The production of narrative through static imagery: examples from a peculiar medieval illustration

Abstract

Certain images perform upon and with their readers. Among the performative capabilities of imagery is narrative function, where the reader actively constructs a sense of time from an otherwise static surface. An extraordinary medieval illustration of Saint Margaret’s emergence from the belly of a dragon is used to demonstrate a range of narrative imagery. Consideration is given to the original conditions of this ‘Margaretene’, especially its medieval readership. This exemplar then contributes to a form of creative analysis, where other extant narrative strategies are utilized to visually ‘tell’ the same story. The result – a series of illustrations rendered by artist James Wisdom – permits a most direct comparison of six narrative strategies. The strategies outlined are graphic projective, partitioned, graphic repetitive, natural repetitive, intrafigural, and evidentiary. Certain trends emerge when the strategies are arranged in an axis based on naturalism. The reader must be more astute as strategies utilize more naturalistic scenes and thus become less dependent upon learned conventions and the repetition of figures.