8 - The Relationship between Letter and Frame in Insular and Carolingian Manuscripts

Summary

It is no great surprise that frames are usually studied in relation to images. Theoretical examinations of the frame and practices of framing have largely concentrated on images, and have developed theoretical observations and ideas out of the perceived relationship between the picture, its frame and the world of the viewer. The early medieval codex allows us a slightly different perspective on the frame. Here, we are just as likely to find pages with framed script as pages with framed images, or we may even find both, arranged as a diptych across a single opening. Despite the fairly substantial body of studies on the status or role of the frame and closely related elements or areas of the page (such as borders, boundaries, edges and margins) in the Middle Ages, the practice of graphically framing text has not to my knowledge received specific attention. Explanations of why text and, in particular, lettered beginnings are framed in the early Middle Ages usually refer us back to the text–image relationship. The disadvantage of these kinds of argument is that, conceptually, they turn the frame into something added, an accessory, and enforce the distinction between the categories text and image, which, as the chapters in this volume show, is an artificial and problematic distinction to make for early medieval manuscripts. Such arguments also simplify the functions of frames in framed text pages, which can vary even within a single manuscript. Stating that the frame treats the text like an image, or awards it the status or effect of an image, does not explain anything, but rather raises additional questions concerning the relations between text, image, letter and material page.

Studying the interactions between letter and frame offers an opportunity to foreground the frame as a spatially relevant graphic principle, and to ask whether the status and function of the frame are the same regardless of whether it is texts or images that are being framed. In a seminal article, Meyer Schapiro suggests an equality between the fields for text and image in this respect: ‘The same properties of the field as a space with a latent expressiveness are exploited in printed and painted verbal signs.’ As an example, he refers to ‘the hierarchy of words on the title page of a book or on a poster’, but does not elaborate. Given the prominence of framed script, this deserves some further investigation.