3 - Faltering Images

Summary

Using error as a method of looking at initials and marginalia, this chapter considers how artists and scribes went against expected word and image play in the manuscript to reflect on the process of reading and recitation – and the confusions and misunderstandings that could potentially ensue. By focusing on several case studies, the reader is walked through the various interpretations that marginalia and initials deployed and how these (at times conflicting) understandings were generatively put into question and undone by subtle variations in color and placement. The goal of this chapter is to show how illuminators worked alongside the text to generate an illustrative program that was surprising and complex in ways that demanded the concerted attention and focus of readers as they chanted the Gospel text.