‘Illuminatrix libri jurata’
: Reading Image and Gender in the Illuminated Roman de la rose Manuscripts of the Montbaston Atelier (1330- 1360)

Student thesis: Doctoral ThesisDoctor of Philosophy

Abstract

This thesis examines text-image relationships in a selection of Roman de la rose manuscripts produced in the Montbaston Atelier with two fundamental aims: firstly, to demonstrate that the Montbaston illuminators played a key role in the ways that audiences were able to understand and interact with the manuscripts that they produced, and secondly, to challenge the premise that the illuminator identified as Jeanne de Montbaston in the dominant scholarship was less competent and less skilled than the other illuminator employed in the atelier on the basis of her gender. The methodology of the thesis is thus twofold: it begins with a re-evaluation of the contemporary records containing biographical details of the Montbastons’ lives and professional activity in order to demonstrate how modern translations/interpretations of this information invoke a gendered power dynamic that perpetuates sexist mistruths. Adopting the Butlerian notion of ‘feminist intervention’, or, a re-appropriation of language that ‘misrepresents or fails to represent’ women as a representational category, the thesis proposes an alternative framework through which to represent and conceptualise better the work of Jeanne de Montbaston and of other professional women involved in the commercial Parisian book trade in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Date of Award1 Jul 2021
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • King's College London
SupervisorSimon Gaunt (Supervisor) & Robert Mills (Supervisor)

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