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2 - Gestural Communication in French Religious Drama and Art of the Late Middle Ages: The Passion Isabeau and Its Miniatures

from Essays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Edelgard E. DuBruck
Affiliation:
Marygrove College in Detroit
Barbara I. Gusick
Affiliation:
Troy University-Dothan, Alabama
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Summary

[To the praise of God, the sovereign Virgin, and all saints (men and women), and upon the request of the very excellent and famous lady and powerful princess Ysabel de Bavière, through God's grace queen of France, I have translated this Passion of Jesus Our Savior from Latin into French, without adding moralities, stories, exempla or figures (of speech), in 1398, beginning with the resuscitation of Lazarus, because this miracle and previous wonders gave occasion to the false, felonious Jews to contrive Jesus' death and passion] (DuBruck, ed. La Passion Isabeau [New York: Peter Lang, 1990], 61).

The passage above (in my translation) presents the incipit of the Passion Isabeau (1398 — hereafter: PI), a narrative text leading readers and listeners through Holy Week, a sacred period fraught with potential for gestural expression (e.g., ritualistic, experiential, theatrical). When viewing the illuminated scenes of this text, one is struck by the intriguing gestic language used by the persons depicted, attesting to the miniaturists' skill while, at the same time, evoking the tableaux vivants of paradramatic stagings. What is interesting about gestures is that the bodily movements of the persons captured on canvas or elsewhere are frozen in time but come to life on stage. In art or theater, gestures are prompted bodily reactions, and sometimes a cognitive disconnect is involved, especially if movements do not achieve the response which they are intended to elicit — for example, acceptance or approval. While there are many variables (some of them indistinct) operating simultaneously to produce a gesture, within the present essay gestural communication is seen as unambiguous, having predictable outcomes.

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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2005

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