Text and Image in René d'Anjou's Livre des Tournois [3 volume set]

An illustrated manual showing how a medieval tournament was organised, here presented in three volumes with essays on various aspects of the manuscript. This 3 volume set contains the full text of René d'Anjou's Livre des tournois. This is famous as the most substantial account of the organisation of a medieval tournament that has come down to us. It survives in eight manuscripts, most of which have an almost identical layout; the best of these is a magnificent work of art in its own right. But these manuscripts have a further interest to the historian of culture, because they represent in effect the evidence for one of the first illustrated manuals, in which text and image are complementary, and form a single whole. The copyists understood this, and followed the original because the mise en page was an essential part of the whole. Justin Sturgeon's interdisciplinary study reveals the patterns and relationships which give the manual its very specific character. The study begins by