From these terms he moves semantically to "babuini, babewyns" (baboons or monkeys), and by association, to "monkey-business," the French word "singe"(monkey), thus "becoming the dubious status of representation itself, being the anagram for signe"(sign) (p. Further, Camille refuses the term grotesque, "a negatively loaded term coined in the sixteenth century to describe antique wall painting." Instead, Camille suggests, the marginalia were conscious creations and, in the terminology appropriate to the time, they might have been called fabula or curiositates. In these marginalia he sees nothing surrealistic or surreal, or even fantastic, as comparative art historian Jurgis Baltrusaitis (1903–1988) would have. However, marginalia often graced the margins of the manuscript independently from the text and expressed a content that seemed fairly remote from it.Īccording to art historian Michael Camille, medieval books of hours are filled with "visual noise"situating the pious believer at the edge of the profane and sacred that coexist on the manuscript page (Camille 1992, p. Medievalists have argued for a tight interfacing of text and image in many manuscripts where full-fledged illustration provide a kind of wordless commentary on the work and this can be a model for reading a relationship between text and marginalia as well. Medieval scholar Lilian Randall's Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (1966) is largely responsible for calling the attention of many medievalists, beyond manuscript specialists, to these remarkable marginal illustrations. Marginalia could reflect, mirror, or expand the main illustration of a text page, as has been the case for some works, such as the late-fourteenth-century allegorical poem the Romance of the Rose (Waters 1992). In medieval illuminated manuscripts figurative marginalia provide a rich terrain of artistic expression, with distinctive characteristics according to period, locus of production, and school or scriptorium. Marginalia are illustrations or notations in the margins of manuscripts.
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