The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages : Image,Text,performance

The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages : Image, Text, Performance Author: Gertsman, Elina Price: Euro 250,00. ISBN: 9782503530635 Record created on 08/31/2009 Description: Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. 28cm., hardcover, 356pp., 45 color, 149 b&w illus. Summary: Elina Gertsman¿s multifaceted study introduces readers to the imagery and texts of the Dance of Death, an extraordinary subject that first emerged in western European art and literature in the late medieval era. Conceived from the start as an inherently public image, simultaneously intensely personal and widely accessible, the medieval Dance of Death proclaimed the inevitability of death and declared the futility of human ambition. Gertsman inquires into the theological, socio-historic, literary, and artistic contexts of the Dance of Death, exploring it as a site of interaction between text, image, and beholder. Pulling together a wide variety of sources and drawing attention to those images that have slipped through the cracks of the art historical canon, Gertsman examines the visual, textual, aural, pastoral, and performative discourses that informed the creation and reception of the Dance of Death, and proposes different modes of viewing for several paintings, each of which invited the beholder to participate in an active, kinesthetic experience. (Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages, 3) Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages (SVCMA 3) E. Gertsman The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages Image, Text, Performance XII+356 p., 149 b/w ill. + 45 colour ill., 4 fold-outs, 210 x 275 mm, 2010 ISBN: 978-2-503-53063-5 Languages: English Hardback The publication is available. Retail price: EUR 250,00 Elina Gertsman¿s multifaceted study introduces readers to the imagery and texts of the Dance of Death, an extraordinary subject that first emerged in western European art and literature in the late medieval era. Conceived from the start as an inherently public image, simultaneously intensely personal and widely accessible, the medieval Dance of Death proclaimed the inevitability of death and declared the futility of human ambition. Gertsman inquires into the theological, socio-historic, literary, and artistic contexts of the Dance of Death, exploring it as a site of interaction between text, image, and beholder. Pulling together a wide variety of sources and drawing attention to those images that have slipped through the cracks of the art historical canon, Gertsman examines the visual, textual, aural, pastoral, and performative discourses that informed the creation and reception of the Dance of Death, and proposes different modes of viewing for several paintings, each of which invited the beholder to participate in an active, kinesthetic experience. Elina Gertsman is assistant professor at the Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University. Winner of the ICMA-Samuel H. Kress Research Award 2009 "Meticulously researched, convincingly argued, and lucidly written throughout (.)" Mitchell B. Merback, The Johns Hopkins University "Elina Gertsman has produced a genuinely interdisciplinary study of a fascinating subject. An impressive strength of this book arises from the author¿s wide-ranging expertise and excellent ability to analyze the Dance of Death poems in their original languages." Pamela Sheingorn, The Graduate Center, City University of New York "In this illuminating and engrossing book, Elina Gertsman charts the emergence and flowering of the danse macabre in the fifteenth century by examining large-scale wall paintings in churches and cemeteries across Europe, and concludes by reflecting on the transformation of the theme in the sixteenth century, in Hans Holbein the Younger¿s print series Les simulachres & historiees faces de la mort. The author is concerned throughout with developing a reception theory for the images, which is skilfully achieved through a combination of rigorous pictorial analysis, sensitivity to the specifics of locatio