Main entry:

Murray, Stephen, 1945- author.

Title & Author:

Plotting gothic / Stephen Murray.

Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2014.
©2014

Description:

x, 290 pages : illustrations, maps ; 26 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-282) and index.
Three eyewitnesses of Gothic. Villard de Honnecourt: ymagier and interlocutor ; Possessing Villard ; The role of the interlocutor in the Villard enterprise ; Animating the artifact ; Animating the beholder ; Controlling the artifact ; Conclusion: deceit and desire in the Villard enterprise ; Gervase of Canterbury: cronicus and logistics man ; Storytelling ; Mnemonics: remembering the old ; The means of production: controlling the new ; Old and new reconciled ; Apocryphal storytelling: a building that "speaks" ; Conclusion: signs, miracles, and illusionism ; Suger, abbot of S-Denis, and the rhetoric of persuasion: manipulating reality and producing meaning ; Rhetorical structure of de consecratione: manipulated dialectic ; Production of the text: from oral to written ; Making connections ; Production of the new church, production of salvation ; Apocryphal stories ; Conclusion: the abbot who spoke the building -- Staking out the plot. Interlocutor and monument ; Material contexts: the means of production ; How on earth did they do that? ; Economic means ; Reading the signs: construction history ; The production of meaning ; Similitude to nature; local roots ; Similitude to other buildings ; Modernism and reason ; An image of heaven ; Conclusion -- Animating the plot. Picturing the three agents of construction ; The cathedral as object of desire ; Triangulating desire ; The gap between vision and realization ; Compression and expansion: plotting ; My desire ; Conclusion: Gothic plots: synchronic, diachronic, and spatial.
Dust jacket.

Summary:

"A historian of medieval art and architecture with a rich appreciation of literary studies, Stephen Murray brings all those fields to bear on a new approach to understanding the great Gothic churches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Plotting Gothic positions the rhetoric of the Gothic as a series of three interlocking plots: a spatial plot tied to the material construction of the churches, a social plot stemming from the collaborative efforts that made Gothic output possible, and a rhetorical plot involving narratives that treat the churches as objects of desire. Drawing on the testimony of three witnesses involved in church building -- Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, Gervase of Canterbury, and the image maker Villard de Honnecourt -- and a range of secondary sources, Murray traces common patterns in the way medieval buildings were represented in words and images. Our witnesses provide vital information about the way the great churches of Gothic were built and the complexity of their meanings. Taking a fresh approach to Gothic architecture, Plotting Gothic offers an invigorating new way to understand some of the most lasting achievements of the medieval era."-- Publisher's website.

ISBN:

9780226191805 (cloth ; alk. paper)
022619180X (cloth ; alk. paper)
(e-book)
9780226191942
(e-book)
022619194X

Subject:

Villard, de Honnecourt, active 13th century
Gervase, of Canterbury, ca. 1141-ca. 1210
Suger, Abbot of Saint Denis, 1081-1151
Architecture, Gothic.
Architecture, Gothic Social aspects.
Architecture gothique.
Architecture gothique Aspect social.
ARCHITECTURE History Medieval.
Gotisk arkitektur.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 289448
Call No.: BIB 231934
Status: Available