Speaking Sculptures in Late Medieval Europe explores medieval sculptors’ motif of the open mouth. The speech mode, as it is called in this book, is more than an illusionistic device or an affective ploy to foster the emotional response of the viewer. Here it is shown to have a deeper significance as an agent of engagement and persuasion. Through the evocation of sound, speaking sculptures fostered imaginatively an aural relationship between the sculpture and the viewer.
Exploring a wide range of geographies, this work demonstrates that the speech mode in sculpture was not an isolated phenomenon but a familiar device in many areas of Late Gothic Europe. By highlighting 14th-, 15th- and early 16th-century examples, as well as key 13th-century precedents, Speaking Sculptures in Late Medieval Europe explores the uses and purposes of this silent rhetoric, and the agency it implies within the period eye and the period ear of pre-Reformation Catholic Europe.
By:
Kim W. Woods
Imprint: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 250mm,
Width: 190mm,
Spine: 16mm
ISBN: 9781848226739
ISBN 10: 184822673X
Series: Northern Lights
Pages: 128
Publication Date: 08 April 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction: Speaking Sculptures in Theory and Practice; 1: Affective Sound, Dramatic Dialogue and Animated Performance; 2: Catechism, Liturgy and Song; 3: Speech, Rhetoric and Agency; 4: The Speaking Dead; Conclusion
Kim W. Woods is an Honorary Associate at the Open University. Her recent publications include Cut in Alabaster: A Material of Sculpture and its European Traditions 1330–1530 (2018) and Imported Images: Netherlandish Late Gothic Sculpture in England, c.1400–c.1550 (2007).
