- Thursday, October 27, 2016
- 3:30 PM–5:00 PM
- Hiemenga Hall 477
Medieval Studies Colloquium
This talk investigates the relationship between artists and scribes of medieval Latin bestiaries manuscripts. Medieval bestiaries, which are derived from the ancient Physiologus, comprise a nearly 2000-year-old tradition and have spawned many hundreds of copies throughout Europe. About seventy percent of all bestiaries manuscripts are illuminated. Depending on the version of the bestiary and on the specific manuscript, the number of illustrated chapters varies from about thirty to one hundred and fifty. While many images reflect the text with relative accuracy, a considerable part of the images appear meaningless. Some simply portray a creature without a graphic elucidation of several of its traits and activities discussed in the text. Others portray an image wholly irrelevant to the text. This talk will discuss these disparities, their reasons, and the internal logic that accounts for the mismatching between image and text, and perhaps even more importantly the reasons that these mismatches have been retained in the bestiaries tradition.
About the Speaker
Ilya Dines, Ph.D. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is a fellow at the Catholic University of America and the Library of Congress for the Medieval and Renaissance Catalog Project.
This event is sponsored by the Medieval Studies Program and the History Department. All are welcome to attend.
