Writing on the world beyond the page: medieval inscriptions as facta and ficta

Abstract

AbstractFrom the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries texts proliferated upon the surfaces of objects, monuments and architecture, ensuring that medieval people lived with texts, even if they never turned a page. Examining a series of inscribed objects, monuments, and buildings, this article focuses upon three constitutive features of this large-scale dynamic: epigraphic prosopopoeia, the use and effects of deixis in medieval inscriptions, and the device of the banderole. It concludes by examining the twelfth-century Bridekirk baptismal font: an epigraphic monument in which all three devices are skillfully deployed, to remarkably self-reflexive ends. The article aims to show how the design of epigraphic texts added not only new textual-material facts to the world, but also textual-visual ficta or fictions.