7 begunnon to wanigenne refter ooer healfhund daga. "2s This sense of duration is suggested in the illustrations. There are four views of the ark. The first is a cutaway drawing showing Noah and his family and all the animals packed in place for the journey. In the second, the ark is enclosed, and the door and window are closed. The third shows the raven perched on a pole extending from the dragon head pecking out the eyes of a head which is impaled there. In the fourth illustration, Noah, his family, and the animals disembark. The first three are the same size and are in approximately the same position toward the bottom of the page. The repetition of the form seems redundant. This is especially true of the second ark. It is relatively featureless; no information is added in the representation. It does, however, give a sense of a static state of affairs-the duration of floating. The repetition is the visual equivalent of the imperfect tense. The three similar pictures substitute for the kind of movement which would indicate duration-in this case the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, or the appearance of mountain tops emerging from the water. The repetition of the same image can also indicate repetition of actions, as we shall see. However, in this case, even without the verbal text, the idea of duration seems implied from the situation. A repeated action, like an action enduring in time, is often indicated verbally by a numerical form.26 When Jacob is reunited with Esau, he bows to him seven times. Rather than tediously repeating, "He bowed, then he bowed again, then ... " the writer says that he bowed seven times. However, the illustrator is not content to make one representative drawing of Jacob bowing. Instead, the picture is repeated. The first six are identical; in the seventh Jacob is shown at Esau's feet after which they embrace. (Figure 4.7). In this case, the reader/viewer is probably dependent on the verbal text to differentiate repetition from duration. Another example of repetition is the genealogical formula discussed above as schematization. The same scene repeated with only minor variations indicates a succession of generations over a long period of time. It is a biological version of the motion of the astronomical bodies, a chain of people living and dying with more or less regularity, a motion or change by which one perceives the passage of time. this kind of repetition is related to duration in a way that the bows of Jacob are not. In that example, the illustrator emphasizes more emphatically than does the verbal text the respect that Jacob shows to his brother. It is not the length of time that he bows that is important, but the number of times.

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Figure 4. 7 Jacob bows to Esau seven times

The depiction of simultaneity is simpler in the pictorial text than it is in the verbal. Two actions occupying the same (framed) picture space often indicate actions that occur at the same time. In Genesis 21.9-10 we read: Hyt gelamp eft syooa, p[re]t sarra beheold hu agares sunu wio Isaac plegode. 7 cw[re]o to abrahame ado pas wylne heonon. ne byo oxre wylne sunu soolice yrfenuma mid minum bearne isaace. Abraha[m] pa underna[m] hefiglice oas word. ac god sylf hi[m] cw[reo] to: ne sy oe hefiglic geouht p[xt] p[ret] sarra oe sxde be oinre" cyfese, ac do swa swa heo cw[reo for pan oe pe byo geciged sxd on isaace.27

The illustration (Figure 4.8) shows Isaac and Ishmael playing outdoors with several balls on the left. To the right, framed by architectural arches, Sarah talks to Abraham. Abraham looks away from her to where God's hand, either gesturing in blessing or as an indication of speech, intrudes into the architectural space. The verbal text describes three events in succession: Sarah sees Isaac and Ishmael, Sarah talks to Abraham, and God instructs Abraham. These occupy the same picture space. We see that Isaac and Ishmael continue to play outside the house as Sarah and Abraham talk, and that even as she is speaking to him, God is offering instruction and consolation. The writer could have indicated simultaneity, but did not. The illustrator therefore, makes a slight shift in the way the scene is understood. The immediacy of Sarah's response and God's are accentuated. Another example of simultaneity also involves Sarah and Hagar. Sarah has asked Abraham to have a child with Hagar, since she herself is childless: "l>u wast p[a:t ic eom untymende. nym nu mine pinene to pinu[m]

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Figure 4.8 Sarah objects to Ishmael playing with Isaac

bedde p[ret] ic huru underfo sum fostorcild of hyre. Abra[m] oa clyde swa swa hi[m] dihte sarai" (Genesis 16.2). 28 The verbal text does not say what Sarah was doing while Abraham and Hagar slept together, but the illustrator shows her lying awake while the couple sleeps in the next room. Withers has shown how the architectural framework in this case functions to separate Sarah from Hagar and Abraham, while it "constructs the simultaneity of the actions depicted within its confines" (172). In both of these cases, the reader/viewer is not dependent on the verbal text to understand the actions as occurring simultaneously; the pictorial text seems to establish its own temporal interpretation. These three temporal modes, duration, repetition, and simultaneity, depict different aspects of time, but they do not, by themselves, create narrative. It is the sequence or succession of events in their causal relationship that makes narrative. Roland Barthes writes: "The mainspring of narrative is precisely the confusion of consecution and consequences, what comes after being read in narrative as what is caused by" (94 ). Barthes points out that such a confusion is an application of the post hoc logical fallacy, and that the tendency of narrative theorists today is to valorize the logic of causality over temporality of narrative order (98). But although sequence does not prove causality, it is frequently the means of implying for both verbal and pictorial texts, as we shall see in the example considered below. Causality is also emphasized by the manner in which events are presented. In any mode of narrative, time is distorted by the pull of the ending, and by the individual events that are chosen by the narrator to present the action. The heightened significance of these events causes them to be depicted in greater detail, which slows down the flow of the narrative. According to Genette, a narrative does not have to have anachronies (an

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order that varies from the chronological) but cannot do without anisochronies (variations in speed or rhythm as opposed to a hypothetical unvarying cosmological time) (Narrative Discourse 88). Items which are given the attention of extra detail are more likely to be part of a causal chain. I have chosen the episode of Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) to illustrate the causal relationship of narrative time. The story is bracketed in the longer narrative structure by its position in the middle of the Joseph narrative. It is emphasized by being set apart from the material with which it might be more congruous. The manuscript contains two explicit versions of the episode, the verbal Old English narrative and the pictorial narrative. A third version is implicit; that is the Latin version from which the translation was made, a version that was, perhaps, familiar to some of the audience. Even for those unfamiliar with it, the difference is implied by the incongruities or gaps in the Old English account that result from elided material. The Latin version of the story, in brief, is this: Judah has three sons, Er, Onon, and Shelah. He marries Er to Tamar, but Er dies before he fathers any children, because God is displeased with him. According to the law of levirate marriage, the younger brother in such a case is obliged to marry his brother's widow and to father children for his brother. Therefore, Judah marries Onan to Tamar; but he displeases God because he avoids impregnating his wife by practicing withdrawal; therefore, he also dies without heirs. Judah is afraid the same fate will befall Shelah, so he tells Tamar to go home to her family until Shelah is older. When Shelah has grown and no marriage has taken place, Tamar dresses as a prostitute and waits for Judah by the road (His wife has since died). He has sexual relations with her without recognizing her and gives her his ring, bracelet, and staff as a pledge for payment. When he sends the payment, his servant is not able to find her. Later it becomes obvious that Tamar has conceived as a result of the encounter. Judah is prepared to have her burned, when she produces his ring, bracelet, and staff. He realizes that he is in the wrong and Tamar is spared. She gives birth to twins. For a number of narrative theorists, an important aspect of narrative is the presence of a double ordering of events: the first is a chronological sequence-a posited real time-and the second is the order in which events are related in the narrative.2 9 Genette's terms for these are "story" and "narrative," to which he adds a third term, "narrating," the mediation between the two. Although in the larger context a double ordering is evident, for this particular episode, story and narrative follow the same course. 30 The verbal text suggests the story order by the use of verb tenses. The creators of pictorial texts have developed codes for indicating order31 but have no codes for indicating an underlying chronology that is different from that order. If a verbal text is present, the pictorial text can follow its order; because the verbal bears more of the burden of storytelling, the pic-

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torial narrative doesn't have to do as much. If there is only the pictorial element, then narrative and story must present the same order. The Judahffamar episode orders events chronologically in the pictorial account and the verbal account very nearly does so,32 but both differ from the Latin version in speed or rhythm. The Old English version condenses the story significantly. The marriage to Onon is omitted, for example, which is the source of a gap in the narrative. Three sons are born, three sons are pictured, but only two are accounted for as husbands. Judah's fear for Shelah is not mentioned, nor is God's displeasure with the older brothers. A shift in meaning occurs where the translator relates Tamar's motive for seducing Judah (see note 32). The Latin has, "Quod crevisset Sela et non eum accepisset maritum. "JJ The motive is obscured in the Old English, because it sounds as though Shela is still too young for marriage. Tamar's seduction of Judah and their agreement about the pledges is given the most detailed treatment. We are told how Judah was going to Timnah for his sheep shearing, how Tamar found out where and when he would be traveling, how she dressed herself as a prostitute, and Tamar and Judah came to an agreement about payment. This particular event is evidently seen as pivotal, even more important than Tamar's marriages or the death of her husbands. These events are covered in a couple of sentences. We are told how Judah's shepherd brought the payment of a kid to Tamar but could not find her. Then the narrative skips to the time when her pregnancy is discovered. We have details of the conversation at the time she is to be burned, and of the birth of the twins and their naming. Genette uses four terms for modes of temporality in narrative time; summary, ellipsis, pause, and scene. Summaries can vary in how quickly time passes, in ellipses time is collapsed, in pauses it stops, and in scenes it is isosynchronous with "real" time (scenes are usually dialogue) (44). The Old English Judahffamar episode has six scenes, four summaries, three ellipses, and one slight pause, compared to nine scenes, seven summaries, three ellipses, and two pauses in the Latin. Nine pictures accompany the narrative. Five of them illustrate scenes, three of them summaries, and the remaining one illustrates both a scene and a summary, if the man in the illustration is Judah. In the first we see Judah, his wife,J 4 and their three sons. Judah and his wife stand behind a bed and the sons as children stand at the foot. In the second, Tamar is widowed. She stands at the left, her hand covering her face. At the right, the shrouded body of her husband is carried away. A beardless man stands next to her facing her. He may be Judah who is beardless in the first picture, but bearded in the subsequent ones. He could be Onan, although this is less likely, since the verbal text does not mention her marriage to Onan. In the next illustration Tamar stands in an architectural structure as a man gives her news about Judah's whereabouts. At the right Judah and his shepherd, Hirah, travel to the sheep shearing. Hirah holds shears in his hands. At the bottom of this page a gloss in Latin is written in the margin-a comment on verse 14, "[she] sat ... down by the

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road to Timnah," which connects the name Tamar, which means palm tree, with certain palm groves. The following pages also contain glosses which comment on place names.35 In the fourth illustration, Judah stops to talk to Tamar as Hirah goes on alone. He hands her his ring, bracelet, and staff. The fifth and sixth illustrations show the messenger with the kid tied to a pole over his shoulder looking unsuccessfully for Tamar, and returning to Judah to report his failure. The seventh has Judah being informed of Tamar's pregnancy, and ordering her to be brought out for punishment. In the eighth (Plate 11 ), a large bonfire burns at the right side of the picture space, while Tamar is led toward the flames. Behind her a man hands Judah his possessions that he had given Tamar in pledge. The final illustration shows the birth of Tamar's twin sons. The verbal narrative, by emphasizing some details and omitting others, collapses time in some parts of the narrative (for example, the time during which Shelah grows to adulthood) and lengthens it in others. The illustrations further lengthen some of the narrative time by causing the reader to slow down the reading to look at the pictures. By ignoring details of Tamar's marriages, the illustrator shortens that time even more than the writer does. Causal relationships are also given different emphasis by the writer and illustrator. The vulgate narrative presents three narrative subjects-God, Judah, and Tamar, in a conflict of desires. God desires obedience, Judah desires his son's protection, and Tamar desires the status of a wife and mother. We know from other biblical narratives that the stigma of barrenness renders a woman negligible. Tamar's desire for children is so strong that she is willing to go to extreme lengths to obtain what she wants. The Old English version removes God as a participating subject, narrows the conflict to the desires of Judah and

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Plate 11 Tamar is led to the fire

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Tamar, and suppresses certain motivating factors. Omission of the marriage to Onan and the fact of Shelah's having grown makes it harder to understand Tamar's loss of patience with Judah. Omission of Judah's reason for holding back makes his actions less plausible. Concentration of Tamar's actions and her successful attempt to trick Judah make her the subject of the story. Instead of two subjects, each with desires with which the reader can sympathize, we have a protagonist and an antagonist. Of the nine illustrations, four of them have to do with Tamar's intercourse with Judah and their agreement about payment. Three deal with her pregnancy and the birth of her sons. The incident in which Omar is about to burned is the most detailed and complex of the nine. It is also the climactic incident of the story, the moment when the problem is resolved. The birth of the twins shows Tamar's desire doubly fulfilled. A woman in this patriarchal culture is strictly limited in the ways she can seek to have wrongs redressed. Tamar uses established social mores (combined with deception) for her own ends. By condensing the narrative and concentrating on Tamar's wrongs and her scheme to be compensated, the translator and illustrator celebrate her ingenuity of resourcefulness. However, her plan succeeds only because her desires are constituted within the patriarchal system. She desires what she is supposed to desire. Each moment of the story is connected by a linear cause and effect relationship leading to this scene. Because motivating factors are omitted from the Old English translation, this cause and effect relationship must be established at least partly by temporal order. Narrative time is distorted by its pull toward the moment of epiphany for Judah, vindication for Tamar, and final fulfillment in the act of giving birth. Pictorial and verbal representations alternate on the page, reinforcing and reinterpreting one another in the space of the graphic field. Because the illustrations are placed after the corresponding verbal text, the flow of the narrative toward its ending is emphasized. However, there seems to be less tension in the pictorial account than in the verbal. The bonfire is very dramatic, but up to that point, the pictures are rather static, and the compositions are similar to one another. They depend on the verbal text to establish plot conflict. At the same time, the illustrations have something of the immediacy of the present tense which is characterized, according to Fleischman, by a timeless neutrality (that is, it has a greater range of temporal references than any other tense can express-present, past, and future events, as well as habitual actions, and generic or gnomic meanings) (34). The fact that the pictures portray only scenes, not the continuous narrative, makes it seem as though they have a different nature from the verbal text which is continuous. But that is not peculiar to pictures. One can imagine a narrative told in pictures with words added sporadically for clarification. So what seems to be a difference rooted in a basic opposition is really the scribe and illustrator using pictures for one purpose (to heighten nodal points in the narrative) and words for another. The verbal and picto-

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rial texts in combination give a reading with a different speed, rhythm, and sense of causality that a reading of either alone. ALLEGORICAL TIME

The fourfold allegorical exegesis of scripture is always present in the medieval period, either explicitly or implicitly. Caesarius of Aries, from whose homilies the Anglo-Saxons borrowed freely, expresses the commonly held belief in the necessity of allegorical readings: Haec enim omnia, fratres, quae in testamento veteri recitantur, si tantum secundum litteram voluerimus accipere, aut parvum aut nullum lucrum animae consequemur. Quid enim nobis prodest, qui ad ecclesiam ad audiendum die verbum fideliter convenimus, si nobis dicatur, quod Abraham miserit puerum suum, ut de regione longinqua adduceret uxerem filio suo, cum et in istis regionibus hoc frequenter fieri videamis? Nos vero, fratres, sequentes beatum apostolum Paulum credamus quia omnia quae scripta sunt Iudaeis in figura contigebant, nobis autem in veritate completa sunt. (Sermo 85) 36

These events from Hebrew scripture have multiplied significance in three other times: in the life of Christ, in the life of the individual Christian (the reader in a present which always changes) and in eschatological times. For many medieval readers, especially among the monastic audience where the manuscripts were made and read, the moral, allegorical, and anagogical meanings were so familiar as to be always present as an intertext in any biblical reading. Two meanings take place in the past, one in the present, and one in the future. Rather than understanding allegorical exegesis as a multiplication of meaning, however I would like to call it a multiplication of the same meaning in timeY The meaning-event which takes place in the time of Hebrew scriptures foreshadows the same meaning-event in the New Testament, recurs in the life of the reader, and again in the end times. This amounts to a theory of time that is in some ways related to narrative time. Time is seen as linear, but not homogenous. It has a shape that is produced by the Incarnation, the intersection of the temporal with the eternal, what Benveniste calls a founding event (71 ),38 This intersection warps time so that everything that comes before it funnels into it, and after it everything is changed. Figure 4.9 shows the four instances of allegorical temporality, and the narrative shape that is drawn to its ending. The meaning that is multiplied in time is not, however, a duplication of events. The second coming of Christ is not a repetition of the Incarnation; that event is an intersection of time and eternity; the second coming is an end to temporality. Every meaning-event since creation has a place in this scheme, and is related to every other meaning-event. According to this idea of temporality, the question of what God "does" before creation is meaningless, as Augustine decides (Confessiones Book 11 par. 12). Events are temporal; they must occur in time because they have duration or motion. Hayden White

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suggests that to have a narrative, there must be an equivalent of "the Lord" which exists outside of time (15). God is understood as the author of the cosmic narrative. Suzanne Lewis writes: Operating within a belief system that regards time as the sequential revelation of God acting purposefully in history is the medieval conviction that every sequence of events that occurs is a "story," that all events have causality, meaning and finality, although they are often known only to God. (Reading Images 52)

Evidence that allegorical meaning is seen as temporal can be found in Augustine's De Genesi ad Litteram. He writes: "Instituimus enim de Scripturis nunc loqui secundum proprietatem rerum gestarum, non secundum aenigmata figurarum (alternative reading, futurarum)" (1.17.33 ).3 9 Augustine gives many more such explanations of the meaning of events in Genesis that we would consider metaphorical. They are called literal because they pertain to the first division of time, and only to that time, the time of literal meanings. Augustine sees a danger in looking only at allegorical interpretation. He writes: Ante omnia, fraters, hoc in nomine Domini et admonemus, et praecipimus, ut quando auditis exponi sacramentum scripturae narrantis quae gesta sunt, pruis illud quod lectum est credatis sic gestum, quomodo leetum est; ne substrata fundamento rei gestae, quasi in aere quaeratis aedificare. (Ser. 2. 7 in Auerbach 39)40

The Illustrated Hexateuch might also be called a literal explication. It is concerned primarily with the time of literal meaning. The illustration of the fall of the angels is part of this emphasis. However, a few examples from the illustrations show that an awareness of the allegorical is implicit in the Anglo-Saxon understanding of Hebrew scripture. The text of Genesis is divided into sections by large colored initials at the stories of Noah, Abraham, and Joseph. These are larger than the other colored initials in

Old Testament

Icarnantion

Present

Figure 4.9 Allegorical Time

Apocalypse

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the text, including the first initial. Another system of division is superimposed upon the Hebrew and Vulgate divisions into books. Aside from the obvious emphasis on important patriarchs, the large initials single out important allegorical figures. Noah and Joseph are types of Christ. The ark is interpreted allegorically as the church. An elaborate set of correspondences connects the animals with different types of Christians. 41 Abraham, especially in the sacrifice of Isaac story, typifies God and Isaac typifies Christ. We can see the practice of finding correspondences with the patriarchs in Vercelli homily 19: "Manegum haligum mannum ~res gangdagas syndon wiometene, ac us is lang pret eall to gerecanne" (318).42 As it stands, this makes little sense. However, the Latin source for this phrase elaborates: Comparantur enim isti quattuor dies quattuor viris perfectis, id est, Noe, Abrahe, Moysi et Christo. Ideo Noe primum comparantur quia ips[e], iubente domino, arcam in figuram aecdisie in qua nunc omnes homines per baptismum saluantur I[n]struere cepit per quam octo homines cum suis animalibus exmundis et immundis, delente diluuio terram, saluati sunt. Abrahe autem quia ipse sine lege nulloque precepto ammonente integram fidem primum servuauit et [in] deum patrem mundi conditorem toto corde credidit .... Moysi uero quia ipse populum Israel de Aegypto uenientem per mare rubrum, siccis pedibus, et per uias desertas, domino iubente, deduxit ... .ldeo autem christo, filio dei, certissime compara[n]tur quia sicut ille post multa mirabilia que in hoc mundo peregit et post multas inuidias a Iudeis sibi inlatas et post passionem resurrectionemque suam coram apostolis in celum sua potentia ascendit, et multos secum educens ad dexteram dei patris, sedit per diuinitatem in excelsis. (Cambridge Pembroke College Ms 25 102, 04) 4 3

The Anglo-Saxon homilists's remark would have been confusing or meaningless to the audience if they were not thoroughly familiar with this kind of connection. The use of large initials at the beginning of the narratives of Noah, Abraham, and Joseph would then have been understood as reminders of the multiple associations connected with them. The illustration of the raven in the Noah story may represent an allegorical tradition in which the raven has a negative connotation. In his thorough study of the question, Milton McC. Gatch points out that while the translation follows the Latin, the illustrator departs from it. The verbal text says that the raven went out and did not return. Gatch's study of exegesis on the passage shows that in common allegorical interpretation, the raven represents a number of negative types of Christian. for example, in Ambrose, the raven represents the sinfulness of the penitent person sent away from the ark (De Noe 62). Gregory of Illiberi calls the raven those expelled by the church (De area Noe 1.521). The fact that the illustration departs from the verbal text suggests that the illustrator is calling upon a familiar allegorical tradition that the audience would be expected to recogmze.

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Another possible reference to exegetical tradition is found in the illustration of the sacrifice of Isaac (Plate 12). One detailed allegorical interpretation is that of Caesarius. The servants who stay behind represent the Jewish people, the ass the synagogue; the ram is Christ the sacrifice pierced with thorns, and Isaac carries the wood for his own sacrifice as Christ does the cross. Caesarius especially emphasizes the fact that the journey took three days. He connects the three-day journey to the Trinity, the three-day journey in Exodus, the three-day wait at Mount Sinai, and of course, Christ's three days in the tomb (Sermone 84. pp. 16-18). The illustration is

Plate 12 The sacrifice of Isaac

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large-about three quarters of the page. The framed space is divided into three parts by three diagonal base lines. Three separate actions are present in the same picture space. At the bottom, Abraham, Isaac, and the servants journey toward the mount. The middle group of figures has started up the hill. Abraham instructs the servants to remain behind. At the top, Abraham prepares to strike Isaac as he bends over the altar. An angel holding a codex leans out of the sky and the ram in its bush floats at the left. The events depicted follow the verbal text closely. It is the three-part construction of the space that suggests an awareness of the kind of interpretation Ambrose gives. The allegorical construction of time, then, seems to be implied rather than stated overtly in this text. But for the Anglo-Saxon scribe and illustrator, part of the importance of these events lies in the belief that they are grounded in concrete incidents. It is important for them to present the events in a manner which invites the reader/viewer, as in the Harley Psalter, to project him- or herself into the picture space in order to believe more wholly in the reality of the lives of the patriarchs and their relationship with God. The events depicted are those of the daily lives of the Anglo-Saxons themselves: caring for livestock, building, sleeping, eating, lying, fighting, copulating, giving birth, and dying. However, there is also a concern that the Anglo-Saxon audience will identify too closely with the people of the Old Testament period. !Elfric expresses this concern in his preface to his part of the translation: Nu pinco me, leof, pert pxt weorc is swioe pleolic me oooe xnigum men to underbeginenne, for pan pe ic ondrxde, gif sum dysig man pas boc rerd oooe rerdan gehyrp, pert he wille wenan pert he mote lybban nu on perre niwan er, swa swa pa ealdan ferderas leofodon pa on perre tide, err pan pe seo ealde X gesett werre, oooe swa swa men leofodon under Moyses x. (Crawford 76) 44

He is particularly concerned that people would think it acceptable to have more than one wife, or to marry siblings. The Hebrew scriptures are as sacred as the New Testament writings, but they must be understood in the sense of their allegorical time frame in order to be translated into daily experience. In few allegorical interpretations are all four time periods invoked at one time. In the Illustrated Hexateuch, the literal is stressed, but the literal meaning/time period is incomplete. An awareness of the other time periods is necessary in reading any Old Testament text with full understanding. In the Illustrated Hexateuch, the others are making themselves known in unobtrusive ways. The whole question, then, of reader inclusion is more complex than it seems at first. In a moral reading the reader and the readers' time period (the present) are never absent. We have seen how the temporal quality of the whole graphic production differs when the text is a narrative. The Psalter is a collection of devotional poetry. The individual psalms have an internal order, but there is no prede-

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termined sequence. This order coheres weekly when there is no cause and effect relationship between the parts. This is especially true when the practice of psalm recitation in the monastic office does not follow the physical sequence strictly, but is characterized by repetitions of non-sequential groups. The complexity of the illustrations accords with the lack of cohesion. Because there is no sense of being drawn to the ending, the reader/viewer may linger over them in a leisurely fashion. A narrative such as the Hexateuch, on the other hand, has much greater sequential cohesion. It is true that the reader/viewer may select individual episodes out of sequence, but each is tied to those that precede and follow it. The illustrations are less complex than those of the Harley Psalter and do not interfere with the flow of the narrative from leaf to leaf. The fact that the visual tropes are more easily recognizable promotes the processing of the information. Each illustration follows the material it illustrates; the reader/ viewer does not have to look back and forth between verbal and pictorial texts to make connections as is the case with the Harley Psalter, and can process them in sequence with only slight pauses. The flow has been interrupted somewhat by the digressions of the glosses which in many cases intrude upon the picture space or invade the frame. The fact that much of the gloss is in Latin sets up greater tension, and makes the text a two-way dialogue between different temporal entities-the Anglo-Saxon scribe and illustrator and the twelfth-century glossator. The addition of the glosses changes the leaf flow of the manuscript as a whole, and of the individual episodes. Even so, the pull toward the ending-the fulfillment of the covenant in Canaan-gives shape to the narrative as a group of strongly connected episodes with cause and effect relationships. The construction of this shape, in turn, resonates with the cosmic construction of time with its two points of convergence. Ricoeur sees a correspondence between the making of narrative and the making of metaphor: "Although metaphor has traditionally belonged to the theory of 'tropes' (or figures of discourse) and narrative to the theory of literary 'genres,' the meaning-effects produced by each of them belong to the same basic phenomenon of semantic innovation". Both involve a synthesis: in metaphor of disparate meanings within a sentence, and in narrative of "goals, causes, and chance" within the unity of a plot (Time and Narrative l:ix). Narrative "grasps together" things which are disparate and unifies them into "one whole and complete story"(l:x). The writers of the Hexateuch have grasped together events in Israel's past and juxtaposed them as parts of an entity, a discourse of destiny. In particular, the redactor of the Pentateuch has formed a group of texts, episodic in themselves, into a work whose theme of covenant is never lost sight of. Walter Ong claims that before the invention of printing, "the only linearly plotted lengthy story line was that of the drama, which from antiquity had been controlled by writing (133 ). Episodic writing is seen as typical of oral cultures. Bibli-

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cal writing is indeed episodic, but the theological and political agenda of its writers ensures that a kind of unity prevails. The translators, scribe, and illustrator of the Anglo-Saxon illustrated version have continued the work begun by those earlier writers, adjusting configurations and calling attention to particular aspects, according to their own agendas. This graphic production has its own tempo and its own construction of temporality to which both verbal and pictorial texts contribute. The differences between their ways of representing time are, however, the result of the complementary development of ways of expressing rather than any innate difference between words and pictures. Together, they create structures of temporality in which the narrative events are shaped and given meaning. In spite of the differences between the Psalter and the Hexateuch, both exemplify the conceptual nature of their ways of representing: in their schemata, tropes, and in the ways in which temporality is given expression in graphic space.

CHAPTER FIVE

My Monster, Myself The Marvels of the East

The third example in this series of Old English illustrated manuscripts is quite unlike those that precede it. The most noticeable difference is that the illustrations are much less complex. In most, one or two figures inhabit a framed space; background is minimal. Interaction takes place more between the viewer and the figures as viewed objects, and less between entities on the page. The verbal text, too, differs from previous examples. A sequence of descriptive passages connected by geographical data, it makes no overt judgments, draws no conclusions; it merely reports a series of extraordinary phenomena. The minimalist quality of both the verbal and pictorial texts is an integral component of its discourse. The manner of presentation itself resists certain modes of reading and interpretation, and consents to others. Much more than the other two graphic productions we have studied, this one involves a looking subject-reader. But although the monstrous creatures are presented as objects to our gaze, the mode is still conceptual rather than perceptual, more concerned with portraying the idea of monstrousness than the appearance of monsters. The graphic production operates on several levels. The ostensible agenda of the production is the dissemination of knowledge: the reader is made familiar with the existence, characteristics, and appearance of the marvelous examples of creation-people, animals, and plants-that inhabit the margins of the world. Within this division, however, is a further subdivision. The first division assumes a relationship with "real" phenomena; that is, the entities described and pictured in the text are not presented as fictional. The text claims to offer a "true" representation of their appearance, habits, and other characteristics for the sake of the information itself. The second offers a hypothetical situation in which the reader/viewer might encounter these beings. In such a case, knowledge of them would be valuable in knowing what to expect and how to react.

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A less obvious agenda involves classification. While this may seem to be part of the dissemination of knowledge, and does, in fact, participate in that operation, the result is both less objective and less obvious. The need to classify is more compelling for presenting the races of monstrous people than for animals and plants, for obvious reasons. Classification involves control of entities which threaten the boundaries on which people depend for society to run smoothly. It is deemed necessary to carefully define the boundaries of the human. Monstrous races call categories into question and create a sense of dis-ease until the questions are settled that threaten the carefully balanced structures of human interaction. On an individual level, the relationship between the reader/viewer and the described and pictured monster is also one of control. The fear of loss of bodily integrity is given plastic form in an illustration of a creature whose parts are missing, enlarged, or otherwise distorted. At the same time that the frightening bodily anomalies evoke this fear, the gaze of the reader/viewer becomes an act of empowerment which brings them under control. THE MANUSCRIPT

The Marvels of the East 1 is found in the Nowell Codex, bound together with the Southwick Codex in Cotton Vitellius A.xv. Usually dated at about the year 1000, the Nowell Codex contains four other items: a fragment of a life of St. Christopher, Alexander's Letter to Aristotle (spurious), Beowulf, and judith. This manuscript has a unique relationship with another of about the same period. The eleventh-century Cotton Tiberius B.v. contains the same Old English text as well as a Latin version, and is also ill ustrated. However, the illustrations, although they are in many ways similar to, and may have a common antecedent with the Vitellius illustrations, are not derived from them. Perhaps the most pertinent site of deviation is the contextual difference between the two, an aspect that affects markedly the ways in which we read the two texts. 2 In addition to Cotton Tiberius B.v., the text of The Marvels of the East also survives in another illustrated version, Ms Bodley 614 of the twelfth century. The close similarity between the Bodley illustrations and those of the Vitellius manuscript, suggests a common source. The Nowell Codex is the work of two scribes; the hand changes in the Beowulf text at the fourth line of folio 175v, so that the Marvels is all the work of Scribe One. Kemp Malone describes the hands thus: "S(cribe)1 had a light touch and, though no calligrapher, wrote with an easy grace foreign to S(cribe) 2, who made his letters with heavy, vigorous strokes of the pen" (17). Only the Marvels text is illustrated. It features thirty illustrations, some framed and some not. The frames are inconsistently constructed-some single, some double lines, with varying degrees of enclosure-but most illustrations are on the right side of the page. The verbal

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text is delineated by a partial grid: the left margin is ruled, as are the horizontal lines, but there is no rule for the right margin. There is little consistency in the size of the illustrations, which are not constrained by the grid. Some pictures impinge upon the textual space (or vice versa), so that words and pictures interpenetrate. Initials, inconsistent in size, are placed outside the grid in the margins. Scholars seem to be much concerned with the aesthetic quality of the Vitellius drawings. Malone quotes Wanley's catalogue of 1705, which calls them: "figuras male delineatis calce mutila", 3 and Forster: "fliichtig ausgefiihrte Wasserfarbenbilder zu Text" 4 (Malone 117). Rypins calls them "crude specimens of water-color work" (xliv), and "of no great merit" (viii). According to James, they are "by a humble and unskilled artist" and "are often undesignedly comic in a high degree" (51). In contrast, Rypins finds the Tiberius illustrations "admirably executed" (xliv), and James calls them "magnificent specimens of the best late Anglo-Saxon school" (51). The Tiberius text has four more sections at the end than does the Vitellius. The Nowell Codex is of unknown provenance, and scholars have speculated little on why it may have been made, except to remark that all but the judith text are in some way concerned with monsters.s St. Christopher, for example, although not described so in this text, is a dog-headed man in the Old English Martyrology (Perhaps the information about his appearance was included in the lost beginning of the Vitellius text): se com on Decius dagum p:rs caseres on pa ceastre pe Sarno is nemned of p:rre peode p:rr men habbao hunda heafod ond of pxre eoroan on pxre :rton men hi selfe. He hxfde hundes heafod, ond his loccas wxron ofer gemet side ond his eagan scinon swa leohte swa morgensteorra, and his teo wxron scearpe swa eofores tuxas. (Old English Martyrology 66) 6

The third text in the manuscript, the Letter to Aristotle, a narrative of Alexander's battles in India and other Eastern lands, contains many descriptions of fabulous peoples and animals. And, of course, the monstrous Grendel of Beowulf is well known. The fifth text, judith (which has no monster), is believed to have been a later addition. The lack of speculation about the audience of the Nowell Codex is curious in the light of the proliferation of theories about the audience of other manuscripts, such as the Harley Psalter. Several reasons suggest themselves. First, since so little is known about the origins of the Nowell Codex, there is little upon which to base such speculations. Second, the Harley Psalter, with its large number of complex illustrations, was a more costly and time-consuming project, and is perhaps more likely to have been created with a special purpose in mind. A third reason may be that presentday scholars see works like the Marvels and Beowulf to have more general appeal, and productions such as the Harley Psalter to serve specialized interests; perhaps, scholars see less reason to attempt to identify a particular

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audience for the text. However, given the importance of all devotional literature in everyday life, especially the Psalms, I believe the distinction between general and specific interests, if indeed it is being made, is a false one. If the manuscript was made for a patron, that patron evidently had a taste for the exotic. If it was made to be kept in the monastic library, it shows an attempt to categorize several texts according to a common denominator. In either case, there seems to have been a perceived genre defined by certain loose parameters, and this genre seems to have been constituted in part by the context. The Tiberius manuscript provides a very different contextual setting for the text. Among the items included in that compilation are two mappae mundi, Cicero's Aratea with drawings of constellations, pictures of the chariots of the sun and moon, excerpts in Old English from Bede's De temporibus, and excerpts from Macrobius and Martianus Capella. A number of other texts have, in James's opinion, been added by Cotton (4). The items which appear to be original to the compilation have in common an interest in astronomy, computation, and other subjects which usually are categorized in this period as natural history. In the Tiberius manuscript, the Marvels text is, by its inclusion there, a work of natural history. In the Nowell Codex, however, as on of a series of monster texts, it carries connotations of sensationalism. THE MONSTROUS RACES

Stories of monstrous races go back at least to Ctesias and Megasthenes in the fifth and fourth centuries, and Alexander's expeditions to India yielded further types and elaborations.? In the fifth century, Herodotus reports on the eating habits of certain peoples, and the peculiarities of certain animals, including snakes which must be smoked out and gold-digging ants. However, the monstrous races are generally known as the Plinian races, because Pliny's catalog of them in the Natura/is Historia (Book VII) was so widely known in the Middle Ages (Friedman 5). The earliest version of the Marvels text is a fourth-century letter from a man named Fermes to the Emperor Hadrian, which purports to be a report to the emperor about an expedition to the East. In The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, John Friedman lists forty types which come from this tradition (Chapter 1 ). The Old English Marvels text includes at least eleven of these: Bearded Women, Headless People with faces in their chests (called Blemmyae in other texts), Conopenas (dog-headed people called Cynocephali elsewhere, Donestre (half human, half divine), Ethiopians, Giants, Icthiophagi (fish-eaters), Panoti (with huge ears), Raw-Meat-Eaters, ShiningEyed People, and Woman-Givers. There is also a second race of monstrous women. In the case of the other races, although the text does not specify except in the case of the WomanGivers, we can probably assume that they were understood to include both

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genders, given the common use of the default male to cover both male and female. The case of the Women-Givers excludes them. It is the quality of willingness to give away its females that marks the men of this race as Other. The two female races include bearded women who hunt with tigers, lions, and lynxes instead of hounds, and giant women with hair down to their heels, camels' feet, and asses' teeth. In addition to their physical anomalies, these women are monstrous because they are female races. The bearded women not only have a singular gender, but they have what would be considered male characteristics and engage in male activities-they are viragos. The absence of the default male is the absence of the human; the female alone is constituted as monstrous. The letter of Fermes spawned a whole group of marvels texts whose sensationalism sets them apart from more encyclopedic works. The writings of Herodotus, Pliny, Isidore of Seville, and Rabanus Maurus are related to the marvels texts, in that they describe unknown lands and their inhabitants. However, these writers were more concerned with an all-inclusive description of the places and peoples of the world. Pliny, for example, in his Natural History, organizes a vast amount of material in a carefully constructed taxonomic scheme. He describes animals, plants, and peoples of all the places of the known world. In modern terminology, we would call his text scientific. The Marvels text, on the other hand, especially in its context among other monster material, seems to extract the most sensational types of people, animals and plants, and present them in a concentrated form. In so doing, it departs from the genre of writers like Pliny, whose main agenda seems to be to inform and classify. The anomalous human forms call upon responses based on the potency of the deformed human body. The need for classification becomes much more urgent when one is confronted with these disturbing examples of taxonomic transgression. To perform the task of defining and limiting, one must pose particular questions. Are the monstrous races human, or are they animal? Do they have souls? Are they descended from Adam? These question engaged the minds of writers from Augustine to Bede. Augustine discusses these questions but refuses to commit himself. At first he seems to support their humanity: quis autem omnes commemorare possit humanos fetus Ionge dissimiles his, ex quibus eos natos esse certissimum est? Sicut ergo haec ex illo uno negari non possunt originem ducere, ita quaecumque gentes in diuersitatibus corporum ab usitato naturae cursu, quem plures et prope omnes tenent, uelet exorbitasse traduntur, si definitione ilia includuntur, ut rationalia animalia sint atque mortalia, ab eodem ipso uno primo patre omnium stirpem trahere confitendum est, si tamen uera sunt quae de allarum uarietate et tanta inter se atque nobiscum diuersitate traduntur. (De civitate dei XVI.8)8

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However, his conclusion is less definite: "aut illa, quae talia de quibusdam gentibus scripta sunt, omnino nulla sunt; aut si sunt, homines non sunt; aut ex Adam sunt, si homines sunt" (XV1.8). 9 Augustine denies the possibility of the existence of Pliny's antipodes: "Quod uero et antipodas esse fabulantur, id est homines a contraria parte terrae, ube sol oritur, quando occidit nobis, aduersa pedibus nostris calcare uestigia: nulla ratione credendendum est" (De civitate dei XVI.9). 10 Bede also discusses this question. The problem is that people on the other side of the equatorial zone would have to have somehow been engendered without descent from Adam, since that part of the earth is too hot to cross. This explanation is untenable, since it goes against scripture (Flint 67). Isidore sees monsters as portents of future events. As Wigginton and Stephens explain, God is so close to nature in Isidore's thought, that monsters must be "purposeful and responsible creations of God's will," rather than errors (74). He also denies the existence of antipodes, but supports the possible existence of the other version of the antipodes (a mistaken interpretation of the original, a race whose feet are attached backwards) (Flint 70). Christopher, although a Cynocephalus, was not only human, but a Christian and a saint. His humanity cannot be denied, although there is some question about when he became fully human; it was necessary for him to receive a miraculous gift of speech, since he could only bark. Grendel, who is the most monstrous monster of them all, is at times given human designations. Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe has shown how ambiguous a creature Grendel is: Three words refer unambiguously to Grendel as spirit: "deapscua" (1.160), "gastes" (1..133), "ellorgast" (1.807); four clearly make him a man: "guma" (II. 973, 1682), "ha:le3a" (1. 2072), "rinc" (1. 720), "wer" (1.105); two make him a recognizable monster: "eoten" (1. 761), "pyrse" (1.426), but the rest of the numerous epithets for Grendel are general enough to be applied to any hostile agent. As Hro3gar himself, who has had firsthand experience with Grendel, attempts to define him for Beowulf (II. 1345-67) he does so by mingling three categories of epithets. (486).

If writers like Augustine and Isidore are determined to allow the possibility of the humanity of the monstrous races, depictions of them in illustrations and verbal texts often implicitly question or negate their humanity. The reason for the intense interest in monsters is their otherness, and this sense of otherness is often pushed to the point where there are no common grounds for shared humanity. Not surprisingly, there are degrees of otherness represented. David Gordon White points out that Christopher is the only member of the race of dog-headed people to have a name. Except for Grendel, he may be the only one of the monstrous races to be allowed this humanizing attribute. Williams explains:

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To name someone is to differentiate, to put aside during the description his or her unity with other beings and with other things, and so, to call him John is to say and to know what he is not: not an animal, but human; not female but male; not Peter, James or any other man, but this one defined, contained, isolated individual. (33)

A name, then, can be any sign which functions to indicate that an individual is that one and no other, but also situates that individual in a state of relationship with others from whom he or she must be differentiated. This is precisely what the depicted monsters lack. Laura Mulvey has remarked that in usual dichotomies of dominant and oppressed groups, the dominant is linked to culture and the oppressed to "Nature" (167). Friedman outlines five cultural categories by which humanity may be called into question: clothing, food, language, weapons, and the presence or absence of cities (Monstrous Races 26-34). Thus the clothing, food, language, weapons and cities of Western Europeans are, like the male schema of the Harley Psalter, the default values that define humanity. As Friedman points out, "Greco-Roman accounts of the monstrous races exhibit a marked ethnocentrism which made the observer's culture, language, and physical appearance the norm by which to evaluate all other peoples" (26). Not only was the standard European, but, as GuyH. Allard claims, the norm was even more limited: Que! est le type d'homme normal pour cette societe chretienne? Schematiquement on pourrait repondre qu'est conforme a Ia raison l'homme adulte, raisonnable et conscient, libre et lettre , de sexe masculin, de race blanche, religieux. L'enfance et Ia vieillesse, les phenomenes irrationels de non-conscience, le non-lettre, Ia femme, lenoir et le jaune, l'insense (insipiens) sombrent dans Ia "region de Ia dissemblance." (19) 11

The genre of the Marvels text, then, is neither science in the Plinian sense, nor narrative, although, like science, it seeks to classify the marvels. Because, as Carroll claims, the monsters transgress taxonomic boundaries, it is necessary to place them in some kind of category. As David White puts it, A self-centered ideology is most particularly a matter of shunting off fundamental and troubling ambiguities, of a studied compartmentalization of lesser details for the sake of establishing order, or a semblance of order. Here, the danger and power of ideological dirt lies in its potential for boundary transgression: uncategorized, it threatens to slip between the cracks to contaminate the heart of the system. Ordering is an endless task of differentiation and definition, through organizing activity. (5)

A marvels text, then, is a genre which holds up for scrutiny, a static, objectifying model of otherness. But the fear of the monstrous operates not only in the realm of the social or theological, but on a more interior level as well. Bruno Roy claims that monsters serve as the incarnation of our most visceral fears, one of which is the loss of bodily integrity (79). Their classification "represente un effort de l'homme occidental ouest-europeen pour

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se confirmer dans sa normalite, en Ia confrontant point par point avec Ia difformite des races imaginaires" (76). 12 They raise the question, "Comment serion-nous si nous n'etions pas ce que nous sommes?" (75). 13 The monster, as Mary Patterson Thornburg claims, presents a reflection of the viewing self. Thornburg, writing about the gothic monster, sees Mary Shelly's Frankenstein monster as a doubling of the protagonist: Victor knows at once that the Monster is his own bad dream (its awakening is connected by him to a literal nightmare), and he knows that the content of the dream is personal, domestic, and sexual.. .. Being who he is, however, Victor is never fully aware of the Monster's meaning or of the Monster's relationship to his own identity. (7). The monster is a reflection, but one that is distorted as in a curved mirror. The fascination with the monstrous races is a fascination of recognition, but the recognized form is at once familiar and alien. Jacques Lacan theorizes a mirror stage in human development during which the infant encounters an image of her or himself as a complete, separate being, a self. The jubilation that the child feels at the realization is, however, accompanied by a realization that the self had previously been experienced as incohesive, a state Lacan calls the corps morce/e (the fragmented body) (Ecrits 2-5). The formation of the self, then is, as Jane Gallop expresses it, "always mediated through a totalizing image that has come from outside" (79). The maturation promised by this image is never realized. "This illusion of unity, in which a human being is always looking forward to self-mastery, entails a constant danger of sliding back again into the chaos from which he started; it hangs over the abyss of a dizzy Ascent in which one can perhaps see the very essence of Anxiety" (Lacan "Reflections on the Ego" 15). Malcolm Bowie explains further: The alienating destination of the "I" is such that the individual is permanently in discord with himself: the "I" is tirelessly intent upon freezing a subjective process that cannot be frozen, introducing stagnation into the mobile field of human desire. The inalienable alienation of the human species is, however, recounted not just in a hybrid philosophical language but in tones reminiscent of the gothic tale. Pregnance (force, potentiality, weight, of significance or implication) has, by the contagion perhaps from the English pregnancy, become a matter of childbearing. The child itself, recently born, gives birth to a monster: a statue, an automaton, a fabricated thing .... The body once seemed dismembered, all over the place, and the anxiety associated with this memory fuels the individual's desire to be the possessor and the resident of a secure bodily "I". These projections towards the ego are constantly threatened by a retrospective pull towards fragmentation' (25). The anxiety produced by the recognition of the corps morcele and the pull toward fragmentation does not disappear with maturity. Lacan writes:

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This fragmented body ... usually manifests itself in dreams when the movement of the analysis encounters a certain level of aggressive disintegration in the individual. It then appears in the form of disjointed limbs, or of those organs represented in exoscopy, growing wings and taking up arms for intestinal persecutions-the very same that the visionary Hieronymus Bosch has fixed, for all time, in painting. 14 (Ecrits 4) The Marvel of the East addresses the fear of loss of bodily integrity first, by making this fear present, objective, and embodied, and second, by placing that object at a safe distance. Michel Foucault has emphasized the ways in which power resides in the act of looking. His discussion of Bentham's panopticon, which allowed surveillance of a large number of prisoners, calls attention to its function as an instrument of power: Bentham "poses the problem of visibility, but thinks of a visibility organized entirely around a dominating, overseeing gaze. He effects the project of a universal visibility which exists to serve a rigorous, meticulous power" ("Eye of Power" 152). One feature of the device which constitutes its efficacy is that the gaze cannot be returned. The prisoners know they are being observed, but cannot see the observer. The same kind of power is exercised symbolically by the reader/viewer who looks at illustrations of the monstrous races, the embodiment of his or her own fears, scrutinized but not scrutinizing, immobile, exposed to the light of day. Like the unseen eye of the individual at the center of the panopticon, the eye of the reader/viewer of the Marvels transfixes the object of scrutiny. The prisoner observed by the panopticon is psychologically immobilized in the cell, just as the monster is literally immobilized on the page. A comparison with the depiction of the monsters in the Marvels with the presentation of the monster Grendel in Beowulf will show how differently they function in these two texts. In the Beowulf text, any empowerment that might result from allowing the gaze to rest upon the monster is withheld, both in the verbal and visual texts. The Beowulf text is not illustrated; this constitutes one of its major defining characteristics. Grendel is not seen, nor is he described. We derive our impressions of his appearance from his actions and character. The account of Grendel approaching and attacking Heorot is distinguished in English literature for its wonderful creepiness, and this effect is achieved by keeping Grendel in the dark. The narrative genre requires an atmosphere of tension, uncertainty, mystery that is heightened by Grendel's lack of definition. Grendel is more frightening than the monsters in the Marvels because he is not contained or limited by his description or depiction, not held immobile by the empowering gaze of the viewer. He is allowed to exist without boundaries. 15 Only when he is no longer a threat, do we see clearly his arm, and later his head, displayed as trophies. He becomes visible only when we reach a point in the plot where a release of tension is appropriate. This kind of tension is not necessary for the genre which the Marvels represents. Here, the beings must be fully visible from the beginning.

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If the gaze is an exercise of power, in the medieval period it can also pose a danger; the effect goes both ways. One falls in love by looking at the beloved whose rays enter through the eyes (Andreas Capellanus claims that the blind cannot fall in love) (33). A fetus can be marked or deformed by images that enter through the eyes of the mother. The act of looking at the representation of the monstrous is a substitute for looking at the thing itself, a situation in which the viewer has greater control over the object which cannot look back. At the same time that the text makes the monstrous races present and visible, it removes them from any possibility of actual encounter; they are always marginal. Pushed to the edges of the known world, they are always mysterious, always unknowable. Although many of the monstrous races in other literature are said to live in India, those in the Marvels text are in the Middle East and Africa, in the regions of Babylonia, the Red Sea, and the Nile River, although geographical information is inaccurate or garbled. In medieval maps of the world, Jerusalem is usually situated at the center of the known world, with the monstrous races placed in the outer margins. As Eastern lands became more known, the monstrous races were pushed farther outward. An ironic aspect of the othering of the people of India is that some of the stories of monstrous races came from the Indian people themselves, a result of their othering of peoples marginal to them. And Herodotus writes about the British Isles as the most marginalized of places: About the far west of Europe, I have no definite information, for I cannot acamnaoa, for pam oe Sela for hys geogooe he ne nam to 1o " ...

11

Notes to Chapter Four

193

gemacan. ([She] sat by the road which goes to Timnah because she had not taken Shela as a husband on account of his youth.) There is no pluperfect tense in Old English as there is in Latin, and the pluperfect sense must be implied from the context. 33 Because Shela had grown up and she had not accepted him as a husband. 34 A mistranslation in the Old English (38.2) makes Shuah the name of Joseph's wife. In both the Hebrew and Latin versions, Shuah is the name of his father-in-law. The difference is clearer in Latin in verse 12, but the Old English omits the name there altogether. 35 "Eman (sic). Termin[us] damasci sic[ut] in ezechiel legit[ur] ad oriente[m] v[ergens] a theman [et] palmetis: q[uae] cet[er]ri int[er]pretes ediderunt thamar. (Enaim. The boundary of Damascus. So it is read in Ezekiel: "to the east turning at Tamar and at the palm groves," which other interpreters give out as "Tamar.") This gloss is from Jerome's translation of Eusebius of Caesaria's De situ et nominihus locomm Hehraicorum. I am indebted to William Stoneman for identifying the source of this and the following glosses. Other glosses in this narrative are also concerned with place names. At the bottom of f. 56v: "Thamna vbi oues suas totondit judas. Ostendit[ur]q [ue] hodie uicu[s] p[er]g[ra]ndis I[n] finib[us] diospoleos euntib[us] elia[m] i(n] t[ri] b[us] dan siue jude" (Jerome's translation of Eusebius of Caesaria's De situ et nominibus locorum Hehreicorum 924). "Legim[us] iuxta heb[ra]ica[m] veritate[m] ubi iudas m[e]ret[r]ice(m] putans thamar dona t[ra]nsmittit et sequester mun[er] u[m] int[er]rogat u[bi] e[st] cadesa hoc e[st] scortu[m] cui[us] habit[us] a cet[er]is feminis i[m]mutatus est. In multis q[uoque] locis hoc idem repp[er]im[us]" (Jerome, Epistolae LXXVIII (De XLII mansionibus Israelitarum in deserto 716). (Timna where Judah sheared his sheep. Today it is revealed [to be] a very large district on the border of Diospoleos by those going the Elias in the tribes of Dan of Judah. We read according to Hebrew truth where Judah, thinking Thamar a prostitute, sent gifts, and the go-between with the gifts inquired, "Where is this fallen woman, where is the harlot whose dress is unchanged from other women." In many places also we discover this same thing.) On f. 57 is a comment on the place where Thamar's twins were born: "Chasbi u[bi] geminos iude filios thamar edidit. Oste[n]dit[ur] au[tem] nunc lo[cus] desert[us] iuxta odolla[m] in finib[us] eleutheropoleos" (Jerome's translation of De situ et nominuhus locorum Hehraicomm 935). (Chasbi where Thamar brought forth twin sons for Judah. But it is revealed now [to be] a deserted place near Odollah on the border of Eleutheropoleos.) 36 "Indeed brethren, all these things which are read in the Old Testament, if we are willing to accept them only according to the letter, will bring us little or no profit of soul. For of what benefit is it to us who assemble in church with devotion to hear the word of God, if it is mentioned that Abraham sent his servant to bring his son a wife from a distant country, when we see this happen frequently also in this land? However, brethren, following the blessed apostle Paul, we should believe that all things which were written for the Jews 'happened to them as a type,' but in reality were fulfilled for us" (Sermons 2:20). 37 This is not to say that the meanings thus produced can be exactly the same, but that they participate in an underlying fundamental signification. 38 Benveniste names the founding event as one of the three features of calendar time: "A founding event, which is taken as beginning a new era-the birth of Christ

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or the buddha, the Hegira, the beginning of the reign of a certain monarch-determines the axial moment in reference to which every other event is dated. This axial moment is the zero point for computing chronicle time." 39 "I have started here to discuss Sacred Scripture according to the plain meaning of the historical facts, not according to future events which they foreshadow" (reading "futurarum" for "figurarum") (1.17.34). He explains that the creation of evening indicates "the sin of rational creatures and the making of morning their renewal" (Literal Meaning of Genesis 39). 40 "Before all things brethren, we admonish and command you in the name of the Lord, that when you hear an exposition of the mystery of the scriptures telling of things that took place, you believe what is read to have actually taken place as the reading narrates; lest, undermining the foundation of actuality, you seek as it were to build in the air" (Auerbach's translation 39). 41 See the discussion of Noah's raven above, p. 126. 42 Therefore, the Rogation days are compared to many holy people, but all that is [too]long for us to recount. 4 3 Indeed, these four days may be matched with four perfect men, that is, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Christ. Therefore, Noah is first matched because he himself, at God's command, undertook to build the ark in the figure of the church, in which now all people are saved through baptism, by means of which eight people with their clean and unclean animals were saved when the flood destroyed the earth. Abraham also because he himself without the law, and having received in advance no admonishing, preserved the first perfect faith and believed with his whole heart in God the father, maker of the world .... Certainly Moses because he himself led the people of Israel out of Egypt coming through the Red Sea, with dry feet, and through the desert ways, at God's command. Indeed, also Christ, the son of God, most certainly is matched because as he after many miracles which he accomplished in the world, and after much enmity having been inflicted on him by the Jews, and after his passion and resurrection, in the presence of his apostles, ascended into heaven by his power, and led many with him, sat at the right hand of the father on high because of his divinity. 44 Now, it seems to me, friend, that that work is very dangerous for me or any person to undertake, because I fear that if some foolish person reads the book or hears it read, he will suppose that he will be able to live now, under the new law, just as the patriarchs lived then in that time, before the old law was instituted, or as people lived under the law of Moses. NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE 1 This

text is also known as "The Wonders of the East." These contextual differences are discussed more fully, p. 132. 3 Figures poorly delineated with a mutilated conclusion 4 Hastily executed watercolors in the text s See Kenneth Sisam, 96. 6 He came in the days of the Emperor Decius into the city that is called Sarno, from the nation where people have dogs' heads, and from the land in which people eat one another. He had a dog's head, and his hair was very thick, and his eyes shone as brightly as morning stars, and his teeth were as sharp as boars' tusks. 2

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7 For a more complete description of the history of the monstrous races, see Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, and Orchard, Pride and Prodigies. 8 "Moreover, who could enumerate all the human infants that are very unlike the parents of whom they were indubitably born? Therefore, since we cannot deny that these are descended from that one man, such is the case also with any races whatsoever that are reported to have deserted, as it were, by their divergent physical types, the normal path of nature that the majority and, in fact, nearly all men follow. If these peoples are classified among rational and mortal animals, then we must admit that their stock is descended from that same single first father of all mankind, always providing that the tales told about the diverse characteristics of these races and their great differences from one another and from us are authentic." (City of God 47, 49.) 9 "Either the written accounts of certain races are completely unfounded, or, if such races do exist, they are not human; m; if they are human, they are descended from Adam" (City of God, 49). 10 "But in regard to the story of the antipodes, that is, that there are men on the other side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets for us, who plant their footprints opposite ours, there is no logical ground for believing this" (Cit)' of God 49, 51). 11 What is the normal type of person for this Christian society? Schematically, we can answe1; that person who conforms to reason, the adult person, reasonable and conscious, free and literate, of the masculine sex, of the white race, religious. Childhood and old age, the irrational phenomena of unconscious, the non-literate, the female, the black, and the yellow, the insane fall in the region of the undifferentiated. 12 Represents an effort on the part of West-European people to confirm themselves in their normality, in confronting point by point the deformity of the imaginary races. 13 How would we be if we were not what we are? 14 Bosch's distorted creatures greatly resemble the babewyns that one finds in the margins of later medieval manuscripts. 15 John Gardner's reworking of the Grendel character uses the monster's viewpoint to question the nature of monstrousness. In a version of the story where we are privy to the monster's thoughts, the illustrations seem appropriate. Beowulf is a different story. 16 Most of the names of the monstrous races and animals appear only in the plural. I have provided hypothetical singulars for the following in order to avoid the awkwardness of referring to them only in the plural: Panoti (Panotus), Blemmyae (Blemmya), Hostes (Hostis). And Lertices (Lertex). 17 Then there is a certain island in the Red Sea where is a people that among us are called Donestre that grow like soothsayers (Ripons ammends frifteras to frihteras, as in Tiberius) from the head to the navel, and the other part is like a human. And they know human languages, and when they see a person of foreign race, they call him and his men by the names of known people; and with false words they deceive him and seize him, and after that they eat him all but the head. And then they sit and weep over the head. 18 People without heads who have their eyes and mouths on their breasts. They are eight feet long and eight feet wide.

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19 One is of the sun, the other of the moon. The sun's lake is hot in the daytime and cold at night. And the moon's is hot at night and cold in the daytime. Their breadth is 200 of the lesser miles, called stadia, and 133Y2 of the greater, called leagues. 20 Around this place women are born who have beards down to their breasts. And they put on horses' hides for garments. They are reputed to be the greatest huntresses. And instead of dogs, they (have) tigers and lions and lynxes that they bring up, which are the fiercest animals. 21 The schemata for women and men are very similar in the Tiberi us manuscript. The illustration of the Ethiopians shows a man and a woman. The only characteristic that differentiates the woman from the man is a rather inconspicuous pair of curved lines to indicate breasts. The only woman who is readily identifiable as such is the fully-clothed woman in the Woman-Giver depiction. 22 The Tiberius illustrator indicates the extreme height of the people of Ciconia (twenty feet) and the Hostes (feet and shanks twelve feet long and chests seven feet long) by making them too large to fit in their frames, but the Vitellius illustrator does not do this. 23 The Latin has "pro sua obscoenitate," (for their foulness) 24 On account of their abundance, they were attacked by the Macedonian Alexander the Great when he killed them when he was not able to take them living, because they are foul in body and contemptible. 25 This people lives many years and they are beneficent people. If anyone comes to them then they give him a woman before they let him depart. The Macedonian Alexander, when he came to them, wondered about their humanity; nor did ~e want to kill them or do harm to them. 26 .. .live on raw meat and honey. 27 .. of the lesser miles called stadia __ and of the greater that are called leagues, __ . In Latin, stadia _ _ quae faciunt leuuas __ . 28 There __are born. The Latin nasamtur is similarly formulaic. 2 9 A horse's mane, a boar's tusks, and a dog's head. 30 Valkyry's eyes 3! Whose eyes shine as brightly as if someone lit a large lantern on a dark night. 3l The story is found in Herodotus, who relates that ants "bigger than a fox, but not so big as a dog," when digging their burrows, throw up dirt which contains gold. The Persian king, he claims, keeps specimens of this creature (246). 33 As big as dogs 34 Beyond the river Brixontis, east from there, are born people tall and large, who have feet and legs twelve feet long, with sides and chests seven feet long. They are called Hostes. Indeed whatever person they catch, they devour him. 35 There are hospitable people, kings who have under them many tyrants.

NOTES TO CHAPTER SIX

'See pp. 246-47. This change is related to a general cultural concept of simultaneity prevalent across the culture during the period. 3 Emmerson (159-63) provides a chart wherein he compares the verbal and pictorial portraits, and lists which characteristics appear in each. 2

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4 Saenger points out that Augustine's Confessions was given chapter divisions and Isidore also divided his Etymologies during this time (376). 5 See Jacques Le Goff, "Merchant's Time and Church's Time in the Middle Ages" in Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages (29-41) where he traces the development of the idea of time as a commodity. 6 See Chapter Two on astronomical measurements of time. 7 This development coincides with the beginnings of polyphony-a shift from the horizontal model of simultaneous but disparate melodic lines where the first and last notes of a phrase were consonant , but others need not be, to the vertical model of harmonic progressions-which would come to full flower in the Renaissance. 8 The Bury Psalter, Ms. Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica, Reg. lat. 12, for example. These illustrations give the impression of an afterthought, and are very different from those found in the centripetal organization of the Gothic page. 9 Camille's Image on the Edge provides an extensive study of this type of manuscript illustration and its relation to the main body of the text. 10 See Martin M. Crow and Clair C. Olson, Chaucer Life-Records for full documentation of Chaucer's many activities .. 11 Emmerson calls attention to the role of the portraits as visual titles. 12 Burrows calls attention to the fact that each fit is half as long as the previous one. 13 See Sylvia's article on glosses from Jerome, also Graham Caie, "The Significance of the early Chaucer Manuscript Glosses (With Special Reference to the Wife of Bath's Prologue)." 14 Gaylord illustrates how Chaucer's portrait does not accord with traditional authorial schemata, but does accord with the wise old man icon as seen in illustrations of texts by Gower and others. ( 129). 15 She provides a detailed account of the criticism on this topic, pointing out the divergence in opinions as to what constitutes a type or an individual (187-89). 16 For commentary on Sir Thopas as a parody, see Alan Gaylord, "Chaucer's Dainty Dogerel: The Elvyssh Prosody of Sir Thopas," David Benson, "Their Telling Difference: Chaucer the Pilgrim and His Two Contrasting Tales," and Judith Tschann, "The Layout of Sir Thopas in the Ellesmere, Hengwrt, Cambridge Dd. 4.24, and Cambridge Gg. 4.27 Manuscripts." 17 Hanna's opinion is that because the portrait comes at the head of the tale rather than at the prologue, the emphasis is on the tale rather than the teller ("Introduction" 14 ). However, The emphasis is inherently on the teller for the prologue. It is when the pilgrim leads the audience into the world of the narrative that the teller is likely to be forgotten. But see also Ruth Waterhouse and Gwen Griffiths in "Sweete Wordes of Non-sense: The Deconstruction of the Moral Melibee," 348; Alan Gaylord, "Chaucer's Dainty Dogerel: The Elvysh Prosody of Sir Thopas," 90. 18 However, Paul Strohm claims that there is no inconsistency, because Melibbe must not try to make war on his enemies himself; he must trust in God to vanquish them. This argument makes sense until the last scene, where Prudence urges Melibee to "deemen moore curteisly," and to "yeven moore esy sentences and juggementz" (1855-56). 19 See Leslie Hotson, "The Tale of Melibeus and John of Gaunt," W. W. Lawrence, "The Tale of Melibeus;" Gardiner Stillwell, "the Political Meaning of Chaucer's Tale of Melibee;" William Askins, "The Tale of Melibee and the crisis at

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Westminster," and Lynn Staley Johnson, "Inverse Counsel: Contexts for the Melibee." 20 Richard Emmerson argues that if the quires were distributed among the illustrators to work on simultaneously, then Melibee received the portrait because it is close to the beginning of quire 20, and the first illustrator would have been still working on quire 19 (152). This scenario is quite possible, but suggests that although the supervisor took pains in assigning the portrait of the author to a highly competent illustrator, he or she was not particularly concerned about its placement. My sense is that the supervisor thought the author portrait important enough to warrant careful consideration on all accounts.

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