English Gothic Misericord Carvings

Betsy Chunko-Dominguez, Ph.D. (2012), University of Virginia, is Professor of Art History at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her research focuses on forms of late medieval marginalia.

"The fabulous panoply of scenes carved into the misericords that once supported the bottoms of medieval monks and canons across England is ripe for an important new treatment, and in Betsy Chunko-Dominguez it has found a suitably erudite and appreciative investigator.[...] a succinct,pithy and broad survey of the medieval interpretive field and a brilliant application of visual analysis, an important historicisation of and corrective to a somewhat neglected subject." Gabriel Byng, Clare Hall, Cambridge, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 70 (2019), 152-153.''Betsy Chunko-Dominguez’s volume makes a significant contribution to the study of specifically English misericord iconography, engaging with recent work in ways that build upon current thinking and, appropriately, offer a stimulating challenge to the views of these authors. Her work engages more fully with critical theory than that of the aforementioned authors, and does so in a way that is purposeful, and that illuminates her subject while avoiding the excesses that can all too often cloud the overly theoretical. Indeed, the writing has a clarity that may be easily understood by the keen nonspecialist [...] The field of misericord studies is still underexplored, and this considered—and, crucially, excellently illustrated—volume makes a valuable contribution to our approaches to this fascinating and often perplexing body of carvings and, more broadly, to the complex material articulations of life and belief in the late Middle Ages''. Paul Hardwick, in Speculum 94/3 (2019), 819-821.

• ContentsAcknowledgments viiList of Illustrations viiiNotes on Permissions xiList of Abbreviations xiiIntroduction: History from the “Bottom Up” 11 Meaning(s) and Medieval Misericords 7Literacy and the Viewer 9An Iconographic Dilemma 13Signa and Res 21The Case for Hybridity 302 Violent Women and the Clerical Gaze 33Touch and Trope 38“Wykked Wyves” 45The Clerical Gaze 513 The Abject and Uncanny Human Form 55Illness and Abjection 57Scatology and Obscaena 65Ungodly Peoples 71Conflated Realities 764 The Subject as Sign: Iconography of the Lay Classes 85Images and Fiction 88At Home and in the Fields 94“Folk” Iconography 105Peasants Behaving Badly 1115 Image and Anxiety: Iconography of Hell and Damnation 121To Partake with Devils 123Dark Visions, Corporeal Fears 128Doleful Realities 136Afterword: The Vanishing Mediator 143Appendix: Dating the Misericords of Fairford 149Bibliography 160Index 182