Author: Bart Besamusca Publisher: University of Wales Press ISBN: 178683684X Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 410
Book Description
There is no book-length overview of the Dutch Arthurian tradition in English available at this moment. Like the other books in the ALMA series, this book will give the state of the art in (in this case Dutch) Arthurian studies. This book provides a comprehensive and informed survey of medieval Arthurian literature in Dutch.
Author: Tjamke Snijders Publisher: Brepols Publishers ISBN: 9782503552941 Category : Benelux countries Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This study investigates how medieval abbeys in the Southern Low Countries used hagiographical manuscripts as a communicative tool. Four basic questions are addressed: How did layout influence a manuscript's communicative potential? Was manuscript communication influenced by its composition? How did the flexibility of texts and manuscripts influence their communicative function? And how did the position of the monastery within the monastic landscape influence manuscript communication? Ranging from in-depth case studies to discussions of structure and agency in manuscript terminology and layout in the aftermath of New Philology, this book argues that the High Middle Ages witnessed a fundamental process of manuscript diversification and specialisation, which was at the basis of the thirteenth-century revolution in manuscript layout. This led twelfth-century monks to start conceptualising the manuscript as an object with fixed contents, which was to be used and copied as a whole. Consequently, the production and spread of saints' lives became part of a process of ideological homogenisation among Benedictine monasteries and started a crucial development in medieval literacy. Awarded the Mgr. Charles De Clercq award from the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (2012) and the five-yearly Flemish Award for Historical Sciences of the Academische Stichting Leuven (2013).
Author: Michiel de Vaan Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company ISBN: 9027264503 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 633
Book Description
The Low Countries are famous for their radically changing landscape over the last 1,000 years. Like the landscape, the linguistic situation has also undergone major changes. In Holland, an early form of Frisian was spoken until, very roughly, 1100, and in parts of North Holland it disappeared even later. The hunt for traces of Frisian or Ingvaeonic in the dialects of the western Low Countries has been going on for around 150 years, but a synthesis of the available evidence has never appeared. The main aim of this book is to fill that gap. It follows the lead of many recent studies on the nature and effects of language contact situations in the past. The topic is approached from two different angles: Dutch dialectology, in all its geographic and diachronic variation, and comparative Germanic linguistics. In the end, the minute details and the bigger picture merge into one possible account of the early and high medieval processes that determined the make-up of western Dutch.
Author: Kathryn M. Rudy Publisher: Open Book Publishers ISBN: 1783742364 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 226
Book Description
Medieval manuscripts resisted obsolescence. Made by highly specialised craftspeople (scribes, illuminators, book binders) with labour-intensive processes using exclusive and sometimes exotic materials (parchment made from dozens or hundreds of skins, inks and paints made from prized minerals, animals and plants), books were expensive and built to last. They usually outlived their owners. Rather than discard them when they were superseded, book owners found ways to update, amend and upcycle books or book parts. These activities accelerated in the fifteenth century. Most manuscripts made before 1390 were bespoke and made for a particular client, but those made after 1390 (especially books of hours) were increasingly made for an open market, in which the producer was not in direct contact with the buyer. Increased efficiency led to more generic products, which owners were motivated to personalise. It also led to more blank parchment in the book, for example, the backs of inserted miniatures and the blanks ends of textual components. Book buyers of the late fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century still held onto the old connotations of manuscripts—that they were custom-made luxury items—even when the production had become impersonal. Owners consequently purchased books made for an open market and then personalised them, filling in the blank spaces, and even adding more components later. This would give them an affordable product, but one that still smacked of luxury and met their individual needs. They kept older books in circulation by amending them, attached items to generic books to make them more relevant and valuable, and added new prayers with escalating indulgences as the culture of salvation shifted. Rudy considers ways in which book owners adjusted the contents of their books from the simplest (add a marginal note, sew in a curtain) to the most complex (take the book apart, embellish the components with painted decoration, add more quires of parchment). By making sometimes extreme adjustments, book owners kept their books fashionable and emotionally relevant. This study explores the intersection of codicology and human desire. Rudy shows how increased modularisation of book making led to more standardisation but also to more opportunities for personalisation. She asks: What properties did parchment manuscripts have that printed books lacked? What are the interrelationships among technology, efficiency, skill loss and standardisation?
Author: Rik Van Nieuwenhove Publisher: Paulist Press ISBN: 9780809105694 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 440
Book Description
"When one looks at an icon, one bas the sense that God is looking back. Our whole person is involved. What the prayers and music of the Feast convey through the ears, the icon conveys visually." This book showcases a collection of extraordinarily beautiful icons that introduces readers and art appreciators to the spiritual riches of the Byzantine liturgical tradition. The author, Father Michael Evdokimov, presents an icon for each of the twelve great feasts of the Orthodox Christian liturgical year. Preceding each icon is a brief commentary of what the reader can hope to find in the icon, including nuances that a casual observer might miss. Facing each icon are prayers appropriate for meditating on the icon. Quotations from spiritual writers of all ages of Christianity are interspersed in the book. In a simple, straightforward manner, Evdokimov shows how the prayers and the icons used to worship God can nourish the spiritual life. Although he sets before his readers beliefs and practices common to Orthodox people everywhere in the world, anyone who appreciates beautiful art will find much to savor here.
Author: Hanno Wijsman Publisher: Brepols Publishers ISBN: Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 332
Book Description
In 2006, 500 years after his death, the Royal Library of Belgium organised an exhibition revealing treasures from the era of Philip the Fair (1478-1506), last duke of Burgundy. This volume reunites most of the papers delivered at a conference held during the exhibition, increased with two new articles. Ten specialists from Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States discuss the book market and its place in society in this transitional period when manuscripts and printed books were produced and used next to one another. The contributions are organised in pairs around five topics, whereby in each case one author treats manuscripts and the other printed books: Philip the Fair and his books, art in books, music in books, politics in books, the book market. Contributions by: Renaud Adam, Jean-Marie Cauchies, Lieve De Kesel, Samuel Mareel, Zoe Saunders, Susie Speakman Sutch, Herman Pleij, Jan Van der Stock, Rob Wegman, and Hanno Wijsman.
Author: Kerstin Carlvant Publisher: Harvey Miller Pub ISBN: 9781905375677 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 542
Book Description
This is the first comprehensive and in-depth study of the earliest figural painting ever to have been produced in Flanders on a continual basis. Most of the manuscripts are Psalters, but Bibles, a Breviary, a Missal, a Netherlandic life of a saint, and yet other texts occur. Three main categories of illuminator are distinguishable: those working in Bruges, in Ghent, and, at least in part, for the circle of the counts of Flanders. The principal chapters and the catalog segments are organized around their individual contributions. An arrangement in time and place of the total body of work was obtained through a lengthy and rigorous process of comparison of figural, ornamental and writing styles, codicological and textual features. Several distinctive Flemish patterns of Psalter iconography have emerged; these are presented in tabular form with accompanying commentaries. A surprising amount of information about the early owners of the books, mostly well-to-do members of the laity, was yielded in the analysis for the manuscript catalogs.
Author: Jane Fenoulhet Publisher: UCL Press ISBN: 1910634972 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
This edited collection explores the ways in which our understanding of the past in Dutch history and culture can be rethought to consider not only how it forms part of the present but how it can relate also to the future. Divided into three parts – The Uses of Myth and History, The Past as Illumination of Cultural Context, and Historiography in Focus – this book seeks to demonstrate the importance of the past by investigating the transmission of culture and its transformations. It reflects on the history of historiography and looks critically at the products of the historiographic process, such as Dutch and Afrikaans literary history. The chapters cover a range of disciplines and approaches: some authors offer a broad view of a particular period, such as Jonathan Israel's contribution on myth and history in the ideological politics of the Dutch Golden Age, while others zoom in on specific genres, texts or historical moments, such as Benjamin Schmidt’s study of the doolhof, a word that today means ‘labyrinth’ but once described a 17th-century educational amusement park. This volume, enlightening and home to multiple paths of enquiry leading in different directions, is an excellent example of what a past-present doolhof might look like.
Author: Matthew S. Champion Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022651479X Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
Over the course of the fifteenth century, the Low Countries transformed Europe's economic, political and cultural life. Innovative and influential cultural practices emerged across the region in flourishing courts, towns, religious houses, guilds and confraternities. Whether in visual culture, music, devotional practice, or communal rituals, the thriving cultures of the Low Countries wrestled with time, both through explicit measurement and reflection, and in the rhythms of social and religious life. This book offers a deeper understanding of how time was structured and experienced by different constituencies through a series of detailed readings of diverse cultural objects and practices, ranging from woodcuts and painted altarpieces, to early print books, and to the use of polyphony in the liturgy. Individual chapters are devoted to life in the university towns of Louvain and Ghent, the liturgical rituals at Cambrai Cathedral, and the rich pageantry that marked the courts of Philip the Good and the new Burgundian rulers. What emerges is a complex temporal landscape in which devotional and secular practices and experiences merged into a new "fullness of time."
Author: Bart Besamusca
Author: Tjamke Snijders
Author: Michiel de Vaan
Author: Kathryn M. Rudy
Author: Rik Van Nieuwenhove
Author: Hanno Wijsman
Author: Kerstin Carlvant
Author: Jane Fenoulhet
Author: Matthew S. Champion
Author: Thomas Bowdler