Authority of Images / Images of Authority: Shaping Political and Cultural Identities in the Pre-Modern World [Hardcover]

Focusing on language's political power, these essays discuss how representation, through language norms, plays and court spectacles, manipulations and adaptations of texts and images, both constitutes and reflects a cultural milieu. The volume brings together various disciplinary approaches, offering a complex appreciation of these questions. While a core of the essays focuses on France, the contributions engage a broad range of geographical contexts, from Byzantium to eastern Germany and England from the early centuries of the Common Era to the seventeenth century, revealing the prevalence and persistence of the key interconnected issues of images and authority. Contributors: Carla Bozzolo; Philippe Caron; Robert L. A. Clark; Paul Cohen; Thomas Conley; Jean-Philippe Genet; Douglas Kibbee; Gillette Labory; Nicole Pons; Mara R. Wade. The book serves as a reminder that we can only translate the past that has been left to us--and much of the time that past has been skewed--whether intentionally or not. The essays included in this collection offer new insights, new data, and new interpretations of their subjects which are a welcome addition to studyes in translation, art, literature, and history. The transdisciplinarity of the collection is to be commended, and will no doubt be of use to many scholars working on aspects of medieval and early modern authority. Rachel Reid, Queen's University Belfast, The Medieval Review 17.11.03