Panizzi Lecture – Poetry Play Persuasion: The Diagrammatic Imagination in Medieval Art and Thought
Channel: British Library
Date: 2022-12-06

This event took place on the 1 of November 2022. The information below is correct as of the publication date.

The final of the three lectures by Jeffrey F. Hamburger on diagrams in medieval art and thought.

Poetry and play are probably the last words that come to mind when most of us think about diagrams.

Throughout the Middle Ages, however, and beyond, diagrammatic techniques provided the underpinning for practices informing complex aesthetic procedures in poetry and the visual arts. Although associated with the rigours of reasoning, diagrams also possessed a playful dimension central to artistic as well as intellectual invention.

Just as diagrams play a critical role in modern game theory, so too in medieval culture, diagrams incorporated a playful element that sought to unify text with image, clarity with complexity, and simplicity with difficulty.

Medieval games themselves were often conceptualised in terms of diagrams. Whereas in modern understandings, medieval art is often associated with the monstrous, viewing it against the backdrop of the diagram permits one to see this aspect as but one side of a coin – the other side of which represents a profound pursuit of order.

The Panizzi Lecture series 2022 is given by Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture, Harvard University.

Thanks to the kind support of Jonathan A. Hill booksellers we are now able offer an online stream of the Panizzi lectures for free.

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