Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England

Textuality and the Visual Image

James Simpson editor Nicolette Zeeman editor Jeremy Dimmick editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:14th Feb '02

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England cover

This book capitalizes on brilliant recent work on sixteenth-century iconoclasm to extend the study of images, both their making and their breaking, into an earlier period and wider discursive territories. Pressures towards iconoclasm are powerfully registered in fourteenth and fifteenth-century writings, both heterodox and orthodox, just as the use of images is central to the practice of both politics and religion. The governance of images turns out, indeed, to be central to governance itself. It is also of critical concern in any moment of historical change, when new cultural forms must incorporate or destroy the images of the old order. The iconoclast redescribes images as pure matter, objects of idolatry worthy only of the hammer. Issues of historical memory, no less than of social ethics, are, then, inherent to the making, love, and destruction of images. These issues are the consistent concern of the essays of this volume, essays commissioned from a range of outstanding late medievalists in a variety of disciplines: literature, art history, Biblical studies, and intellectual history.

... this strong collection of essays can be recommended for its sustained quality and welcomed for having pointed the direction towards fresh pathways of thought. * Modern Language Review *
The book is, in all of its parts, as erudite as it is suggestive. * Revue d'Histoire Ecclesiastique *
... rewarding reading. * Journal of Ecclesiastical History *
This collection of essays presents itself in a very promising way. Its topics are both currently fashionable and undeniably central to late medieval England. Its contributors include an impressive gathering of eminent medievalists. Its publisher has given the volume an elegant design. * Joel Fredell, The Medieval Review *

ISBN: 9780198187592

Dimensions: 242mm x 162mm x 20mm

Weight: 540g

264 pages