Liu Yuan’s Lingyan ge, a woodblock-printed book from 1669, re-creates a portrait gallery that memorialized 24 vassals of the early Tang court. Liu accompanied each figure, presented under the guise of a bandit, with a couplet; the poems, written in various scripts, are surrounded by marginal images that allude to a contemporary novel. Religious icons supplement the portrait gallery. Liu’s re-creation is fraught with questions. This study examines the dialogues created among the texts and images in Lingyan ge from multiple perspectives. Analysis of the book’s materialities demonstrates how Lingyan ge embodies, rather than reflects, the historical moment in which it was made. Liu unveiled and even dramatized the interface between manuscript and printed book in Lingyan ge. Authority over the book’s production is negotiated, asserted, overturned, and reinstated. Use of pictures to construct a historical argument intensifies this struggle. Anne Burkus-Chasson argues that despite a general epistemological shift toward visual forms of knowledge in the seventeenth century, looking and reading were still seen as being in conflict. This conflict plays out among the leaves of Liu Yuan’s book.
Pierre Salmon served as royal secretary to Charles VI of France at a time when papal schism plagued the church, civil war divided the country, and the king suffered from an intermittent but incapacitating psychosis. In an effort to find a cure for the king's illness, stabilize the turbulent political situation, and secure his own future, Salmon supervised the production of two distinct versions of the beautifully illuminated guidebooks to good kingship known as his Dialogues. Where much previous scholarship has relied on an abridged edition of the Dialogues, Anne D. Hedeman returns to the complete, original manuscripts to present a fresh view of Salmon's purposes. She suggests that whereas the first version (1409) held out hope for the king's eventual complete recovery and accordingly counseled him on ruling wisely, the second version (1412-15) reflected a changed political situation: the French civil war had erupted, the compromise pope had died, and efforts to find a cure for the king had failed. include the future governors of France, especially the heir, Louis of Guyenne, who took on an increased role in the government of the realm during his father's attacks of madness. Hedeman shows how Salmon manipulated artistic style and iconography to construct a visual narrative that often was quite independent of its text. She also suggests how changes to the images in Franois de Rochechouart's copy of the manuscript (ca. 1500) signal efforts to appropriate Salmon's stature as a trusted royal advisor for later political purposes. Richly illustrated with plates from the original manuscripts, Of Counselors and Kings is a treat to the eye as well as to the intellect.
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