Graphic Devices and the Early Decorated Book

The early medieval decorated book illuminates our understanding of the processes of cultural transition from late Antiquity to the Middle Ages and from a trans-continental super-power to western and eastern nation states and revivals of empire - Byzantine and Carolingian. The study of 'graphicacy' (graphic devices, such as inscribed letters and decorative symbols, used to convey information on the text) is emerging as a pivotal tool for understanding how the graphic architecture of the book played a role in the dissemination and reception of thought. The essays in this volume add to the growing scholarship on the medieval schematic and diagramming imagination, exploring some of the many ways in which the spatial arrangement and patterning of text, graphic sign, and figural image generated meaning for medieval viewers, readers, and performers of the written word. Among the individual topics addressed are monograms; the appearance of the cross in early medieval Christian manuscripts; and Anglo-Saxon decorated initials.