Zeldenrust, Lydia (2016) Serpent or Half-Serpent? Bernhard Richel’s Melusine and the Making of a Western European Icon. Neophilologus. pp. 19-41. ISSN 1572-8668
Abstract
This essay presents a much-needed exploration of the impact of the woodcuts of the first German Melusine edition on the iconography of the larger, Western European Mélusine tradition. Although the debt owed by printers of early German Melusine editions to Bernhard Richel’s editio princeps has been acknowledged, the influence of Richel’s images on the woodcuts of early editions printed in other languages—French, Castilian, Dutch, and English—as yet remains largely unexplored. By examining the impact of one of Richel’s woodcuts in particular—that depicting Melusine’s transformation into a half-serpent—this essay traces how Richel’s iconography came to play such an important role that his depiction of Melusine’s hybrid body eventually became one of her defining and most recognisable characteristics. In so doing, it reveals a number of interesting transcultural connections between early Mélusine printers and the clever image-recycling strategies they employed. This case study will also give us valuable insight into the production and illustration of early printed books, as the cross-cultural reuse and copying of prototype images challenge modern ideas of coherence between text and image.
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Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (York) > English and Related Literature (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 23 Oct 2019 15:20 |
Last Modified: | 16 Oct 2024 16:09 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-015-9458-0 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11061-015-9458-0 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:152526 |
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