The book of hours, a type of devotional book that usually contains a collection of prayers, psalms, hymns, and other readings to be recited at specific hours of the day, is one of the most well-preserved artistic products from the late Middle Ages. These books have received extensive scholarly attention as complex cultural products that were often richly illuminated. The Book of Hours and the Body: Somaesthetics, Posthumanism, and the Uncanny is focused on illuminations in several books of hours that could have helped their users reflect on issues of embodiment, gender, being human, and the divine. The methodological framework and goals are ambitious—the author, Sherry C. M. Lindquist, explores each book through the lens of a postmodern theory, together with information on historical and sociopolitical circumstances, to reveal both premodern and postmodern terms of embodiment. Lindquist’s research topics show her commitment to understanding broad questions of humanistic theories and identity. She also poses questions about the ways that art historical research can assist in fostering social justice. By employing new theories concerned with the unstable nature of body perceptions, identity, and society, she offers her readers an awareness of perpetuating stereotypes, colonialist perspectives, gender biases, and the exclusion of marginalized groups that were the results of the damaging parts of Western art history’s legacies. These purposes make this a very worthwhile book.

The book consists of four chapters. The first chapter is introductory. Chapters two through four present the core of the research. Lindquist dedicates each chapter to exploring one book of hours through the lens of a specific theory. Chapter two deals with the Belles Heures (1405–1408; New York, The Cloisters Collection, 54.11a,b), a book of hours created for Jean, the duke of Berry, in the light of the somaesthetic theory (studying the body’s sensory and aesthetic experiences); chapter three delves into posthumanism as a useful theory to interpret images in the Vienna Hours of Mary of Burgundy (ca. 1477; Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Codex Vindobonesis 1857), and chapter four intersects the theory of the uncanny and images from two books of hours made for Thomas Butler, the seventh Earl of Ormond (late 15th century; British Library, Harley mss. 2887 and 2 B XV). Lindquist admits that all the visual materials of each book could have been examined according to the three theories. However, her choice to match a theoretical framework to one material-visual product offers the readers a clear analytical framework, which in turn helps them assimilate the novel methodological approach and the discussions of theories that might be less familiar to premodern art historians.   

As art historians specializing in the premodern world, we often question the appropriateness of applying postmodern theories to premodern artworks because the underlying assumptions and contexts might differ significantly. From the point of view of traditional art historical study, which aims to strive to understand the past on its own terms, the inclusion of such theories without an awareness of differences in linguistic perceptions and beliefs that construct peoples’ mentalities might result in anachronistic discussions and conclusions. However, Lindquist is not concerned only with the interpretation of works from the past in the context of their period. While being aware of anachronistic pitfalls, she suggests using the present moment and its concerns as a lens through which to view and interpret past events, works, or ideas. Works of art created for the European elite often reflect ideological patterns of exclusion, targeting peasants, the bourgeoisie, Jews, Muslims, and anyone else considered “other” by the Christian European elite. Jonathan Alexander’s article “Labeur and Paresse: Ideological Representations of Medieval Peasant Labor” (1990) addressed this issue through the Tres Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry (1412–1416 and 1489, Musée Condé, Chantilly, ms. 65). However, aside from this example, few studies on books of hours’ illustrations examine the constructed differentiation of social rank with a similarly heartfelt and painful awareness.

Each chapter is structured into five corresponding sections. It opens with a description of a visual example from the manuscript that reflects relevant qualities to the theory to be examined. It also sketches working definitions and brief historiographical and relevant theoretical approaches with the aim of justifying the inclusion of the theory in premodern artistic products. Then, the author provides a brief description of the manuscript and relevant previous scholarship. This section also explores how traditional scholarship has neglected particular aspects of these books of hours in broader art history narratives. In the following sections, these observations clarify the importance of deconstructing traditional narratives and prepare for theoretical reevaluation. Following the theoretical and historiographical discussion, the chapter examines relevant themes by exploring portraits of owners, narrative illustrations, and marginal decorations, employing ideas from the chosen theory of the chapter. Next, the section on art, politics, and society analyzes the significance of insights gained from earlier sections. This analysis is done by considering these insights alongside more historical information, allowing for a deeper understanding of their impact and relevance. The conclusions of each chapter consider how the revisionist implications and the new interpretive framework enable new insights both into late medieval culture and into how we fashion and use our personal items to shape ourselves.

The first example is discussed in chapter two. Lindquist examines selected corporeal themes in the Belles Heures and delves into the self-fashioning of both the artists and the patron, and into the psychological and social implications of representing idealized and suffering bodies. Additionally, it discusses how the bodies of marginalized groups are dehumanized as part of the elite’s efforts to achieve their own self-fulfillment. The theory of somaesthetics provides a fertile ground for a new interpretation of visual evidence. The philosopher Richard Shusterman introduced this term, referring to an interdisciplinary field that examines the body’s potential for sensory experience and creative self-fashioning. Shusterman’s theory’s meliorative aspects fit well into the essence of the cultural product of prayer books, where the visual and textual contents were aimed at forging a better person whose privileged status in society is self-evident. The discussion of portraits of the duke, surrogate portraits, and tortured bodies provides an exhaustive account of the patron’s intimate concerns for improving his soul and his claims for power and privilege.

In chapter three, Lindquist analyzes competing yet overlapping concepts of Renaissance Humanism (in capital H), humanism (in small h), and posthumanism. She deconstructs Otto Pächt’s The Master of Mary of Burgundy (1948) and Erwin Panofsky’s Early Netherlandish Painting (1971) studies of the Vienna Hours by showing Pächt’s aspiration for describing the artist’s work as part of delineating a larger evolutionary narrative of Western artistic achievements and Panofsky’s attempt to “insert perspective into a universal, Hegelian teleological schema” (97). The most interesting part of chapter three is where the author examines figures and inscriptions in the margins and their relations to gender construction. Here, she uses a comparative study of the marginal motives in Mary’s Book of Hours and in her father’s, Charles the Fearless Book of Hours (ca. 1471; Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, ms. 37). The close reading of the visual imagery of human and nonhuman figures helps her to establish a new framework to understand the intersection of center and margin (with regard to compositional decisions in the book itself and to the fluid nature of posthumanism as a nonbinary concept). She dismantles one aspect of the ideological program which constructs the creation of the volume—to provide Mary of Burgundy (1457–1482) with a visual tool to understand her complex role. As a female ruler who succeeded her father, Charles the Bold (1433–1477), as the sovereign of one of the most powerful domains in Europe, she had to reconcile gendered responsibilities and her sociopolitical role as the keeper of her duchy.

The final chapter introduces the theory of the uncanny as an interpretive framework for analyzing several depictions and the issue of materiality in two books of hours owned and used by Thomas Butler (1426–1515). At the section where the author discusses the relevant theory, I wished she had provided a brief account of concepts prevailing in the fifteenth century that have affinities with the theory she employs. The uncanny was discussed in Christina Normore’s A Feast for the Eyes (2015) and in Stephen Perkinson’s The Likeness of the King (2009). Both scholars discussed aspects related to the uncanny in relation to contemporary court culture artistic products. However, the lack of this information is not an obstacle to understanding the merits of the chosen theory in the context of the visual materials. The discussion of the uncanny and its advantages in interpreting fifteenth-century imagery continues with an analysis of several examples from the book, including the anthropomorphic Trinities, and the pictorial cycle of the lives of the Virgin and Christ.

This book is a significant and original contribution to the study of body perceptions, gender, and identity formation through engagement with visual-cultural products in the premodern world. It also provides ample enlightening insights into the specific books of hours it examines. One of its significant contributions to the scholarship of social art history is that it provides the reasons for integrating contemporary theories in the study of what Lindquist terms “matters of urgency—especially those like the history of embodiment” (5). By emphasizing the theories as a starting point for new historiography, she reveals the “prejudicial frameworks in which historians have worked” (5), adding to our knowledge of late medieval societies, but even more, highlighting our perceptions and beliefs on these themes.