>  I have a very technical question.  Is there a
> >difference between the word "image" and the word "stereotype"?
> Are there any works, medieval or not, which
> >discuss this type of distinction?

In literary studies, you really have a plethora of terms covering the kinds of
representation that you find in texts.  (You might not be dealing with strictly
literary texts, but when you are dealing with written characterisations of humanity,
you could do a lot worse than use literary techniques in your analysis.)  The reason
that there are so many terms is that the terminology that we use often comes freighted
with unspoken assumptions.  If you really want to look into this question thoroughly,
I really don't think there is a short answer to be given to your question.

If you had the time, I think you would find it worthwhile to read some sort of
introductory text on literary studies.  The only one I have here is Critical Terms in
Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia & Thomas McLaughlin.  It has separate, short,
readable chapters on such useful topics (for you) as "Representation", and "Race",
amongst others.  I notice in the chapter on race, the author (Anthony Appiah) refers
to some Elizabethan representations of Jews and quite happily uses the word
stereotype.  But he does so in order to show that what we might dismiss with that
pejorative term had dynamic, working meanings for the people in whose time it was
produced.  This leads me to the comments of Richard Landes:

>
> this seems analogous to the difference btwn a sign and a symbol.
> Stereotypes tend, like signs, to be undimensional, whereas images and
> symbols are multi-valent, and can this, take on a life of their own.

>
> Stereotypes, on the other hand, are one of the products of a mentalite,
> rather than an operative force in the workings of mentalite.

This definition might be neat & easy to get hold of (a bit like a stereotype, in
fact), but it avoids dealing with a lot of the more slippery & more interesting issues
of how we categorise other people's ideas.  Undimensional to whom?  Multi-valent to
whom?  And if a stereotype, however stale or repugnant it might seem to one person,
has obvious meaning to another -- if it has, in fact, the power to affect people's
lives -- why should it be dismissed in this fashion?  To label something a stereotype
often means stopping short of doing the real work; why do such similar "images" recur
so frequently that we can be tempted to label them "stereotypes"?  Who is producing
them?  Who might be listening to them?  Are they to be found in times of particular
social unrest/economic hardship or other noteworthy conditions?   In short, WHY did/do
they have such appeal?  This, to me at least, is a much more interesting question to
ask, than to dismiss them as second-rate intellectual products.

There is another essay you might be interested in, that is more directly on this
topic:
Kathleen Biddick, "Genders, bodies, borders: Technologies of the visible," Speculum 68
(1993): 389-418.  Biddick is very down on Caroline Walker Bynum for not recognising
that the eucharistic images (literally images this time) that she celebrates as
liberating  for Christian women, were part of a massive campaign of anti-semitism
taking place in parts (I think) of what is now modern Germany.  I don't have the
article at hand, but from memory, I believe she made links between these eucharistic
images and the circulation about tales of Jews desecrating the eucharist.  My point is
that although those "stereotypical" stories may have been around a long time, they had
some terrible momentum in this particular time and place, and, instead of just
dismissing them as stereotypical, it turns out to be much more useful to consider who
is promulgating the stories here than the content of the stories themselves.  It is,
further, somewhat pointless to try and understand them, in Biddick's examples, without
taking them in relation to what was being set up as the opposite of everything the Jew
was being made to stand for; the holiness and goodness that comes with eucharistic
devotion.  One makes the other look good, and vice versa.  As I said before,
stereoptypes do work.

I hope this helps,
Melissa Raine



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%