Visual Translation

“Visual Translation will give scholars across the board not only a new understanding of the place of French humanists in the shaping and accessibility of manuscripts whose creation they oversaw but also insight into the complex and integral role that they played in formulating the programs of illumination that would go on to define these texts for generations.” —Elizabeth Morrison, editor of Book of Beasts

"This fascinating book treats a group of illustrated manuscripts from the early 15th century produced in or around Paris. . . . Some manuscripts . . . were translated into French, but this deeply learned book uses 'visual translation' to signify the use of images to enrich the text for readers in a very different culture, making the past 'resonate' with the present. . . wonderfully illustrated with nearly 200 color images of miniatures and important texts." —Choice

"While the prominence and quality of illustrations in French manuscripts have attracted attention, their images have rarely been studied systematically as components of humanist translation. Anne D. Hedeman fills this gap by studying the humanist book production closely supervised by Laurent de Premierfait and Jean Lebègue for courtly Parisian audiences in the first half of the fifteenth century." --RMBLF.be

"The answers Hedeman discovered and analyzed in the book offer insight into aspects of humanist thought and of translation that were specific to the early 15th century and other aspects that are timeless." --The University of Kansas

"A very engaging and abundantly illustrated book. ...The ‘elite illustrated subset of humanist manuscripts’ that Hedeman brilliantly presents to the reader thus reveals once again the dynamic interaction among their princely audiences, the various craftsmen who contributed to their execution, the two humanists who supervised their production, and the texts they transmit." —Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures

"Hedeman’s book enhances our understanding of literary and manuscript culture in the highest French aristocratic circles, showing the wealth of knowledge and intellectual activity produced through the dissemination of classical and Italian texts and culture."—French Studies