1 THE NEW MIDDLE AGES BONNIE WHEELER, Series Editor The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to pluridisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer- reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections. PUBLISHED BY PALGRAVE: Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Crossing the Bridge: Comparative Essays on Patronage, and Piety Medieval European and Heian Japanese edited by Gavin R. G. Hambly Women Writers edited by Barbara Stevenson and The Ethics of Nature in the Middle Ages: On Cynthia Ho Boccaccio’s Poetaphysics by Gregory B. Stone Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages Presence and Presentation: Women in the by Laurel Amtower Chinese Literati Tradition Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of edited by Sherry J. Mou Investiture The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: edited by Stewart Gordon Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth- Century Representing Rape in Medieval and Early France Modern Literature by Constant J. Mews edited by Elizabeth Robertson and Understanding Scholastic Thought with Christine M. Rose Foucault Same Sex Love and Desire Among Women in by Philipp W. Rosemann the Middle Ages For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de edited by Francesca Canadé Sautman Burgh and Pamela Sheingorn by Frances A. Underhill Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages: Ocular Desires Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in by Suzannah Biernoff the Middle Ages edited by Cindy L. Carlson and Angela Listen, Daughter: The Speculum Virginum Jane Weisl and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-S axon edited by Constant J. Mews England by Mary Dockray- Miller Science, the Singular, and the Question of Theology Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth- by Richard A. Lee, Jr. Century Woman edited by Bonnie Wheeler Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance The Postcolonial Middle Ages edited by Thelma S. Fenster and Clare edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen A. Lees Chaucer’s Pardoner a nd Gender Theory: Malory’s Morte D’Arthur: R emaking Bodies of Discourse Arthurian Tradition by Robert S. Sturges by Catherine Batt The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in Religious Literature the Southern Low Countries edited by Renate Blumenfeld- Kosinski, edited by Ellen E. Kittell and Mary A. Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Warren Suydam Popular Piety and Art in the Late Middle Charlemagne’s Mustache: And Other Cultural Ages: Image Worship and Idolatry in England Clusters of a Dark Age 1350–1500 by Paul Edward Dutton by Kathleen Kamerick Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight Absent Narratives, Manuscript Textuality, and in Medieval Text and Image Literary Structure in Late Medieval England edited by Emma Campbell and Robert by Elizabeth Scala Mills Creating Community with Food and Drink in Queering Medieval Genres Merovingian Gaul by Tison Pugh by Bonnie Effros Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism Representations of Early Byzantine Empresses: by L. Michael Harrington Image and Empire The Middle Ages at Work by Anne McClanan edited by Kellie Robertson and Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Michael Uebel Objects, Texts, Images Chaucer’s Jobs edited by Désirée G. Koslin and Janet by David R. Carlson Snyder Medievalism and Orientalism: Three Essays on Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady Literature, Architecture and Cultural Identity edited by Bonnie Wheeler and John by John M. Ganim Carmi Parsons Queer Love in the Middle Ages Isabel La Católica, Queen of Castile: Critical by Anna Klosowska Essays edited by David A. Boruchoff Performing Women in the Middle Ages: Sex, Gender, and the Iberian Lyric Homoeroticism and Chivalry: Discourses of Male by Denise K. Filios Same-S ex Desire in the Fourteenth Century by Richard E. Zeikowitz Necessary Conjunctions: The Social Self in Medieval England Portraits of Medieval Women: Family, by David Gary Shaw Marriage, and Politics in England 1225–1350 Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages by Linda E. Mitchell edited by Kathryn Starkey and Horst Eloquent Virgins: From Thecla to Joan of Arc Wenzel by Maud Burnett McInerney Medieval Paradigms: Essays in Honor of The Persistence of Medievalism: Narrative Jeremy duQuesnay Adams, Volumes 1 and 2 Adventures in Contemporary Culture edited by Stephanie Hayes- Healy by Angela Jane Weisl False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Capetian Women Middle English Literature edited by Kathleen D. Nolan by Elizabeth Allen Joan of Arc and Spirituality Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of edited by Ann W. Astell and Alterity in the Middle Ages Bonnie Wheeler by Michael Uebel Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Mindful Spirit in Late Medieval Literature: Modern Cultures: New Essays Essays in Honor of Elizabeth D. Kirk edited by Lawrence Besserman edited by Bonnie Wheeler Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, edited by Jane Chance and Alfred K. Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings Siewers edited by E. Jane Burns Representing Righteous Heathens in Late Was the Bayeux Tapestry Made in France?: Medieval England The Case for St. Florent of Saumur by Frank Grady by George Beech Byzantine Dress: Representations of Secular Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the Dressnin Eighth- to- Twelfth Century Painting Middle Ages by Jennifer L. Ball by Erin L. Jordan The Laborer’s Two Bodies: Labor and the Hybridity, Identity, and Monstrosity in “Work” of the Text in Medieval Britain, Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles 1350–1500 by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen by Kellie Robertson Medieval Go- betweens and Chaucer’s The Dogaressa of Venice, 1250–1500: Wife Pandarus and Icon by Gretchen Mieszkowski by Holly S. Hurlburt The Surgeon in Medieval English Literature by Jeremy J. Citrome Logic, Theology, and Poetry in Boethius, Abelard, and Alan of Lille: Words in the Temporal Circumstances: Form and History in Absence of Things the Canterbury Tales by Eileen C. Sweeney by Lee Patterson The Theology of Work: Peter Damian and the Erotic Discourse and Early English Religious Medieval Religious Renewal Movement Writing by Patricia Ranft by Lara Farina On the Purification of Women: Churching in Odd Bodies and Visible Ends in Medieval Northern France, 1100–1500 Literature by Paula M. Rieder by Sachi Shimomura Writers of the Reign of Henry II: Twelve On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Essays Middle Ages edited by Ruth Kennedy and Simon by Valerie Allen Meecham- Jones Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, Lonesome Words: The Vocal Poetics of the Old and the Limits of Epic Masculinity English Lament and the African- American edited by Sara S. Poor and Jana K. Blues Song Schulman by M. G. McGeachy Race, Class, and Gender in “Medieval” Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval Cinema English Nunneries edited by Lynn T. Ramey and by Anne Bagnell Yardley Tison Pugh The Flight from Desire: Augustine and Ovid Allegory and Sexual Ethics in the High Middle to Chaucer Ages by Robert R. Edwards by Noah D. Guynn England and Iberia in the Middle Ages, Medieval Romance and the Construction of 12th– 15th Century: Cultural, Literary, and Heterosexuality Political Exchanges by Louise M. Sylvester edited by María Bullón- Fernández Communal Discord, Child Abduction, and The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth- Making Rape in the Later Middle Ages Process by Jeremy Goldberg by Albrecht Classen Lydgate Matters: Poetry and Material Culture in the Fifteenth Century Claustrophilia: The Erotics of Enclosure in edited by Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Medieval Literature Denny- Brown by Cary Howie Sexuality and Its Queer Discontents in Middle Cannibalism in High Medieval English English Literature Literature by Tison Pugh by Heather Blurton Sex, Scandal, and Sermon in Fourteenth-C entury The Drama of Masculinity and Medieval Spain: Juan Ruiz’s Libro de Buen Amor English Guild Culture by Louise M. Haywood by Christina M. Fitzgerald The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Chaucer’s Visions of Manhood Distance in the Late Middle Ages by Holly A. Crocker edited by Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner The Literary Subversions of Medieval Women by Jane Chance Battlefronts Real and Imagined: War, Border, and Identity in the Chinese Middle Period Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and edited by Don J. Wyatt Literature by Scott Lightsey Wisdom and Her Lovers in Medieval and Early Modern Hispanic Literature American Chaucers by Emily C. Francomano by Candace Barrington Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Representing Others in Medieval Iberian Queenship: Maria de Luna Literature by Nuria Silleras- Fernandez by Michelle M. Hamilton In the Light of Medieval Spain: Islam, the Paradigms and Methods in Early Medieval Studies West, and the Relevance of the Past edited by Celia Chazelle and Felice edited by Simon R. Doubleday and David Lifshitz Coleman, foreword by Giles Tremlett The King and the Whore: King Roderick and Chaucerian Aesthetics La Cava by Peggy A. Knapp by Elizabeth Drayson Memory, Images, and the English Corpus Langland’s Early Modern Identities Christi Drama by Sarah A. Kelen by Theodore K. Lerud Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages: edited by Eileen A. Joy, Myra J. Seaman, Archipelago, Island, England Kimberly K. Bell, and Mary K. Ramsey edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language: An Excrement in the Late Middle Ages: Sacred Edition, Translation, and Discussion Filth and Chaucer’s Fecopoetics by Sarah L. Higley by Susan Signe Morrison Authority and Subjugation in Writing of Julian of Norwich’s Legacy: Medieval Medieval Wales Mysticism and Post- Medieval Reception edited by Ruth Kennedy and Simon edited by Sarah Salih and Denise N. Baker Meecham- Jones Medievalism, Multilingualism, and Chaucer The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary: by Mary Catherine Davidson Enshrinement, Inscription, Performance The Letters of Heloise and Abelard: A by Seeta Chaganti Translation of Their Complete Correspondence The Legend of Charlemagne in the Middle and Related Writings Ages: Power, Faith, and Crusade translated and edited by Mary Martin edited by Matthew Gabriele and Jace McLaughlin with Bonnie Wheeler Stuckey Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe The Poems of Oswald von Wolkenstein: An edited by Theresa Earenfight English Translation of the Complete Works Visual Power and Fame in René d’Anjou, (1376/77–1445) Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Black Prince by Albrecht Classen by SunHee Kim Gertz Women and Experience in Later Medieval Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: Medieval Writing: Reading the Book of Life Studies and New Media edited by Anneke B. Mulder- Bakker by Brantley L. Bryant and Liz Herbert McAvoy Margaret Paston’s Piety Ethics and Eventfulness in Middle English by Joel T. Rosenthal Literature: Singular Fortunes by J. Allan Mitchell Gender and Power in Medieval Exegesis by Theresa Tinkle Maintenance, Meed, and Marriage in Medieval English Literature Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English by Kathleen E. Kennedy Literature by Roger A. Ladd The Post- Historical Middle Ages edited by Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Federico Aesthetics: Art, Architecture, Literature, Music edited by C. Stephen Jaeger Constructing Chaucer: Author and Autofiction in the Critical Tradition Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Objects by Geoffrey W. Gust in Global Perspective: Translations of the Sacred edited by Elizabeth Robertson and Queens in Stone and Silver: The Creation of a Jennifer Jahner Visual Imagery of Queenship in Capetian France by Kathleen Nolan Late Medieval Jewish Identities: Iberia and Beyond edited by Carmen Caballero- Navas and Finding Saint Francis in Literature and Art Esperanza Alfonso edited by Cynthia Ho, Beth A. Mulvaney, and John K. Downey Outlawry in Medieval Literature by Timothy S. Jones Strange Beauty: Ecocritical Approaches to Early Medieval Landscape Women and Disability in Medieval Literature by Alfred K. Siewers by Tory Vandeventer Pearman Berenguela of Castile (1180- 1246) and The Lesbian Premodern Political Women in the High Middle Ages edited by Noreen Giffney, Michelle M. by Miriam Shadis Sauer, and Diane Watt Crafting Jewishness in Medieval England: Reason and Imagination in Chaucer, the Legally Absent, Virtually Present Perle- poet, and the Cloud -a uthor: Seeing by Miriamne Ara Krummel from the Center by Linda Tarte Holley Street Scenes: Late Medieval Acting and Performance The Inner Life of Women in Medieval by Sharon Aronson- Lehavi Romance Literature: Grief, Guilt, and Hypocris y Women and Economic Activities in Late edited by Jeff Rider and Jamie Medieval Ghent Friedman by Shennan Hutton Language as the Site of Revolt in Medieval and Palimpsests and the Literary Early Modern England: Speaking as a Woman Imagination of Medieval England: by M. C. Bodden Collected Essays Ecofeminist Subjectivities: Chaucer’s Talking edited by Leo Carruthers, Raeleen Birds Chai- Elsholz, and Tatjana Silec by Lesley Kordecki Divine Ventriloquism in Medieval Contextualizing the Muslim Other in English Literature: Power, Medieval Christian Discourse Anxiety, Subversion edited by Jerold C. Frakes by Mary Hayes Ekphrastic Medieval Visions: A New Vernacular and Latin Literary Discourses of the Discussion in Interarts Theory Muslim Other in Medieval Germany by Claire Barbetti by Jerold C. Frakes Heloise and the Paraclete: A Twelfth- Century Fairies in Medieval Romance Quest (forthcoming) by James Wade by Mary Martin McLaughlin EKPHRASTIC MEDIEVAL VISIONS A NEW DISCUSSION IN INTERARTS THEORY Claire Barbetti palgrave macmillan EKPHRASTIC MEDIEVAL VISIONS Copyright © Claire Barbetti, 2011 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-29235-6 ISBN 978-0-230-37053-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-37053-1 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Barbetti, Claire. Ekphrastic medieval visions : a new discussion in interarts theory / Claire Barbetti. p. cm.—(The new Middle Ages) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978–0–230–10984–1 (hardback) 1. Ekphrasis. 2. Poetry, Medieval—History and criticism. 3. Poetics— History—To 1500. I. Title. PN56.E45B37 2012 809.1902—dc22 2011015473 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: November 2011 For Victor