Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages (review)

In her lucid introduction to this important work, Kathryn Starkey informs the reader that the debate over the meaning of the visual turn in medieval studies goes back at least to 600 AD, when Pope Gregory the Great defended the use of religious images, so that those not literate in Latin would be able to understand God's message. Gregory I argued that the use of words and images should not be regarded as mutually exclusive, but that the process of perceiving them was similar, as both call for reading and visualization. The essays she and Horst Wenzel have selected are intended to demonstrate the interplay between word, image, and performance in German medieval literature, in light of the visual turn courtly culture took in the 12th century. Another purpose of the work is to reveal the current state of medieval studies and to introduce German scholars to American audiences. The essays provide perspectives on medieval visual culture and a critical historical basis for the study of visuality and visual processes, focusing on images, material objects, performance, and the process of visually perceiving them. The essays are organized around the following themes: 1) New Visions in Medieval Studies; 2) Intermediality; 3) Rethinking Manuscript Culture; 4) Spiritual Visions; 5) Word, Image, and Technology. Edward T. Potter translated the essays of Ott, Müller, Ernst, Bumke, and Cramer; Starkey rendered this service to Wenzel.

Norbert H. Ott introduces "Word and image as a field of research." He reviews briefly the history of scholarship, contrasting the greater interdisciplinarity of North America, where media representation and transmission have been studied in their interrelationship, with the more pronounced philological focus of scholars in Germany and their penchant for the methods of literary history. He asserts that relationship between art and literature and image and text was as important to the construction of a German vernacular secular culture as was the relationship between Latin and the vernacular. What is needed today, he argues, is not only precise terminology and greater methodological agreement, but 1) a truly interdisciplinary approach among scholars of texts and scholars of images; 2) a comprehensive focus on medieval culture; 3) an understanding of the methodological principles of neighboring disciplines so that critical evaluation can proceed; 4) a cessation of the policing of the boundaries of individual disciplines; 5) a halt to the atomization of fields; and 6) an integration of disciplines within the context of common research interests. He concurs with Michael Curschmann that at this point the field is at a groundbreaking stage, and that a definitive work on images and text, oral and gestural performance, written and iconic representations can only be written some time in the future.

While affirming that the courtly culture relies on the visual language of communication that was encoded in iconic signs, Jan Dirk Müller ("Writing–Speech– Image: The Competition of Signs") warns against misreading these signs. Through careful visual analysis of scenes in epics he demonstrates that the exclusive reliance on legible visual encoding could and did lead to misreadings of visual signals, when not interpreted by words. To avoid misreadings, particularly when there are competing signs, Müller recommends paying special attention to the intersection of visual and verbal modes of communication.

Haiko Wandhoff writes on "The Shield as Poetic Screen: Early Blazon and the Visualization of Medieval German Literature." Focusing on the interdependence of verbal description and visual cues in literary texts, Wandhoff shows that verbal representation helps the audience visualize poetic works of art, such as the shield. Historically shields have represented noble status and social identity. Their description underwent a change from ekphrasis to heraldry, allowing for the easy transformation of the verbal into the visual medium. Heraldization found its place in poetry when writers, such as Johann von Würzburg, transformed romance into heraldic visament or blazon, as for instance in Wilhelm von Österreich, where the poetic text was turned into "the ultimate shield beyond shields." Wandhoff describes the explosion...