Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures

By 1908 when Forster published A Room with a View, an enjoyment of premodern Italian art formed a proverbial element of the British middle classes. Yet this passion reflected less than a century of consensus, and had not developed organically, but was deliberately conceived. Driven by some combination of inspiration and desperation, two men came together to teach the late Georgian English that premodern Italian art was desirable and that illumination could be thought of as miniature paintings, and that Italian miniatures could therefore be collected just like panel paintings.

What does it mean to read an illuminated manuscript today? The Roman de la Rose reveals a language beyond text - the parchment, the gesture, and the gaze all speak eloquently.

What does it mean to read an illuminated manuscript today? And more specifically, how do we—as modern readers and viewers—encounter a work like the Roman de la Rose, with all its visual and textual complexity, its resistance to singular interpretation? Two manuscripts from Les Enluminures open a path toward understanding how the Rose speaks to us.