Illuminating the Word in the Early Middle Ages

Description

This richly illustrated study addresses the essential first steps in the development of the new phenomenon of the illuminated book, which innovatively introduced colourful large letters and ornamental frames as guides for the reader's access to the text. Tracing their surprising origins within late Roman reading practices, Lawrence Nees shows how these decorative features stand as ancestors to features of printed and electronic books we take for granted today, including font choice, word spacing, punctuation and sentence capitalisation. Two hundred photographs, nearly all in colour, illustrate and document the decisive change in design from ancient to medieval books. Featuring an extended discussion of the importance of race and ethnicity in twentieth-century historiography, this book argues that the first steps in the development of this new style of book were taken on the European continent within classical practices of reading and writing, and not as, usually presented, among the non-Roman 'barbarians'.

Lawrence Nees is Professor of Medieval Art and H. Fletcher Brown Chair of the Humanities at the University of Delaware. He is the author of The Gundohinus Gospels; From Justinian to Charlemagne: European Art A.D. 565-787; A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court; Early Medieval Art 300-1000; Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem, and edited Approaches to Early-Medieval Art. He is currently preparing two books: Illuminating the Word: On the beginnings of medieval book decoration, and Frankish Manuscripts 7th-10th Centuries. Professor Nees has received research fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center of Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (National Gallery of Art, Washington), the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, and the National Humanities Center.