Overview

This study examines the visual productions of the German Peasants’ War – pamphlets, banners, and clothing – to argue for the disruptive and radical visual legacy in which hierarchies and modes of subjection were overturned. Drawing on the author’s experience as a print maker and artist, the book offers a close and sympathetic analysis of the visual culture produced in this moment of war and revolt. Far from only being a matter of historical interest, these disruptive modes of visual production also resonate with contemporary debates about dissensus, populism, and political identity, especially in the work of Jacques Rancière. The refusal of these peasants (and mercenaries and some clergy) to remain in their place ruptured the visual field of power. It was also the repression of this popular eruption that was to shape conventional visual culture and politics as a reaction. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, medieval and early modern studies, and political history.

Full Product Details

9781032776347

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Jonathan Trayner revitalises the longstanding political fascination with the German Peasants’ War of the early sixteenth century by foregrounding the visual culture of subaltern revolt. Reimagining class struggle in the interregnum between feudalism and capitalism through the visual ephemera of the printing press, Trayner ties the material culture of peasant protagonism into a wider performative context of preaching, song, theatre, riot and carnival. Like the prints that he studies, this book is an eye opener."" -- Dave Beech, University of the Arts London. ""The German Peasants’ War was the largest mass insurrection in European history before the French Revolution. Extended research in recent years has revealed much about its causes, course, and consequences. However, that research has also threatened to rob its primary participants of their voices. Many scholars have challenged the value of printed sources supporting the insurgents to provide insight into the grievances and goals of a largely illiterate peasantry. Jonathan Trayner restores those voices by shifting our attention away from this almost exclusive focus on the printed word to consideration of the printed image and its interaction with the printed word, and from the content of those images and words to how they were viewed and used by the participants. The result is an intriguing study of the developing subjectivation and agency of commoners in the social transition from the Middle Ages to modernity."" -- Geoffrey Dipple, University of Alberta

Author Information

Jonathan Trayner lectures at Southampton Solent University, UK.

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