Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The Arthurian tradition's visual imagery can seem an unwieldy lot, displaying a prodigious variety of media. Although often times coinciding with the chronological record of Arthurian literature, and at times even pre-dating the written texts, these visual retellings of King Arthur's legend in fact proscribe a unique path of interpretation from their textual cousins. Not merely illustrative of the written word, images of the Arthurian legend employ the materiality of their form and function to convey meaning and engender specific receptions. Such formal properties aid the viewer in receiving and understanding Arthurian stories as specific reflections of and influences on the particular cultures in which they were created. What survives of medieval visual images, including those depicting the Arthurian legend, is a mere fraction of what must surely have been produced. Our task then is to construct a history of Arthurian visual imagery from the precious fragments that remain. Some of the earliest depictions of Arthur's legend can be found from the twelfth century attached to churches in the form of sculpture. This so-called secular imagery shared the architectural spaces with the more valorized images of sacred history. Modern notions of a stark opposition between secular and sacred were unthinkable in this period; the church saw all aspects of life, and indeed all aspects of cosmic ... log in or subscribe to read full text