History as a Visual Art in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance

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Morrison (history and poetics, Rutgers U.) addresses the fragmentary and contradictory qualities that puzzle modern readers in the historical writing of 12th-century Europe. He explains that to the writers of these histories, understanding was not exclusively linguistic or rational but instead, like other arts, emotional and visual. Audiences found unity not in what the reason read in a text but in what the imagination read into it. The devices of narrative discoordination express a critical method designed for the intended audience to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)