
Images of Adventure
Ywain in the Visual Arts
James A. Rushing Jr.(Author)
University of Pennsylvania Press
1st Edition
Published on 29. September 1995
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-0-8122-3293-6 (ISBN)
Description
Modern audiences are most likely to encounter Yvain and other Arthurian characters in literature. We read ChrEtien de Troyes's Yvain or Hartmann von Aue's Iwein, and easily slip into the assumption that during the Middle Ages the title character existed primarily, or even exclusively, in these canonical texts. James A. Rushing, Jr. contends, however, that many times the number of people who heard or read ChrEtien or Hartmann must have known the Ywain story through the varieties of second-hand narration, hearsay, and conversation that we may call secondary orality. And man other people would have known the story through its visual representations.
Exploring the complex relationships between literature and the visual arts in the Middle Ages, Images of Adventure: Ywain in the Visual Arts examines pictorial representations of the story of Ywain, knight of the Round Table, from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. Of the images Rushing studies, only those found in the manuscripts of ChrEtien's Yvain are placed in any obvious relation with a written text, and not even they can be construed as straightforward illustrations. Images of Ywain are presented without any textual anchor in the thirteenth-century wall paintings from Schmalkalden in eastern German and Rodenegg Castle in the South Tyrol; on the rich embroidery sewn in the fourteenth century for the patrician Malterer family of Freiburg; and in a group of English misericords that show Ywain caught in a moment of high adventure and perhaps comic embarrassment.
"Pictures," according to Pope Gregory the Great, "are the literature of the laity." Navigating between the traditional disciplines of literary study and art history, Images of Adventure offers at once a detailed catalog of Ywain images, a series of close "readings" of works of art, and a concrete sense of what Gregory's oft-quoted statement may actually have meant in practice.
Exploring the complex relationships between literature and the visual arts in the Middle Ages, Images of Adventure: Ywain in the Visual Arts examines pictorial representations of the story of Ywain, knight of the Round Table, from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. Of the images Rushing studies, only those found in the manuscripts of ChrEtien's Yvain are placed in any obvious relation with a written text, and not even they can be construed as straightforward illustrations. Images of Ywain are presented without any textual anchor in the thirteenth-century wall paintings from Schmalkalden in eastern German and Rodenegg Castle in the South Tyrol; on the rich embroidery sewn in the fourteenth century for the patrician Malterer family of Freiburg; and in a group of English misericords that show Ywain caught in a moment of high adventure and perhaps comic embarrassment.
"Pictures," according to Pope Gregory the Great, "are the literature of the laity." Navigating between the traditional disciplines of literary study and art history, Images of Adventure offers at once a detailed catalog of Ywain images, a series of close "readings" of works of art, and a concrete sense of what Gregory's oft-quoted statement may actually have meant in practice.
More details
Series
Edition
Reprint 2016
Language
English
Place of publication
Pennsylvania
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paper over boards
Illustrations
44 illus.
44 illus.
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
633 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8122-3293-6 (9780812232936)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
11/2016
1st Edition
University of Pennsylvania Press
€196.99
Available for download
Person
James A. Rushing, Jr., is Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University, Camden.
Content
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Exploring the Realms Beyond the Text
1. The Ambiguity of Adventure: The Rodenegg Mural Cycle
2. The Game of Adventure: The Ywain Wall Paintings at Schmalkalden
3. Exemplary Scenes of Adventure: Princeton University Library Garrett
4. Adventures Right and Wrong: The Illuminated Paris Yvain
5. The Adventure of the Horse's Rear: Ywain on English Misericords
6. Adventure Turned to Slavery: The Malterer Embroidery
7. Ywain in the Adventurer's Hall of Fame: The Runkelstein "Triads"
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Exploring the Realms Beyond the Text
1. The Ambiguity of Adventure: The Rodenegg Mural Cycle
2. The Game of Adventure: The Ywain Wall Paintings at Schmalkalden
3. Exemplary Scenes of Adventure: Princeton University Library Garrett
4. Adventures Right and Wrong: The Illuminated Paris Yvain
5. The Adventure of the Horse's Rear: Ywain on English Misericords
6. Adventure Turned to Slavery: The Malterer Embroidery
7. Ywain in the Adventurer's Hall of Fame: The Runkelstein "Triads"
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index