In this Princeton doctoral thesis, revised for publication, James A. Rushing, Jr. examines the many visual illustrations of scenes included in the Ywain romance. These illustrations can be found in a number of locations throughout Europe and make use of various mediums. These include the Rodenegg Mural Cycle at castle Rodenegg in South Tyrol from around 1230; the wall paintings in the cellar of the "Hessenhof" in Schmalkalden/Thuringia from ca. 1230-1250; the miniatures in the Princeton University Library ms. Garret 125 from ca. 1260; the miniatures in the Paris ms. Bibliotheque Nationale fr. 1433, from ca. 1310-1320; English misericords of various provenance and date; the Freiburg/Germany Malterer Embroidery, today in the Augustinermuseum, from ca. 1310-1330; and the frescoes at castle Runkelstein near Bozen, South Tyrol, from the early 1400s.
Rushing argues both as an art historian and as a literary scholar, attempting to correlate the visual illustrations with the textual evidence. His prime concern is focused on the question in how far the artists and then the viewers of the art products were familiar with the narratives upon which the illustrations were based, or whether the illustrations created their own narratives. This question has more validity with respect to the murals, the misericords, and the textile works, but is not as relevant for the manuscript illustrations because the miniatures were incorporated into the mss. with the specific purpose of illuminating the narrative, not to tell their own story (Rushing, to be sure, would disagree).
In his examination Rushing proceeds in a diligent manner, presenting all the available historical and art historical data pertaining to the illustrations, and discusses the important details and scenes depicted, first by examining them in isolation, then in relationship with the literary text. To help his readers, the author incorporates a large number of black and white illustrations. Unfortunately, most of the photos, except for those showing the English misericords and the Freiburg Malterer embroidery, are of a rather mediocre quality and make it very difficult to follow Rushing's arguments, particularly as he is so concerned with the visual details.
This study provides, indeed, important information pertaining to the illustrations of the Ywain material. The reader can follow Rushing's analysis from scene to scene and thus learns to understand the major features in the pictures. An index at the end of the book provides an additional tool to quickly trace individual aspects of the miniatures, frescoes, and misericords, etc. All this, however, is not new; instead Rushing relies on a considerable body of research carried out chiefly by his own doctoral advisor, Michael Curschmann, and the Munich scholar, Norbert Ott. In addition there are the studies by Fruehmorgen-Voss and Achim Masser, to mention just two of the most significant names.
Rushing's central claim is that these illustrations, whatever form they took, were not simply that, namely illustrations, but must be considered as narratives in their own right. A large portion of his analysis is concentrated on relating and comparing the visual representation of the Ywain material with the literary narratives. Not surprisingly, he quickly observes considerable deviations, often new contexts in which the protagonist has to be positioned, hence new versions of the story. The Runkelstein frescoes, or triads, for instance, "remove the knight entirely from the context of any narrative, situating Ywain in a new structure -- the topos of the Nine Worthies" (p. 248). The English misericords show nothing but the one crucial scene in which Ywain, in hot pursuit of Ascalon, is caught between two gates because the powerful portcullis cuts his horse in half, leaving him inside of this prison alive. Rushing argues that the "pictures all suggest that the story was not as well known as those of Tristan or Parzival, perhaps especially in England" (p. 213).
According to Rushing's thesis, the viewers would not have needed any knowledge of the context in their appreciation of this scene carved in wood (p. 215). This would imply to me that these misericords would not serve at all as testimonies that the carvers or the monks using the misericords were only familiar with the very basic elements of the Ywain narrative. It seems questionable, however, whether such a thesis can be upheld. How many options does a carver have to retell an extensive courtly romance? How many movements, events, actions, etc. could be incorporated in this wooden art? Would these images not tell us simply that the carver was familiar with the account of Ywain's dilemma? Maybe s/he knew more than s/he could include, maybe s/he worked from a model book, maybe the narrative account was so well- known that no more clues were necessary. These misericords did not provide much space at all to elaborate the theme. In other words, Rushing's thesis is speculative and lacks firm evidence; not even the context -- other misericord carvings -- allows for further conclusions.
The discussion of the two manuscripts leads, however, to more solidly founded arguments. In the case of the Princeton University Library ms. Garrett 125, the miniatures mostly, if not entirely, leave out the key elements characterizing Ywain in his uncomfortable dilemma in face of a broken promise to Laudine and his desperation because of her repulsion. In Rushing's words: "the viewer finds in these images no questioning of the ethics of adventure, no moralizing about the value of adventure, but the presentation of a series of representative episodes of romance adventure" (p. 158). Anybody who has ever closely studied ms. illustrations would agree that this is not a surprising fact as medieval artists -- if not artists of all times -- had a very difficult time to reflect the intricacies of the narratives they were supposed to illuminate. Depending on space availability and personal skill, miniaturists tried to do their best to capture at least the sense of the story, and it would be too much to expect, within the very limited space of a ms. illustration, to discover all fine points of the narrative expressed in visual terms. That is, after all, not the purpose of visual representation.
Apparently, as Rushing's analysis reveals, the illustrator of the Paris ms. was more in tune with the story's underlying message, as the details in his miniatures indicate, whereas the other artist does not seem to have understood that much or simply did not care. But we all know that medieval paintings closely followed very specific traditional models and had to conform to the audience's expectations, which, in turn, was informed by a wide range of visual images. Even if an artist wanted to retell a literary story as closely as possible, there were concrete constraints for him, which are not taken into consideration here.
Since Rushing relies very much on possibilities and plain assumptions, we might also add the speculation that the artists only painted as many details as they were paid for. If their patron charged them with nothing but a simple illustration, then that was it what they did. If the patron commissioned more elaborate miniatures, then the results were different.
The Freiburg Malterer embroidery does not even tell the story of Ywain, but only provides an allusion to it. The illustration reflects only a very general interest in the romance and could well have been based on other sources, among them, as Rushing rightly points out, the topos of the "Minnesklave," the slave of love. Curiously enough, however, the author then interprets the image of a unicorn with its horn resting on a maiden's lap as "an obvious phallic image" (238), as if in this case the characteristic ambiguity of most textile illustrations no longer were in existence.
Rushing's assumptions rest on his introductory observation that medieval audiences were by and large illiterate, that pictures served as their medium to "read," and that most literary narratives were read aloud or performed with musical accompaniment, leaving it entirely up to the individual to reinterpret and retell the stories. In particular, artists enjoyed considerable freedom from the literary models, as Rushing tries to demonstrate in his study, although they were bound by other requirements both inherent to their art and to the canon of visual images. This, however, does not really come as a surprise, as Rushing confirms this himself in the introductory chapter. Previously, Norbert Ott had argued: "even in illustrating manuscripts, artists generally do not work with texts, so much as with the material on which the texts are based" (p. 19).
It seems somewhat simplistic to reiterate the very obvious, namely that pictures are different than literary texts, that the written word can deal with many more aspects than the visual representation (p. 23), and in this sense many of Rushing's points are really moot from the start, as he plainly opens already open windows. One final example representative for many must suffice. In his discussion of the Rodenegg frescoes, the author concludes: "the Rodenegg artist's goal was not to translate a text into pictures, but to use an existing story as the basis for an independent pictorial narrative" (p. 63). There is certainly some truth to the first half of the sentence, whereas the latter half goes far beyond what can be confirmed with the help of extant evidence. At the end Rushing even distinguishes between "pictorialization of texts," what the illustrations were not, and "visual manifestations of the story" (p. 264). This observation might, but also might not, follow from his discussion. We know too little about the artists' intentions and abilities to make such far-reaching claims. Even if the illustrations deviate considerably from the narratives, they still indicate important elements of familiarity with the story. After all, within the time frame covered in this study, orality continued to be a major medium for the dissemination of literature. Also within the world of scribes many variations easily occurred, as Paul Zumthor ("mouvance") and others have taught us.
Nevertheless, the detailed descriptions of the extant medieval illustrations of the Ywain material are valuable, and in this sense Rushing's study emerges as a useful reference work for the images, not so much, however, as a critical study on the relationship between pictorials and literary texts.