IMC 2017: Sessions

Session 1602: All That Glitters: Experiencing Gold in Text and Manuscript

Thursday 6 July 2017, 11.15-12.45

Organiser:	Jane Sinnett-Smith, Department of French Studies, University of Warwick
Moderator/Chair:	Catherine E. Karkov, School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies, University of Leeds
Paper 1602-a	The Touch of Gold (Language: English) Spike Bucklow, Hamilton Kerr Institute, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge Index terms: Art History - General, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Technology, Theology
Paper 1602-b	Painted Gold and Jewels: An Interlude of Materials and Media in Carolingian Gospel Books (Language: English) Ilka Mestemacher, Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar, Universität Hamburg Index terms: Art History - General, Biblical Studies, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Religious Life
Paper 1602-c	Kissing, Touching, Wearing away: Reliquaries, Gold, and Tactile Devotion in the Manuscripts of Gautier de Coinci's Miracles de Nostre Dame (Language: English) Jane Sinnett-Smith, Department of French Studies, University of Warwick Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Lay Piety, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Religious Life
Abstract	Highly malleable, yet also incorruptible; associated with purity and spiritual perfection, yet also hinting at avaricious desires, gold in the Middle Ages is dense with symbolic potential. This interdisciplinary session brings together literary specialists and art historians to explore the ways gold is used, represented, and experienced in medieval manuscripts. Focusing on manuscripts as sites of multi-sensory and multi-media experience uniting the visual, aural, and tactile as well as text, image, and object, this panel asks how the materiality and symbolic density of gold affects its treatment in manuscripts, and in turn how this inflects the reader's experience of the book.