Jonathan Boulton, Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame
Michel Pastoureau, EPHE, EHESS The International Medieval
Society in Paris (IMS-Paris) is soliciting abstracts for
individual papers and proposals for complete sessions for its
2013 symposium organized around the theme of “Color" in medieval
France. From the beginning of the Middle Ages, color was as
connected to the visual and performing arts as it was to
letters, theology, science, the livelihoods of medieval people,
and their way of relating to the world. Long before Vasari’s
famous distinction between colore and disegno, medieval artists
and musicians had recognized the great aesthetic, semiotic, and
rhetorical potential of color. From a musical and rhetorical
standpoint, the concept of color and the quality of ornatus both
signified embellishment. In many ways such embellishments
resulted in devices in musical notation that were intended as
visualizations of the aural experience. These visualizations
were derived from the definition of catego