Breaking the silence of the grave: the agency of speech scrolls on late medieval French tombs

Abstract

Abstract Amongst the many visual stimuli that fill late medieval churches, text scrolls occupy an important place. Merging both image and text in the shape of written banderoles, they add a layer of ‘sound’ to a variety of objects. This article deals with their specific use on funeral monuments where, acting as ‘speech scrolls’, they provide the dead with a distinctive voice. The musical resonances of the texts that appear on such speech scrolls is explored, and special focus is given to their presence on cadaver tombs in order to explore the agency held by the uncanny image of talking corpses within the context of late medieval strategies for the afterlife.