Illuminations from Books of Hours by Janet Backhouse (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 215 distinction between essence and existence; page after page of argumentation cement the work’s place in the highest tier of philosophical achievement. The sheer complexity of the Metaphysics engenders in the reader a compulsion to reduce the entire narrative to propositions, but this is a most worthwhile endeavor , and one of which Avicenna would surely have approved. DAVID BENNETT, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA Janet Backhouse, Illuminations from Books of Hours (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2004) 160 pp., ill. Janet Backhouse’s Illumination from Books of Hours is a lovely selection of 140 or so plates from Books of Hours in the collections of the British Library. Despite her own long-standing authority as a scholar of Books of Hours in particular—and illuminated manuscripts in general—Backhouse focuses the reader’s attention here on the stunning visual testimony of the illuminations themselves, rather than on scholarship concerning them. The plates appear alone, without commentary, following a short introduction. The most immediately striking feature of this volume is its diminutive size. The quality of the reproductions is as luxurious as that of many a hefty coffee table book, but the dimensions are more on the scale of a slim paperback novel. This welcome measure allows us to experience the illuminations (which are shown in their actual size when possible) in a format approximating their original incarnation in Books of Hours. Though few modern readers will likely find occasion to carry this collection around as an accessory the way the original owners might have, it is a pleasure to be able to hold this book easily up to the best light and plunge one’s nose into it in order to appreciate the finest details of the images. Backhouse’s introduction offers a straightforward explanation of what Books of Hours are—their content and use, how details concerning their production and ownership may be deduced, their history as a valuable social and economic commodity. More captivating is Backhouse’s discussion of the British Library collections the plates are drawn from. Where a manuscript languishes at present generally has little bearing on what most scholars and collectors hope to access through it—namely, a glimpse of the world that produced and consumed it in its first blush. Backhouse’s brief history of the British Library collections reminds us of several things: that these manuscripts have a long and legitimate history extending beyond their time and place of origin; that the institutions which hold many of them today have, as well, their own interesting histories; that the phenomenon of collecting (by institutions as well as individuals) lends a rejuvenated vitality to Books of Hours which rivals—in its own way—the interest they aroused when they were new. Backhouse reflects that the “status [of Books of Hours] as objects of desire has continued into modern times, with examples of particular interest or quality exciting rivalry among collectors and attracting sale room prices at least equal in contemporary terms to the value put upon them by their original owners” (8). Setting scholarly theories aside, Backhouse reminds us that these manuscripts possess a sort of magnetism which assures that they will always be more timeless than antiquated. In a further nod to the British Library, Backhouse borrows the manuscripts’ REVIEWS 216 order of acquisition as the organizing principle for this volume, which results (she speculates) “in a pleasingly random mixture of dates and places of origin, while at the same time providing an unusual overview of the way in which one particular part of the manuscript collection has evolved” (9). The distribution of images is, as it happens, very pleasantly random and diverse, and their subtle framing within a more modern than historical context lends currency to their interest. CHRISTINE THUAU, French & Francophone Studies, UCLA Günter Bandmann, Early Medieval Architecture as Bearer of Meaning, trans. Kendall Wallis (New York: Columbia University Press 2005) 368 pp. Kendall Wallis’s recent translation of Günter Bandmann’s Mittelalterliche Architektur als Bedeuntungsträger (1951) marks the first time the Englishspeaking world can enjoy direct access to this seminal work of medieval architectural scholarship. Due to the half-century lapse between publication and translation...