Speaking Sculptures in Late Medieval Europe A Silent Rhetoric

Speaking Sculptures in Late Medieval Europe explores medieval sculptors’ motif of the open mouth. Too often dismissed as an illusionistic artistic device, or as an affective ploy to foster the emotional response of the viewer, ‘ speech mode’ , as it is called in this book, is here shown to have a deeper significance as an agent of engagement and persuasion. Through the evocation of sound, speaking sculptures fostered imaginatively an aural relationship between the sculpture and the viewer. Exploring a wide range of geographies, this work demonstrates that the speech mode in sculpture was not an isolated phenomenon but a familiar device in many areas of Late Gothic Europe. By highlighting fourteenth-, fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century examples, as well as key thirteenth-century precedents, Speaking Sculptures in Late Medieval Europe explores the use, effects and purposes of this silent rhetoric, and the agency it implies within the period eye and the period ear of pre-Reformation Catholic Europe.

Dr Kim Woods is an Honorary Associate at the Open University. Her recent publications include: Cut in Alabaster: A Material of Sculpture and its European Traditions 1330-1530 (2018).

Introduction: Speaking Sculptures in Theory and Practice; 1: Affective Sound, Dramatic Dialogue and Animated Performance; 2: Catechism, Liturgy and Song; 3: Speech, Rhetoric and Agency; 4: The Speaking Dead; Conclusion