Reviewed by:

• The Art of Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403–1476 by Sonja Drimmer
• Hilary Maddocks

We know very little about manuscript illuminators in fifteenth-century England. As Sonja Drimmer observes in her original, provocative book, nearly all are identified as anonymous, shadowy figures we classify according to artistic style. It doesn’t help that art historians have traditionally been more interested in the aesthetic excellence of continental work than in the ‘splendid vulgarity’ (as manuscript curator Janet Backhouse put it) of English art. According to Drimmer, even when illumination is considered, it is often regarded as secondary to the text it illustrates or as mere adornment, an added extra to enhance prestige for an affluent patron.

In her study of vernacular English manuscripts of the fifteenth century, Drimmer turns these assumptions on their heads. The period saw the blossoming of a national vernacular literature by authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, and John Lydgate, with the concomitant proliferation of illuminated manuscripts of their work. Drimmer argues for a reevaluation of the agency of illuminators in the creation of this literature, seeing them as no less than essential players in the formation of English literary identity, which she calls both ‘a visual and linguistic event’ (p. 3). She prises illuminators away from subservience to the text on the page, breaking the text/image nexus, casting them as powerful, thinking operators engaged with the broader political culture, ‘assembling, adapting, and combining image types from a range of sources’ (p. 5).

The independence of illuminators is first examined through the visual construction of the poet as auctor. Up to the fifteenth century the manuscript book was considered to be the shared responsibility of the myriad practitioners who constructed the finished book—unlike today, the author did not hold a privileged, primary position. The illuminator was one of these practitioners, operating in loose collaboration but more or less independently. What was different about vernacular literature was that because the manuscripts were newly illustrated, there was no tradition of illustration, which compelled the artists to invent their own compositions.

Drimmer traces the development of the vernacular author portrait, a fascinating exercise at a time when the notion of the authorial identity itself [End Page 253] was fragile and in flux. She finds that Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate are almost never depicted as authors in the act of writing, despite the traditional Evangelist portrait offering a clear precedent for depicting authorship of a work. For example, confused as to the status of Chaucer in relation to his works, the illuminator of the Ellesmere manuscript of The Canterbury Tales (San Marino, Huntingdon Library MS EL 26 C9, c. 1400–05) conflates identities, depicting Chaucer as a pilgrim, as narrator, and as author pointing at the adjacent text, not in the act of writing, but with a penner around his neck.

Illuminators’ inability to represent the idea of the contemporary author is also evident in manuscripts of Gower’s Confessio Amantis; of all the illuminated copies, only one shows him actually composing his work. Like Chaucer’s, Gower’s authorial identity is elusive.

The third author considered by Drimmer is Lydgate, whom she finds less evasive. Fifteen illuminations show him as a Benedictine monk, but in nonauthorial guise, as the manuscripts under consideration are more concerned with paying homage to royal and religious patrons and sponsors, and it is they who appear in illuminations as the primary identities, whether this be Henry V or Saint Edmund. Even when there was no explicit sponsorship, such as in manuscripts of The Siege of Thebes, the author identity is still unstable. For example, in one manuscript Lydgate is depicted not as author but as a pilgrim monk mounted on a horse (London, British Library, Arundel MS 119, fol. 1^r, c. 1425–50)

While illuminators ‘formalized equivocality as the English poet’s defining feature’ (p. 148), Drimmer also argues that they ‘redrafted the terms in...

审阅者：

• 《典故的艺术：阐释者与英国文学的创作，1403-1476》，索尼娅·德里默 (Sonja Drimmer)
• 希拉里·马多克斯

我们对十五世纪英国的手稿插图知之甚少。正如索尼娅·德里默（Sonja Drimmer）在她具有挑衅性的原创书中所观察到的那样，几乎所有的人物都被认定为匿名的、模糊的人物，我们根据艺术风格进行分类。传统上，艺术史学家对大陆作品的美学卓越性更感兴趣，而不是对英国艺术的“辉煌粗俗”（正如手稿策展人珍妮特·巴克豪斯所说），这无济于事。根据德里默的说法，即使考虑到照明，它也常常被认为是次要的，它所说明的文字或仅仅是装饰品，是提高富裕顾客威望的额外附加物。

在对 15 世纪白话英语手稿的研究中，德里默颠覆了这些假设。这一时期见证了杰弗里·乔叟、约翰·高尔和约翰·利德盖特等作家的全国性白话文学的蓬勃发展，随之而来的是他们作品的插图手稿的激增。德里默主张重新评估阐释者在此类文学创作中的作用，将他们视为英国文学身份形成过程中的重要参与者，她称之为“视觉和语言事件”（第3页）。她让插画家不再屈从于页面上的文字，打破了文字/图像的联系，将他们塑造成强大的、有思想的操作者，参与更广泛的政治文化，“组装、改编和组合来自各种来源的图像类型”（第 5 页）。

首先通过作为导演的诗人的视觉建构来考察阐释者的独立性。直到十五世纪，手稿被认为是无数创作成书的从业者的共同责任——与今天不同，作者并不拥有特权的主要地位。照明者就是这些从业者之一，他们以松散的合作方式运作，但或多或​​少是独立的。乡土文学的不同之处在于，由于手稿是新插图的，没有插图的传统，这迫使艺术家发明自己的作品。

德里默追溯了白话作者肖像的发展，在作者身份本身的概念[结束第253页]脆弱且不断变化的时代，这是一项令人着迷的练习。她发现乔叟、高尔和利德盖特几乎从未在写作过程中被描绘成作者，尽管传统的福音传教士肖像为描绘作品的作者身份提供了明确的先例。例如， 《坎特伯雷故事集》埃尔斯米尔手稿的插图作者对乔叟与其作品的地位感到困惑（圣马力诺，亨廷顿图书馆 MS EL 26 C9，c）。1400-05）将身份混为一谈，将乔叟描绘成朝圣者、叙述者和指向相邻文本的作者，不是在写作，而是脖子上挂着一支笔。

高尔的《阿曼蒂斯忏悔录》的手稿也明显体现了插画家无法代表当代作者的思想。在所有的彩绘副本中，只有一份显示了他实际创作的作品。与乔叟一样，高尔的作者身份也难以捉摸。

德里默考虑的第三位作者是利德盖特，她发现他不那么回避。十五幅插图显示他是一名本笃会僧侣，但以非作者的形式出现，因为正在考虑的手稿更关注向皇家和宗教赞助人和赞助者致敬，而他们作为主要身份出现在插图中，无论这是亨利V 或圣埃德蒙。即使没有明确的赞助，例如《底比斯之围》的手稿，作者身份仍然不稳定。例如，在一份手稿中，利德盖特不是被描绘成作者，而是被描绘成骑在马上的朝圣僧侣（伦敦，大英图书馆，Arundel MS 119，第 1 r 卷，^c . 1425–50）

虽然阐释者“将歧义形式化为英国诗人的定义特征”（第 148 页），但德里默还认为，他们“重新起草了……中的术语”。