Daniel Terkla

Various

Daniel Terkla — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 13:18:57 PDT

Selections by the author: Marco Polo, 165-167; William of Rubruck, 357; Ludovico de Varthema, 322-324.

Various

Daniel Terkla — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 13:07:48 PDT

Selections by the author: Martin Behaim, 55-56; lignum aloes, 342-343; Psalter Map, 505-506.

Byron's Underground Manfred

Daniel Terkla — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 08:11:41 PDT

A Basochien Proto-Drama and its Mariological Context: L' Adovocacie Nostre-Dame

Daniel Terkla — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 08:08:12 PDT

This essay, which is excerpted from a longer initial study of L’Advocacie Nostre Dame, is primarily expository and exploratory in nature. Little has been written about this fascinating text, and the bulk of what has been done dates from the second half of the nineteenth century. This slim body of critical writing is, to say the least, out-dated and deserving of a fresh look. L’Advocacie is critically interesting, highly entertaining, and rather puzzling in a number of aspects, particularly in those related to its genre. Work on it has the potential to provide us with new insights into a range of related areas, such as early French drama, law (and its place in literary production), and the connection between legal societies and Marian Devotion. This paper is intended as a first step toward such future research and toward situating the work in context. After briefly summarizing the plot of this relatively obscure text, I survey critical opinion on L’Advocacie’s textual history, including the problems of dating, authorship and genre. I then outline what I consider to be the two primary aspects of its cultural context, those which seem to have made its composition possible: the medieval cult of the Virgin Mary and the Basoche―the association of advocates, registrars, and law clerks―which had its genesis in early fourteenth century France.

Speaking the Map: Teaching with the Hereford Map

Daniel Terkla — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 09:29:03 PDT

Historians of cartography long have suggested that the Hereford Mappa Mundi was created as a teaching tool, or at least that it had some didactic function in the cathedral that has housed it for over 700 years. My goal here is to support these suggestions by setting the Hereford map in a slightly different context than others have done and so to lay the groundwork for further study. To accomplish this, I incorporate new work in sermon studies that helps in the development of a usage scenario for the map-as-teaching-tool. In addition, I follow Valerie I.J. Flint's (1998) suggestion that the use clergy made of Arma Christi rolls might provide a pedagogical analogue to that which churchmen made of the Hereford map. I go beyond this, though, to situate the map in a material matrix that includes, not only Arma Christi rolls, but other non-cartographical works that we know clergy used to instruct the laity: ecclesiastical wall paintings, Exultet rolls, and informational tabulae. Like the map's designer, those who created the murals and rolls relied upon the complex arrangement and interaction of words and images to re-present their data to viewers (tabulae of the sort to which I refer were text only).³ I refer to the visual manifestations of those arrangements and interactions as data clusters.

Divina Commedia(The Divine Comedy)

Daniel Terkla — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 12:02:31 PDT

Impassioned Failure: Metaphor, Memory and the Drive toward Intellection

Daniel Terkla — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:50:49 PDT

Informal Catechesis and the Hereford Mappa Mundi

Daniel Terkla — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 08:35:27 PDT

New Research on the Bayeux Tapestry: The Proceedings of a Conference at the British Museum

Daniel Terkla et al. — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 08:23:32 PDT

From Amazon: The Bayeux Tapestry, perhaps the most famous, yet enigmatic, of medieval artworks, was the subject of an international conference at the British Museum in July 2008. This volume publishes 19 of 26 papers delivered at that conference. The physical nature of the tapestry is examined, including an outline of the artefact's current display and the latest conservation and research work done on it, as well as a review of the many repairs and alterations that have been made to the Tapestry over its long history. Also examined is the social history of the tapestry, including Shirley Ann Brown's paper on the Nazi's interest in it as a record of northern European superiority and Pierre Bouet and Francois Neveux's suggestion that it is a source for understanding the succession crisis of 1066. Among those papers focusing on the detail of the Tapestry, Gale Owen-Crocker examines the Tapestry's faces, Carol Neuman de Vegvar investigates the Tapestry's drinking vessels and explores differences in its feast scenes, and Michael Lewis compares objects depicted in the Tapestry and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11. The book also includes a resume of four papers given at the conference published elsewhere and a full black and white facsimile of the Tapestry, with its figures numbered for ease of referencing.

The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations

Daniel Terkla et al. — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 08:18:50 PDT

From Amazon: In the past two decades, scholarly assessment of the Bayeux Tapestry has moved beyond studies of its sources and analogues, dating, origin and purpose, and site of display. This volume demonstrates the value of more recent interpretive approaches to this famous and iconic artefact, by examining the textile's materiality, visuality, reception and historiography, and its constructions of gender, territory and cultural memory. The essays it contains frame discussions vital to the future of Tapestry scholarship and are complemented by a bibliography covering three centuries of critical writings.. CONTRIBUTORS: Dan Terkla, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, Stephen D. White, Richard Brilliant, Shirley Ann Brown, Karen Eileen Overbey, Valerie Allen, Madeline H. Caviness, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Michael John Lewis, Martin K. Foys

Cut on the Norman Bias: Fabulous Borders and Visual Glosses on the Bayeax Tapestry

Daniel Terkla — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 08:41:43 PDT

The Original Placement of the Hereford Mappa Mundi

Daniel Terkla — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:31:35 PDT

Although antiquarians, historians of cartography, palaeographers and art historians have written about the Hereford mappa mundi for more than three hundred years, we know little about its original placement or use. This paper relies on new masonry and endrochronological evidence and the system of medieval ecclesiastical preferments to argue that this monumental world map was originally exhibited in 1287 next to the first shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe in Hereford Cathedral’s north transept. It did not function as an altarpiece, therefore, but as part of what I call the Cantilupe pilgrimage complex, a conglomeration of items and images which was for a time one of England’s most popular pilgrimage destinations. In this location, the map would have added to the complex’s attractive power and served as a multi-media pedagogical tool.

Review: The Rhetoric of Power in the Bayeux Tapestry, by Suzanne Lewis

Daniel Terkla — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:54:03 PDT

In the preface to her study of the much-discussed Bayeux Tapestry, Suzanne Lewis, professor of art history at Stanford University, wonders, "[W]hy another book on the Bayeux Tapestry?" (xiii). She confidently responds that she has "something new to say" (xiii) and quickly invokes the major recent studies of this important artwork. Although she does not situate her work in that context beyond invoking names, Professor Lewis states that she has "no quarrel with . . . Michael Parisse (1983), David Wilson (1985), David Bernstein (1986), J. Bard McNulty (1989), or Wolfgang Grape (1993)" (xiii). Acknowledging that The Rhetoric of Power "is built upon [this] thick foundation of extant work" (xiii), she offers the following as its theoretical approach and seemingly novel thesis: "By focusing on the art of narrative, particularly within the framework of recent film theory, I want to show how history is not reflected in images but produced by them. The pictorial narrative of the Bayeux Tapestry presents not so much an illusion of reality but reality itself" (xiii). In other words, and if I understand correctly, this "elitist work" (xiv) presents its learned audience with a biased account, with "reality" as its designer portrayed it, of events leading up to and including the Norman Conquest of England in 1066-not with a journalistic recounting of historical events. Lewis, then, sets out to reveal how the designer conveyed this bias by examining "the work as problematic fiction, shot through with inconsistencies and ruptures" (xiii-xiv).

"I'm gonna git Medieval on your ass": Pulp Fiction for the 90s--the 1190s

Daniel Terkla et al. — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:38:50 PDT

Rarely does contemporary film offer any zippy ephemera to grace the office doors of medievalists, since film-makers like Quentin Tarantino do not often look to our discipline's corpus for inspiration. Imagine, then, the mix of incredulity and delight we two professors felt while taking in the pawn-shop scene in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. After being painfully violated--anally raped, to be precise--and then rescued in a most chivalric manner by one of his minions, Marsellus Wallace swears an oath to Zed, his "hillbilly boy" rapist: "I'm gonna git Medieval on your ass" (Pulp Fiction 131). What? we thought: "Medieval"? Why, we asked, "Medieval"? Had we heard correctly? Was this a critical mandate? After discussing this at some length behind closed office doors (still sans Tarantino ephemera) and after trying it out on our team-taught undergraduates, we decided to allow ourselves the guilty pleasure of investigating ways Quentin Tarantino might indeed have gotten medieval on us.

The Revolution is Being Televised: Pedagogy and Information Retrieval in the Liberal Arts College

Daniel Terkla et al. — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:28:21 PDT

In this period of rapid and ongoing technological change, teaching undergraduates sophisticated research skills demands more than the traditional library tour or instruction. It requires collaboration between faculty and librarians. The authors offer the plan they have tested and which they and their students find beneficial in filling this demand.