The Idol of the Text

Author / Editor
Zeeman, Nicolette.

Title
The Idol of the Text

Published
Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson, and Nicolette Zeeman, eds. Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England: Textuality and the Visual Image (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2002, pp. 43-62.

Description
For Chaucer and other medieval writers, "the figure of the idol is a means of focusing on problematic aspects of imaginative textuality and its contexts" (44). The sculptures in HF and Lollius in TC are partially represented or broken figures of disrupted textuality. In PF, frozen idols "emblematize" the sterility of courtly love, and the sterile Pardoner embodies idolatry itself. Zeeman also discusses works by Macrobius, Alain de Lille, and Jean de Meun.

Contributor
Dimmick, Jeremy, ed.
Simpson, James, ed.

Alternative Title
Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England: Textuality and the Visual Image.

Chaucer Subjects
House of Fame.
Troilus and Criseyde.
Parliament of Fowls.
Pardoner and His Tale.