Medieval Architecture And Its Intellectual Context

Medieval Architecture and its Intellectual Context reflects the range of Peter Kidson's own interests and are united in following his approach to medieval architecture and art: a determination to see buildings and objects in the intellectual terms of the time in which they were created.

This important addition to the literature is the first overall study of the architecture of Norman England since Sir Alfred Clapham's English Romanesque Architecture after the Conquest (1934). Eric Fernie, a recognized authority on the subject, begins with an overview of the architecture ofthe period, paying special attention to the importance of the architectural evidence for an understanding of the Norman Conquest. The second part, the core of the book, is an examination of the buildings defined by their function, as castles, halls, and chamber blocks, cathedrals, abbeys, andcollegiate churches, monastic buildings, parish churches, and palace chapels. The third part is a reference guide to the elements which make up the buildings, such as apses, passages, vaults, galleries, and decorative features, and the fourth offers an account of the processes by which they wereplanned and constructed. This book contains powerful new ideas that will affect the way in which we look at and analyze these buildings.

The 11th and 12th centuries witnessed a transformation of European culture, from architecture and the visual arts to history, philosophy, theology and even law.

In this collaborative work seventeen international scholars use contemporary methodologies to address the ways in which we understand Gothic church buildings today. Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings discusses major monuments that have traditionally stood at the core of medieval art-historical studies: the cathedrals of Durham, Wells, Chartres, Reims, Poitiers, Strasbourg, and Naumburg, the abbey of Saint-Denis, and the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris. The contributors approach the subject from different specialties and methodologies within the field of art history, as well as from the disciplines of history, liturgical studies, and theology. Willibald Sauerl)nder's overview acknowledges that since the early nineteenth century scholars have been confronted with monuments that no longer perform their original functions. The moment of the creation of these great cages of stone, filled with images in metal, paint, glass, stone, and textiles, has passed as surely as Villon's `snows of yesteryear.' Artistic intentions shifted continuously over the centuries as these great buildings were adapted to new situations, historical, cultural, and religious. Once the settings for complex and diversified rituals of religious, social, and political dimensions, the buildings today stand in a completely different time frame and are experienced by a different audience. This volume addresses the hermeneutics of the development of scholarship concerning the Gothic church, reviewing the variable, but largely exclusive, agendas from the early nineteenth century to the present, including those of Viollet-le-Duc, Lef¦vre-Pontalis, M+le, Sedlmayr, Von Simson, Panofsky, Grodecki, and Bony. The conclusion is that there is no way to return to the original Gothic cathedral or the original audience. Artistic Integration in Gothic Buildings reassesses the traditional canon through a new pluralism of approaches and presents the Gothic church as an intricate and complex living monument that has been evolving over eight centuries and more.

A new way of looking at the medieval castle - as a cultural reflection of the society that produced it, seen through art and literature.

Drawing on new work published over the past twenty years, the author offers a history of building in Western Europe from 300 to 1200. Medieval castles, church spires, and monastic cloisters are just some of the areas covered.

A historian of medieval art and architecture with a rich appreciation of literary studies, Stephen Murray brings all those fields to bear on a new approach to understanding the great Gothic churches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Plotting Gothic positions the rhetoric of the Gothic as a series of three interlocking plots: a spatial plot tied to the material construction of the churches, a social plot stemming from the collaborative efforts that made Gothic output possible, and a rhetorical plot involving narratives that treat the churches as objects of desire. Drawing on the testimony of three witnesses involved in church building—Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, Gervase of Canterbury, and the image maker Villard de Honnecourt—and a range of secondary sources, Murray traces common patterns in the way medieval buildings were represented in words and images. Our witnesses provide vital information about the way the great churches of Gothic were built and the complexity of their meanings. Taking a fresh approach to Gothic architecture, Plotting Gothic offers an invigorating new way to understand some of the most lasting achievements of the medieval era.

Every age and every culture has relied on the incorporation of mathematics in their works of architecture to imbue the built environment with meaning and order. Mathematics is also central to the production of architecture, to its methods of measurement, fabrication and analysis. This two-volume edited collection presents a detailed portrait of the ways in which two seemingly different disciplines are interconnected. Over almost 100 chapters it illustrates and examines the relationship between architecture and mathematics. Contributors of these chapters come from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds: architects, mathematicians, historians, theoreticians, scientists and educators. Through this work, architecture may be seen and understood in a new light, by professionals as well as non-professionals. Volume I covers architecture from antiquity through Egyptian, Mayan, Greek, Roman, Medieval, Inkan, Gothic and early Renaissance eras and styles. The themes that are covered range from symbolism and proportion to measurement and structural stability. From Europe to Africa, Asia and South America, the chapters span different countries, cultures and practices.