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Volume 11
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, born in 1957, is Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture at Harvard University. He has published on medieval art, especially on illuminated manuscripts, on piety and mysticism. His research interests include text-image issues across various media, the history of diagrams and of female monasticism.
Diagrams expose knowledge and determine its perception. Starting from the ‘Ur-diagram’ of the Divided Line, as in Plato’s ‘Republic’, this essay explains different forms from late antiquity to the early modern period. Randgänge der Mediävistik • Volume 11
The Editor Professor Dr. Michael Stolz has held the Chair (Ordinarius) for Medieval German Literature at the Institute of German Languages and Literature at the University of Bern since 2016. The image on the front cover is based on the thirteenthcentury labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral. The image on the back cover cites Paul Klee’s watercolor Destroyed Labyrinth (1939, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern).
Spaces of Knowledge in Medieval Diagrams I S B N 978-3-7965-5411-7
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783796 554117
The Series Comparable to the design of medieval labyrinths, whose edges are oriented towards the center, the series “Randgänge der Mediävistik” (Peripheral Paths in Medieval Studies) explores seemingly remote medieval cultural phenomena. It addresses both conventional and less conventional manifestations from the centuries preceding c. 1600, interdisciplinary forays on the margins of the various medieval studies disciplines, as well as reference points that connect the Middle Ages and Modernity. The questions posed lead from the seemingly distant objects of medieval culture to aspects of the present. Several contributions to the series are based on talks held at the Bern Centre for Medieval Studies in memory of the Bernese German Studies scholar Maria Bindschedler.
Spaces of Knowledge in Medieval Diagrams
The spatial structure of diagrams can be described in algebraic, geometric, cognitive or semiotic categories. Based on the ʻUr-diagramʼ of the Divided Line, as in Platoʼs ʻRepublicʼ, diagrams can be understood as representations of the visible and the intelligible world. However, the knowledge thus conveyed is subject to the contingency of material and contextual, i.e. time-specific, circumstances. How is the spatial organization of diagrams in medieval manuscripts structured under such conditions? The examples dealt with in this essay range from depictions from the late antique ʻCorpus Dionysiacumʼ to the visualizations of the powers of perception and cognition by the Renaissance scholar Charles Bovelles. Over the centuries, the spatial disposition of the diagram proves to be an image of a world which, according to the medieval view, was created by a deus artifex with geometric skills.
Jeffrey F. Hamburger
Jeffrey F. Hamburger
Randgänge der Mediävistik