Blackwell Reference Online

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Why should the margins of devotional books . . . be loaded with incongruous distortions of natural or fabulous forms of life and why did not the sense of propriety in the possessors of such books revolt at the ill-timed, and even indecent, merriment of the artist? The only answer to be given to this question is that the ornamentation of a manuscript must have been regarded as a work having no connection whatever with the character of the book itself. Its details amused or aroused the admiration of the beholder who . . . took no thought whether the text was sacred or profane. It has taken art historical study of the imagery in the margins of Romanesque and Gothic manuscripts, as well as in the figurative margins of religious architecture and furniture, nearly 70 years to get beyond this response to the question so many viewers have asked, as phrased by E. M. Thompson, Keeper of Manuscripts for the British Museum, in his 1896 essay “The Grotesque and the Humorous in Illuminations of the Middle Ages.” A few years later, Louis Maeterlinck opened his own study of satire in Flemish painting by paraphrasing Thompson's question and answer, and then elaborating on the reasons for this compartmentalization: different zones of the manuscript page were intended for different audiences; the text written in the center was meant for the education of the men in the family, while the extraneous ... log in or subscribe to read full text