| Defaced: The Visual Culture of Violence in the Late Middle Ages Contributor(s): Groebner, Valentin (Author), Selwyn, Pamela (Translator) |
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ISBN: 1890951374 ISBN-13: 9781890951375 Publisher: Zone Books OUR PRICE: $24.70 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: February 2004 Annotation: Destroyed faces, dissolved human shapes, invisible enemies: violence and anonymity go hand in hand. The visual representation of extreme physical violence makes real people nameless exemplars of horror -- formless, hideous, defaced. In "Defaced," Valentin Groebner explores the roots of the visual culture of violence in medieval and Renaissance Europe and shows how contemporary visual culture has been shaped by late medieval images and narratives of violence. For late medieval audiences, as with modern media consumers, horror lies less in the "indescribable" and "alien" than in the familiar and commonplace. From the fourteenth century onward, pictorial representations became increasingly violent, whether in depictions of the Passion, or in vivid and precise images of torture, execution, and war. But not every spectator witnessed the same thing when confronted with terrifying images of a crucified man, misshapen faces, allegedly bloodthirsty conspirators on nocturnal streets, or barbarian fiends on distant battlefields. The profusion of violent imagery provoked a question: how to distinguish the illegitimate violence that threatened and reversed the social order from the proper, "just," and sanctioned use of force? Groebner constructs a persuasive answer to this question by investigating how uncannily familiar medieval dystopias were constructed and deconstructed. Showing how extreme violence threatens to disorient, and how the effect of horror resides in the depiction of minute details, Groebner offers an original model for understanding how descriptions of atrocities and of outrageous cruelty depended, in medieval times, on the variation of familiar narrative motifs. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Art | Subjects & Themes - General - Art | History - Medieval - Art | Criticism & Theory |
| Dewey: 704.949 |
| LCCN: 2003042268 |
| Series: Mit Press |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 6.1" W x 9.1" (1.00 lbs) 199 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - Medieval (500-1453) - Chronological Period - Ancient (To 499 A.D.) |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: From the fourteenth century on, the artifacts of Western visual culture became increasingly violent. Destroyed faces, dissolved human shapes, devilish doppelg ngers of the sacred: violence made real people nameless exemplars of formless, hideous horror. In Defaced, the historian Valentin Groebner provides a highly sophisticated historical, cultural, and political model for understanding how late-medieval images and narratives of "indescribable" violence functioned. Early modern images formed part of a complex, often contested, system of visualizing extreme violence, as Groebner reveals in a series of political, military, religious, sexual, and theatrical microhistories. Intended to convey the anguish of real pain and terror to spectators, violent visual representations made people see disfigured faces as mirrors of sexual deviance, invisible enemies as barbarian fiends, and soldiers as bloodthirsty conspirators wreaking havoc on nocturnal streets. Yet not every spectator saw the same thing when viewing these terrifying images. Whom did one see when looking at an image of violence? What effect did such images have on spectators? How could one distinguish illegitimate violence that threatened and reversed the social order from the proper, "just," and sanctioned use of force? Addressing these issues, Groebner not only calls into question contemporary habits of thinking about early modern visual culture; he also pushes his readers to rethink how they look at images of brutality in a world of increasing violence. |
Contributor Bio(s): Groebner, Valentin: - Valentin Groebner is professor of medieval and Renaissance history at the University of Lucerne. He is the author of Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts and Who Are You? Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe. |