The Good Neighbours: Words and Images in the Ms. 3368 of the Sainte Geneviève Library in Paris

Abstract

The essay aims to explore some historical-conceptual junctures of the Early Modern literary culture, starting from the perspective of the meeting and interaction between words and images in the physical space of a manuscript and in the conceptual space of a mnemotechnical treatise. Therefore the article describes a richly illustrated manuscript of the Parisian library of Sainte-Geneviève (ms. 3368), which contains an Italian treatise on the art of memory from the mid-15th century. The semiotic, rhetorical and cultural strategies mobilized by the physical co-presence of a text and its figurative translation represent in fact the core of every mnemonic process. The illustrations visualize the result of the associative process that enables remembrance, whilst the text follows and breaks down the process in a linear way, normally mentioning the res memorandae and then the image that has to be visualized in the mind.