Script as Image

In the Middle Ages, writing conveyed far more than information. In

contradistinction to the modern separation of image and text and, by

implication, form and content, which was reified with the invention of

printing, illuminated manuscripts made images out of words. In

consonance with Christian doctrine, which declared that the Word had

become flesh, letters painted on parchment assumed bodily presence to

create effects of power and persuasion. Painted letters elicited modes

of performance, oral recitation and ritual action. Far from calligraphic

ornament or a medium with prescribed boundaries, medieval lettering

reveals itself as a flexible instrument in which various categories of

human experience and expression – the audible, the visible, the

symbolic and the figurative – come together. Among the topics touched

on by this book are display scripts, monograms, nomina sacra and carmina

figurata, epigraphic inscriptions, chrysography and color, speech

scrolls, relationships among author, scribe and artist as expressed

through scripts, the anthropomorphic dimensions of abstract lettering,

and the impact of iconic scripts on the reader.