Representing History, 900 1300

Brings together the disciplines of art, music, and history to explore the importance of the past to conceptions of the present in the central Middle Ages. Modern scholarship, particularly historical studies, has long acknowledged the importance of the past to medieval conceptions of the present. This volume brings art history and music into dialogue with historical studies. The essays draw out the strategies shared by these fields in the realm of historical representation. How was the creative representation of past practices—in illuminated manuscripts, monumental sculpture, and architecture, as well as in musical notation, motet composition, and performance—understood as both a historical and historicizing act? What kinds of relationships did composers, patrons, chroniclers, and musicians entertain with their predecessors? Historical studies have shown how chroniclers and annalists rewrote tradition while self-consciously writing themselves into it; the essays in this volume explore such strategies in art and music. The contributors are Jaume Aurell, Jeffrey A. Bowman, Susan Boynton, Ardis Butterfield, Margot Fassler, Patrick J. Geary, Lindy Grant, James Grier, Cynthia Hahn, Joan A. Holladay, Laurent Morelle, Lawrence Nees, Susan Reynolds, Gabrielle M. Spiegel, and Christine B. Verzar.