IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 525: Buildings, Books, and Bodies: The Materiality of Late-Medieval Devotional Art and Literature

Tuesday 2 July 2019, 09.00-10.30

Sponsor:	Department of English Language & Literature, University College London
Organiser:	Natalie Jones, Department of English Language & Literature, University College London
Moderator/Chair:	Ben Parsons, School of English, University of Leicester
Paper 525-a	Touching the Void: The Spiritual Significance of Tangibility in Dirk Bout's Triptych of the Life of the Virgin (Language: English) Jordan Cook, Department of History of Art, University of York / The National Gallery, London Index terms: Architecture - Religious, Art History - Painting, Lay Piety, Religious Life
Paper 525-b	Reading the Corpus: Christ's Body as Book in the Later Middle Ages (Language: English) Natalie Jones, Department of English Language & Literature, University College London Index terms: Art History - Painting, Language and Literature - Middle English, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Religious Life
Paper 525-c	Making a Good Woman out of a Manuscript (Language: English) Hetta Howes, School of English & Drama, Queen Mary, University of London Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Lay Piety, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Religious Life
Abstract	This interdisciplinary session investigates how the material, and ideas of materiality, facilitate spiritual experience in the later Middle Ages. Focusing on visual and literary cultures of Mariological and Christological devotion, the panel will explore how the material is invoked to assist a work's creative and spiritual endeavours. By considering uses of portal archways in images of the Virgin, the metaphor of Christ's body as book in literature and manuscript culture, and the materiality of a Christological prayer-sequence written for a female anchoress, the session investigates how readers might enact a movement from the material to the spiritual to enhance their devotional practices.