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The forest. An enchanted Middle Ages?
Catalogue of the exhibition at the Saint-Antoine l'Abbaye Museum from July 4 to November 11, 2021.

The forest. An enchanted Middle Ages?

Snoeck
€22,00 €0,00
N° d'inventaire 23922
Format 22 x 26
Détails 144 p., paperback with flaps.
Publication Gent, 2021
Etat Nine
ISBN 9789461616814
Approaching the representation of the forest by questioning its power of attraction in the Middle Ages and beyond, comes back implicitly to evoking the original story of Saint Anthony and that of his patron saint, Anthony the Great, the archetypal figure of the anchorite. "Desert of the West," the forest is distinguished by an intimate relationship with the reclusive hermit or the repentant saint. It constitutes this space, this in-between world, one wild, the other civilized, it is this hagiographic forest which sublimates, sometimes excessively, the retreat of the hermit. It is also in the heart of the forest that valiant knights, hunted lovers, water fairies, then wood fairies evolve. Literature presents a fantastic forest. Beyond encyclopedias and other treatises on hunting, which offer a wide range of illustrated flora and fauna, Arthurian literature, epic and courtly novels, are part of the narrative tradition of a threatening and evil forest, or on the contrary, marvelous and enchanted, which invariably refers to the Celtic tradition. The forest then appears as the place of wandering, seclusion, flight, exclusion, transformation. It is also the place of initiation - often through a hermit - of learning and prefigures a dreamlike world. But the forest is also the sanctuary of a prolific fauna that pours out in an often enchanted bestiary giving free rein to animality, the wild forest. The animal indeed occupies a prominent place in novels, lais or chansons de geste. Often associated with a symbolic representation of the world, it highlights a phantasmagorical vision at the center of which metaphors are legion. Whether real or imaginary, its mere evocation often embodies a fabulous universe. Moreover, it remains in hagiographical stories an auxiliary of the saint that it accompanies (Saint Eustace or Saint Hubert and the stag, Saint Anthony and the wild pig, Saint Gilles and the doe...) or that it sometimes fights. Bestiaries are both a literary genre and an encyclopedia that aims above all to be descriptive of the animal world, between narrative and symbolism, where we find the lion, the unicorn, the wolf, the bear, the weasel and many others. By revealing the hidden and dark side of the forest, the lair of beasts and wild men, a theme particularly popular at the end of the Middle Ages, artists of the 19th century and at the dawn of the following century, in a single romantic impulse, deliver a resurgent representation of the mythical forest of the Middle Ages, drawing its origins from across the Channel. Thus, Walter Scott fuels the imagination by staging a chivalrous Middle Ages embodied by Ivanhoe against the backdrop of a historical epic. Gustave Doré, through the figures of Lancelot, Viviane and Merlin, draws on Arthurian tales aimed at glorifying heroic figures, transcended by the meticulous reconstruction of both the setting and the events described. The forest becomes the mirror of a dreamed Middle Ages, it is this mythical forest, imposing itself moreover as a semantic double of Gothic architecture, vaults soaring towards the sky with floral capitals whose rediscovery is for a long time associated with the time of the cathedrals magnified by Victor Hugo. In many respects, the forest in the plurality of its incarnation is indeed that of an enchanted Middle Ages.
Approaching the representation of the forest by questioning its power of attraction in the Middle Ages and beyond, comes back implicitly to evoking the original story of Saint Anthony and that of his patron saint, Anthony the Great, the archetypal figure of the anchorite. "Desert of the West," the forest is distinguished by an intimate relationship with the reclusive hermit or the repentant saint. It constitutes this space, this in-between world, one wild, the other civilized, it is this hagiographic forest which sublimates, sometimes excessively, the retreat of the hermit. It is also in the heart of the forest that valiant knights, hunted lovers, water fairies, then wood fairies evolve. Literature presents a fantastic forest. Beyond encyclopedias and other treatises on hunting, which offer a wide range of illustrated flora and fauna, Arthurian literature, epic and courtly novels, are part of the narrative tradition of a threatening and evil forest, or on the contrary, marvelous and enchanted, which invariably refers to the Celtic tradition. The forest then appears as the place of wandering, seclusion, flight, exclusion, transformation. It is also the place of initiation - often through a hermit - of learning and prefigures a dreamlike world. But the forest is also the sanctuary of a prolific fauna that pours out in an often enchanted bestiary giving free rein to animality, the wild forest. The animal indeed occupies a prominent place in novels, lais or chansons de geste. Often associated with a symbolic representation of the world, it highlights a phantasmagorical vision at the center of which metaphors are legion. Whether real or imaginary, its mere evocation often embodies a fabulous universe. Moreover, it remains in hagiographical stories an auxiliary of the saint that it accompanies (Saint Eustace or Saint Hubert and the stag, Saint Anthony and the wild pig, Saint Gilles and the doe...) or that it sometimes fights. Bestiaries are both a literary genre and an encyclopedia that aims above all to be descriptive of the animal world, between narrative and symbolism, where we find the lion, the unicorn, the wolf, the bear, the weasel and many others. By revealing the hidden and dark side of the forest, the lair of beasts and wild men, a theme particularly popular at the end of the Middle Ages, artists of the 19th century and at the dawn of the following century, in a single romantic impulse, deliver a resurgent representation of the mythical forest of the Middle Ages, drawing its origins from across the Channel. Thus, Walter Scott fuels the imagination by staging a chivalrous Middle Ages embodied by Ivanhoe against the backdrop of a historical epic. Gustave Doré, through the figures of Lancelot, Viviane and Merlin, draws on Arthurian tales aimed at glorifying heroic figures, transcended by the meticulous reconstruction of both the setting and the events described. The forest becomes the mirror of a dreamed Middle Ages, it is this mythical forest, imposing itself moreover as a semantic double of Gothic architecture, vaults soaring towards the sky with floral capitals whose rediscovery is for a long time associated with the time of the cathedrals magnified by Victor Hugo. In many respects, the forest in the plurality of its incarnation is indeed that of an enchanted Middle Ages.