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The Mind's Eye: Visualizing Encyclopedic Knowledge in The The Mind’s Eye: Visualizing Encyclopedic Knowledge in the Later Middle Ages by Jamie Kemp B.A., McMaster University, 2005 M.A., University of British Columbia, 2007 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of Art History and Visual Studies © Jamie Kemp, 2014 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee The Mind’s Eye: Visualizing Encyclopedic Knowledge in the Later Middle Ages by Jamie Kemp B.A., McMaster University, 2005 M.A., University of British Columbia, 2007 Supervisory Committee Dr. Erin Campbell, Department of Art History and Visual Studies Supervisor Dr. Catherine Harding, Department of Art History and Visual Studies Departmental Member Dr. Iain Higgins, Department of English Outside Member iii Abstract Supervisory Committee Dr. Erin Campbell, Department of Art History and Visual Studies Supervisor Dr. Catherine Harding, Department of Art History and Visual Studies Departmental Member Dr. Iain Higgins, Department of English Outside Member This dissertation critiques and updates the theoretical frameworks for understanding encyclopedic and diagrammatic images as presented in the scholarship of Lucy Freeman Sandler, Barbara Maria Stafford, John Bender, and Michael Marrinan. It offers a new model for examining the cognitive role of images by studying an important medieval encyclopedia, On the Properties of Things, originally written in Latin by Bartholomaeus Anglicus in the thirteenth century. Bartholomaeus’ text was the most popular encyclopedia of the later middle ages and four vernacular translations were produced and circulated between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Significantly, the French translation of the compendium, coming out of the vernacularization movement of King Charles V but radiating out to other production centres, involved the design of an elaborate and novel illustrative program. The present project examines two exceptional fifteenth-century French copies of this encyclopedia (BnF fr. 9141 and BnF fr. 135/6), and interprets them in light of the shifting intellectual culture and evolving reading practices of late-medieval lay audiences. The information-rich and highly aestheticized miniatures found in such encyclopedic manuscripts have traditionally been defined, by Sandler and others, as having an explanatory function and the capacity to elevate the content of the text through iv displays of material luxury. My model expands the significance of such images by highlighting their capacity to promote thought. I argue that images in didactic compendia can (i) encourage the reader to actively engage with the text through representations of aristocratic readers performing their understanding of the book socially, and (ii) facilitate visual thinking by aesthetically reflecting the structure of the encyclopedic text through the diagrammatic strategies of the collection, compression, and division of fragmented information. Though the images in my two manuscript case studies take distinct approaches to reader engagement and the mediation of knowledge, in both cases the power of these visualizations rests in the cognitive acts and range of mental associations they provoke. This dissertation demonstrates that epistemically-dense images, in addition to merely reflecting a text, could shape knowledge as it was being formed in the minds of active viewers, readers, writers, and artists, in an intellectually rich period in late- medieval France. v Table of Contents Supervisory Committee ...................................................................................................... ii! Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii! Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v! List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii! Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... xiii! Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1! Bartholomaeus Anglicus and the Reception of his Encyclopedia .................................. 1! Research Problem ........................................................................................................... 6! New Directions in the Scholarship of Encyclopedic Images .......................................... 8! Theoretical Tools: Image and Mind .............................................................................. 14! Outline of Chapters ....................................................................................................... 20! Chapter One: The Art of Information Management: Pre-Modern Encyclopedias as Intellectual Technologies .......................................................................................... 20! Chapter Two: The Cultural Translation of On the Properties of Things .................. 20! Chapter Three: “Plaisance et amour a sapience”: The Intellectual Values of Bartholomaeus’ Late-Medieval Readers ................................................................... 21! Chapter Four: Allegories of Thought: Private Reading and Public Knowledge, BnF fr. 9141 ...................................................................................................................... 22! Chapter Five: Reflected in the Mirror of Knowledge, BnF fr. 135/6 ....................... 22! Chapter Six: The Encyclopedia and the Diagram: BnF fr. 135/6 ............................. 23! Chapter One: The Art of Information Management: Pre-Modern Encyclopedias as Intellectual Technologies .................................................................................................. 25! (i)Defining the Encyclopedic Genre ............................................................................. 26! (ii) Encyclopedists and their Skills ............................................................................... 30! Authorial Humility and Textual Instability ............................................................... 30! Encyclopedists Create Technologies for Learning ................................................... 34! Collectio and Divisio ................................................................................................. 37! (iii)Encyclopedic Images and Cognition ...................................................................... 39! Chapter Two: The Cultural Translation of On the Properties of Things .......................... 47! (i)Reception History of the Genre ................................................................................. 48! The Encyclopedia in Education ................................................................................ 48! Encyclopedias as Source-Books for Sermon Writing ............................................... 51! The Vernacular Private Library ................................................................................ 54! (ii) Charles V and the Livre des propriétés des choses ................................................. 56! Charles V’s Translation Program .............................................................................. 56! Jean Corbechon and the Livre des propriétés des choses ......................................... 59! Visual and Material Translation ................................................................................ 64! Later Illustrations ...................................................................................................... 70! Chapter Three: “Plaisance et amour a sapience”: The Intellectual Values of Bartholomaeus’ Late-Medieval Readers ........................................................................... 74! vi (i)Silent Study and the Engaged Reader ....................................................................... 76! (ii)Manuscript Collection and the Lay “Intellectual Brotherhood” .............................. 81! (iii)Lagged Performance ............................................................................................... 84! Chapter Four: Allegories of Thought: Private Reading and Public Knowledge, BnF fr. 9141 ................................................................................................................................... 87! (i)The Boucicaut Master and BnF fr. 9141 ................................................................... 90! (ii)Overview of the Illustrative Program ....................................................................... 93! The Trinity ................................................................................................................ 94! The Grid .................................................................................................................... 96! Levels and Hierarchies .............................................................................................. 97! (iii)Attentive, Thinking Figures .................................................................................... 98! Thinking Figures in the Larger Tradition ............................................................... 102! The Fitzwilliam Manuscript (Fitzwilliam Mus., ms.
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