medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Laura Jacobus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>This one ran and ran on the Medart-l discussion list, under the heading
Gislebertus if I recall. You'll find it in their archive, but set aside
a day....
well, it did; but then again it didn't.
Ron Baxter at the Courtauld Institute opened the question last winter with a
general (and somewhat negative) inquiry to the list --an art history list--
which was take up a bit by me and a very few others (perhaps including you,
Laura, regret that i cannot recall).
by the time i'd gotten around to finding a copy of the book out here in
LaLaLand where i was working on my winter tan, photocopying and reading it,
the string had gotten pretty stale and i was then weigh laid by about a dozen
other things and dropped the ball.
in any event, the topic never got the thorough airing it deserved, as best i
saw.
it *is* an interesting and important book by an established and respected
(certainly by me) scholar at the U. of Chicago (Professor Seidel has several
books under her dress) on a topic ("G. of Autun") which, to some extent, is of
interest to a broad range of medievalists in various fields: who amongst you
has not heard of and seen something of "his" work and would not hesitate to
use him as the Paradigmatic "Icon" he has become if pressed into service to
teach some kind of grand introductory course on The Middle Ages?
(among other things, the chapter devoted to historiography --the mainly 20th
c. "construction" of the notion of "Gislebertus" as a some kind of brilliant,
ideosyncratic, individual, creative genius cast in a very modern mould-- is
quite excellent, i thought, and well worth a careful reading by all who are
cogniscent of the constantly present pitfall of tyrannical constructs to which
we all are subject, no matter what particular discipline we may be mucking
around in.)
as i said, the purely historical parts (the identification of "Gislebertus" as
an historical personage and the precise institutional nature of the church of
St. Lazare within the fabric of Autun's ecclesiastical landscape) are best
skipped over to avoid considerable empathetic pain and, curiously enough, are
not really central to what i prefer to take as Professor Seidel's main
contribution.
the questions of "memory" or of "congruent replication" [my term, not
Seidel's] in medieval monuments which she raises are of much more general
interest, however, and the point of my bringing up on *this* list was, as i
say, to try and get some kind of feel for the book's presence on the horizon
of *non* art historians.
which, i take it from the Silence, is: not much.
dommage.
best to all from here,
christopher
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