Myth, Montage, and Visuality in Late Medieval Manuscript Culture: Christine De Pizan’s Epistre Othea

The material properties of late medieval manuscripts testify to the power of visual images to shape both the reading experience and the reader. Desmond and Sheingorn’s innovative study draws extensively on film theory and its notions of spectatorship to explore the ethical implications of viewing illustrated manuscripts for the medieval reader. Focusing particularly on two manuscripts, the Duke’s manuscript and the Queen’s manuscript of Christine de Pizan’s Epistre Othea, the authors suggest that pre-modern and post-modern cultures share a predilection for the cinematic arrangement of knowledge in a montage format in which meaning derives from unexpected juxtapositions.