Images, Texts, and Marginalia in a "Vows of the Peacock" Manuscript (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS G24)
ISBN: 9789004250833
Platform/Publisher: BRILL / BRILL
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Fasts and feasts; Halacha.; History.; Law.; Sabbath.;

The "Vows of the Peacock" - written in 1312 and dedicated to Thibaut de Bar, bishop of Liège - recounts how Alexander the Great comes to the aid of a family of aristocrats threatened by Indians. The poem remained popular throughout the fourteenth century and was soon followed by two sequels. Twenty-six illuminated manuscripts constitute part of a catalogue and concordance of all Peacock manuscripts. One of the most provocative, (PML, MS G24), has twenty-two miniatures which illustrate chivalry and courtly love, as epitomized in the text. An unusually high number of scurrilous marginalia, however, surround them. An interdisciplinary exploration of iconography, reception, image-text-marginalia dynamics, and context reveals their ultimate polysemy as scatological comedians and serious harbingers of sin.


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