A contest of the visual and the verbal in Gonzalo de Berceo's Miracles of Our Lady.

What is it about?

Miracle tales are visual events – people see and believe – must see to believe. Gonzalo de Berceo's miracle tales have all the hallmarks of the visual text: they are performative and spectacular. Yet they are filtered and mediated through the poet/pilgrim/observer. What is unknowable is depicted as knowable, approachable, comprehensible. Through ekphrasis, the miracle is accessible to a contemporary audience. Berceo allows his audience the opportunity to approach the medieval goal of “gazing upon the divine face.”

Featured Image

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Ekphrasis as it has been traditionally examined is seen as a self-reflexive text. The supposed primacy of written text in the Middle Ages leads us to believe that the re-vision of a visual work of art into text makes the work of art more important; the written text being seen as a work with more authority. Yet Berceo himself was aware that the source text was secondary to the sacred event itself, thus belying the notion that a written text is somehow more authoritative than a visual, performative spectacle (the miracle itself). The traditional ekphrastic binary between observer and observed can be dismissed in the case of Berceo’s Milagros. Traditionally, the observed is imprisoned within the words the observer chooses to use. The power dynamic is clear. Yet in the case of the Milagros, the observed escapes the confines of the written portrayal to become more powerful than the text (or indeed the observer) itself.

Perspectives