Letter, word, and good messengers: Towards an archaeology of remote communication

摘要

Some late-medieval illuminations, in which depictions of messengers play an important role, are examined in order to shed light on the images' preoccupation with body and script, and on their attempts at illustrating norms and anxieties regarding messengers and their duties. Cultural production in medieval Europe frequently depicted instances of remote communication and displayed an awareness of its problems and challenges. Distant communication relied on subaltern human agents, who carried written messages and used their own body to store and deliver messages. The pictorial treatments point to a love-hate relationship of the senders/recipients to the messengers as the necessary third party. Beyond control, out of the eyes of the master, every messenger had the potential of endangering the success of the desired communication. Thus, the images highlight the fragility of a communicative situation dependent on human relays.