Skip to main content

IMC 2003: Sessions

Session 302: Impotence and Subversion, II: Sessions in Memory of Michael Camille

Monday 14 July 2003, 16.30-18.00

Sponsor:International Center of Medieval Art, New York
Organiser:Veronica Anne Sekules, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia
Moderator/Chair:Miri Rubin, School of History, Queen Mary, University of London
Paper 302-aImages of Authority and Subjection in the Teaching of Reading
(Language: English)
Michael Clanchy, Institute of Historical Research, University of London
Paper 302-bBeing Economic with the Truth on Trecento Rulers' Tombs
(Language: English)
Brendan Cassidy, School of Art History, University of St Andrews
Paper 302-cThe Natural Order of the Peasant
(Language: English)
Veronica Anne Sekules, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia
Abstract

Paper -a: After the Lateran Council of 1215, the primer for teaching reading becomes standardized, and images begin to match it of Lady Grammar [Grammatica] and the Virgin Mary with books or ABC boards. These are idealized female images, but did women [mothers typically, using Books of Hours] actually initiate their children into reading for purposes of prayer?

Paper -b: This paper explores the iconography of a number of Italian fourteenth-century tombs of signori in which the imagery is calculated to
deflect attention from the fact that their regimes were despotic. It is about rulers who use images to pretend that their regimes are not
totalitarian, that they owe their legitimacy to popular support and that their power, they suggest, is actually shared with representatives of the
people. It's about propaganda and the deceit that the powerful practice, to present themselves in the best possible light.

Paper -c: Taking up some of the themes from Camille’s works on the Luttrell Psalter, ‘Labouring for the Lord’ and ‘Mirror in Parchment’, this
paper will consider the tensions in images and perceptions of the medieval peasant as instrument of the lord, as burlesque entertainer, as moralising exemplar and as an extension of nature.