| The "Huntingfield" Psalter, now manuscript M.43 of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, comprises a substantial fragment of an English devotional book produced in southern England, c.1220. The distinctive surviving devotional feature of M.43 is a series of forty full-page miniatures that preface the psalter text. Stylistically these anonymous pages display qualities soon to be identified with the Oxford illuminator, William de Brailes.;Iconographically they testify to the continuity of English tradition evident in surviving materials associated with Winchester, yet demonstrate ready initiative in inventing or appropriating images new to English manuscripts.;Among the themes addressed by the narrative images that preface this psalter, two may reflect the motivations of the probable patrons: an interest in the creation and fates of families, and a uniquely-developed explication of the founding narratives of Israel as a kingdom. Both themes may be related to the experiences of members of the Suffolk family prominent in securing Magna Carta, members whose obits are noted in the manuscript's calendar.;This dissertation aims to develop hermeneutical protocols for relating patronage, program, and function to one another in a single frame of reference. The psalter-as-prayerbook is that frame, and the functional interaction of pictures and texts in constituting the devotional psalter as such is the dynamic process under examination.;Metamorphosed by changing kinds of literacy and of visual experience, devotional practices mould books that in turn direct their use. Close comparison with related intact manuscripts, and explication of contemporary devotional texts, both aim asymtotically to realize the nature of this unique manuscript, and its use in that general context. |
