This important and stimulating work in the field of medieval visual culture is part of Boydell’s series Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture, which aims above all to provide a forum for debate. Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture certainly achieves such an ambition, comprising thirteen extremely wide-ranging and thought-provoking papers (plus an introduction and an afterword), divided into three parts. The first of the three sections covers interactions between image, word and audience in late medieval illuminated manuscripts and the second explores liminal spaces of identity and gender, for example, the place of women in illuminated books and the role of the patron in constructing his or her identity, ranging from the motif of kneeling donors to sculptural and spatial representation in chantry chapels – as well as the intriguingly titled ‘The Sexuality of the Medieval Comb’. Finally, the third, more overarching, section addresses the ways in which texts, rituals, mental images and devotional imagery contributed to medieval visual culture as ‘performative acts of imagination’ (Ehrstine, quoted on p 5), encompassing literary genres, Passion spectatorship, the promotion of civic power and representations of merchants’ bedchambers as an ambiguous social space. As befits the subject matter there is a plethora of illustrations, including eight magnificent colour plates.

The essays in this collection, which results from a symposium at Princeton University, highlight the ways in which images, texts and ritual performances create and reinforce meaning. The cover picture (also fig 1.10), which shows the release of the giants Gog and Magog from the ‘Apocalypse of Jean de Berry’ (c 1415), sums up the spirit and thrust of the volume, especially in Richard K Emmerson’s acknowledgement of varied readings – then and now. In Chapter One, Emmerson points out that Gog and Magog’s release from hell after a thousand years of confinement replaces the more common trope of the liberation of the Dragon or Satan, and deftly links the image with its beholders’ possible responses. Since Gog and Magog were equated in medieval legend with the armies of the Antichrist, Emmerson suggests that some viewers may have associated them with nations supporting opposing schismatic popes, or with the contention that the schism could only be resolved by force. Alternatively, the sizeable audience already familiar with the Alexander Romances, in which the peoples of Gog and Magog are imprisoned in the Caucasus, could have interpreted the giants as forces allied to the Antichrist who would attack Christianity from the East: that is, Islam, the Tartars and the Jews. Emmerson also acknowledges Millard Meiss’s (1974) association of the early fifteenth-century origin of the Berry ‘Apocalypse’ with the French civil war and the English resurgence during the Agincourt campaign, while pointing out that most of its images ‘seem remarkably untouched by political conflict and military invasions’ (p 36). He thus prioritises the Great Schism as the primary level of meaning, at least for the owner of the ‘Apocalypse’, Jean de Berry, who was one of the Schism’s most active and consistent opponents. The inventive iconography in the Gog and Magog image would therefore have encouraged the duke to play an active role in determining its meaning, and even to act on the warnings of the ‘Apocalypse’ by relaying its intervisual messages to contemporaries, thereby ‘preparing them to withstand the crisis of the Church on the threshold of the Last Days’ (p 43).

Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture explores a very wide variety of material across space and time; it ranges from the medieval to the early modern period and covers disparate geographic areas across Europe. It is dedicated to Pamela Sheingorn, a prolific scholar who is currently Visiting Fellow at the Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College. Her first book (1987) discussed the Easter Sepulchre in England, and she has done much to popularise a number of theoretical standpoints including gender, sexuality, queer theory and, most recently, cognitive studies (p 6). The book is testament to Sheingorn’s output and the editors, Elina Gertsman and Jill Stevenson, assistant professors of medieval art and of theatre arts respectively, should be congratulated for bringing it together. As Boydell & Brewer’s publicity statement points out, the collection ‘benefits from … ambitious cross-disciplinary explorations and engagements with contemporary theory undertaken in the field of medieval studies in recent decades’. This said, it is accessible to possible newcomers to each topic discussed. For example, Rachel Dressler, in her chapter on sculptural representation and spatial appropriation in chantry chapels, takes care to explain what a chantry actually was, thus delivering a stand-alone paper which can be read and easily understood by those new to the subject – not least students. This reviewer is about to request a copy for her university’s library, and recommends that other Fellows do the same.