A Feast for the Eyes: Art, Performance, and the Late Medieval BanquetTo read accounts of late medieval banquets is to enter a fantastical world where live lions guard nude statues, gilded stags burst into song, and musicians play from within pies. We can almost hear the clock sound from within a glass castle, taste the fire-breathing roast boar, and smell the rose water cascading in a miniature fountain. Such vivid works of art and performance required collaboration among artists in many fields, as well as the participation of the audience. A Feast for the Eyes is the first book-length study of the court banquets of northwestern Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Christina Normore draws on an array of artworks, archival documents, chroniclers’ accounts, and cookbooks to re-create these events and reassess the late medieval visual culture in which banquets were staged. Feast participants, she shows, developed sophisticated ways of appreciating artistic skill and attending to their own processes of perception, thereby forging a court culture that delighted in the exercise of fine aesthetic judgment. Challenging modern assumptions about the nature of artistic production and reception, A Feast for the Eyes yields fresh insight into the long history of multimedia work and the complex relationships between spectacle and spectators. |
Contents
Setting the Table | 1 |
1 Between the Dishes | 21 |
2 Spectator Spectacle | 44 |
Gallery follows page 72 | 72 |
3 Efficacy and Hypocrisy | 74 |
4 Dining Well | 102 |
5 Stranger at the Table | 131 |
6 Wedding Reception | 164 |
Notes | 195 |
| 233 | |
| 253 | |
Other editions - View all
A Feast for the Eyes: Art, Performance, and the Late Medieval Banquet Christina Normore Limited preview - 2015 |
Common terms and phrases
accounts actions active actors animals apes appears artistic attention audience banquet Bibliothèque royale Bold Brussels Burgundian Burgundy century chapter Charles Church concerns connection court create culture depicted described descriptions discussed duchess Duke elite emotional entremet ethical example exchange fact feast festivities figures France French giant gift given guests hall hand History Holy Church human iconography important included indicate individual Jean king late medieval lion living magnificence manuscript Marche Margaret of York marriage marvelous means Middle Ages miniature moved nature noble objects once painting Paris particularly performance Pheasant Philip play pleasure political possible practice present refer role scene served signs similar social spectacle stage status strange Studies suggests temperance term tion tradition trans University Press viewer virtue visual vows wedding