Art History 392M - S-Medieval Art of the Book

This course explores how and why a preoccupation with the care and commemoration of the dead was given concrete reality in art, architecture, and ritual throughout the Middle Ages. Proceeding in a largely chronological fashion, we will explore changing conceptions of death itself and the afterlife from the third through the fifteenth centuries. Critical in our investigations will be an understanding of the many ways in which the living and the dead were dependent upon one another throughout this period, and how all forms of the visual arts mediated this interdependence. Among the topics to be explored are the Apocalypse, the development of a purgatorial conscious, the creation of a class of the "special dead" (saints), confrontations with pandemics (The Black Plague), and - perhaps the most haunting images of all - the Macabre.

This course will introduce students to the history of medieval manuscripts and manuscript illumination. Maximally hands-on and discussion intensive, each session will focus on the skills required to examine medieval manuscripts and will concentrate on readings relating to those skills. In addition, students will develop the capability to determine the probable date, origin, and nature of a given manuscript. The opportunity to experience medieval objects first-hand and through both printed and digital facsimiles will deepen our analyses, and consideration of what a??the booka?? is as a medium will carry us to the digital environment in which medieval objects are, nowadays, so often experienced.