Labyrinth Research Bibliography
Bibliography of Articles and Studies Related to Labyrinth Research 2022 Update (.pdf 412K) - version that will be searchable on the new Labyrinth Society website
Bibliography of Studies Related to Labyrinth Research (.pdf 517K) - version in the searchable categories below
This downloadable Bibliography has all entries sorted by author. The entries in the bibliography have been categorized below by topic and also by type (doctoral dissertation, journal article etc.).
Imagined pilgrimage in gothic art: Maps, manuscripts and labyrinths
Abstract: Maps and the related manuscripts by the thirteenth-century English artist and chronicler Matthew Paris provide a case study of the use of medieval images for imagined pilgrimage. Neither these maps--his itineraries and mappamundi--nor imagined pilgrimage have received any full length study.
Chapter 1 defines the meditational contexts in which such forms of pilgrimage took place. The itineraries were designed to encourage their readers to internalize the maps and to project their embodied responses into their workings, where viewers and maps cooperated in the construction of an imagined pilgrimage.
Chapter 2 identifies local, practical contexts by which the brethren of St. Albans would have understood these constructions.
Chapter 3 explores how liturgical manipulations of time and space informed medieval mappaemundi, especially in the itineraries' different depictions of an apocalyptic Jerusalem. The unique design of Paris' mappamundi also encouraged embodied access to Jerusalem and is explained by its reference to the shape of other mappaemundi as a chlamys--an imperial and liturgical garment.
How the itineraries shaped the geography of the world as a history of the Divine Plan is explored in Chapter 4. The foundational myths of London, Rome and Jerusalem, the seven page format of the itineraries, and the different associations of history with both liturgy and the Divine Plan taught the monks to read the itineraries as a meditative aid to the recollection of sacred history.
Chapter 5 expands the corpus of materials that can be explained under the rubric of imagined pilgrimage to include the labyrinth pavements of the Gothic cathedrals surrounding Paris. Medievals often paired mappaemundi with labyrinths as parallel depictions of the world. Both labyrinths and mappaemundi were organized around two vantages: a stationary, exterior position, and a mobile, interior perusal. The external vantage point is one that properly belonged to God and which devolved to kings and emperors as a sign of their right to rule. The production of a "presentation copy" of Matthew Paris' mappamundi for King Henry III, implicated that form of vision as another apparatus of Henry's program of state decoration in his chambers at Westminster.