Visualizing Household Health

“Jennifer Borland has done a great service in teaching medievalists from several different fields how to ‘read’ these sequences of historiated initials and how to interpret them as both constructions and constructors of later medieval ideas about bodies, health, and social status.” —Winston Black Manuscript Studies “Visualizing Household Health: Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the ‘Régime du corps’ is a valuable contribution to the study of medieval medicine, deluxe manuscripts, and elite domesticity. Its in-depth interpretations of some of the Régime’s historiated initials stand out as especially noteworthy.” —Julie Orlemanski caa.reviews “Visualizing Household Health includes the academic apparatus to support further study of the Régime, while also serving as a welcome and timely interpretative exploration of the illumination, reception, and context of these fascinating manuscripts.” —Anne Rudloff Stanton Speculum “A most welcome addition to the study of medieval medical imagery.” —Taylor McCall Social History of Medicine “Borland’s beautiful book, ornamented with eighty-five illustrations and appended with three excellent tables describing the Regime manuscripts and their illustrations, will be a valuable resource for historians of medieval art and scholars of medieval medicine intent on understanding how women labored in service of their own health and that of their households.” —Melissa Reynolds Renaissance Quarterly “Borland masterfully weaves together the methodologies of a variety of disciplines: the history of women as patrons and consumers, the history of medicine, anthropology, geography, and of course material and visual studies and art history, all under the larger umbrellas of social history and medieval studies. . . . By immersing the illuminated Régime manuscripts in this multivalent exploration, the full nature of their rich content is finally revealed.” —Tracy Chapman Hamilton, author of Pleasure and Politics at the Court of France: The Artistic Patronage of Queen Marie of Brabant (1260–1321) “Visualizing Household Health interrogates the function and value of illumination paired with a secular text with both practical and theoretical knowledge. . . . Borland demonstrates the newest area of modern scholarly attention to the wayfinding devices that integrated the textual and visual communication of medieval knowledge.” —Jean A. Givens, author of Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art “Just as the Régime targets a wide-ranging readership, so too does Borland’s book have much to offer to different disciplines....” —Linda Marie Rouillard Mediaevistik “Very thoughtful in its approach and its discussion of so many interrelated contexts, Borland’s book is truly interdisciplinary and makes a major contribution to art history, gender studies, manuscript studies, history of medicine, and so many other fields.” —Diane Wolfthal Studies in Iconography