1. The Narrative - introductory lecture notes
"The narratives of the world are numberless. Narrative is first and foremost a prodigious variety of genres, themselves distributed amongst different substances - as though any material were fit to receive man's stories. Able to be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures and the ordered mixtures of all these substances ; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting (think of Carpaccio's Saint Ursula), stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news item, conversation. Moreover, under this almost infinite diversity of forms, narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society; it begins with the very history of mankind and there nowhere is nor has been a people without narrative. All classes, all human groups, have their narratives, enjoyment of which is very often shared by men with different, even opposing, backgrounds. Caring nothing for the division between good and bad literature, narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural; it is simply there like life itself."
Roland Barthes, from Image- Music- Text ,
Introduction to the Structural Analyses of Narratives.

2. Looking hard at a Photograph ...
 This is a Jerry Cooke photograph for an article on Nabisco (National Biscuit Company) Fortune magazine June 1948
Walker Evans writes,
"The picture is quiet and true. Since I am writing about photography let me point out that this picture is a better part of the story at hand than either a drawing or a painting would be. There is a profitable and well-run cracker firm in a sweaty part of the town, there is a knot of men talking on the pavement about anything but crackers, amidst the irrelevant trucks. This is where Mal-o-Mars are cooked and this is where last week's newspaper meets the gutter too. And the Strand Hotel becomes famous for flavour. My point is Fortune photographs should take a long look at a subject, get into it, and without shouting, tell a lot about it." to R.D. Paine, 23.7.48 (Walker Evans at Work).

3. Looking hard at a Painting :
Jared French State Park 1946, tempera 26" x 26" - speculate what narrative will unfold after the stroke of noon.
 
4. Direction and the Narrative and the Untrustworthy Author

5. Movement Left to Right; Image d'Epinal, Degres des Ages , c1850 popular French print here is an exercise in comparison for you.

6. The False Ending; Lawrence Sterne The Life and Adventures of Tristram Shandy ; the death page and the false ending
see lecture on Sterne

Reading the Pauper's Bible , the West Front of the French Gothic Cathedral.

Ways of Reading; Notre Dame de Paris, 8 panels devoted to the life of students. (departure for Paris, the Bishop's Court, punishment on the ladder, sanctuary., collection of titles, artisans, studying, lecture. see Kraus, The Living Theatre of Mediaeval Art , Thames and Hudson L 1967)

7. Pairs and Cross References Bible Moralisé, Christ's Miracles of Healing (cf stained glass) c1240 vertical reading and in pairs.395 x 275mm BM London; Bible Moralisé de Jean Le Bon c1350, parallel scenes, two sorts of frames, architectural and polylobe.

Belleville Breviary , c1350, 2 vols, winter and summer divine office, the Calendar page, the Old Testament and the New, prophet and apostle, Zachariah and Matthew, December .The text begins as a prophesy and re-appears as an Article of Faith.The bricks of the Synagogue over the year's volume conclude in collapse.

The Missal of S.Denis, Miracle of the Leprous Pilgrim c1350 BM London 233 x 164 mm

Hours of Jeanne D'Evreux , by Jean Pucelle

8. Narrative Alternatives

The Garden as Narrative ;
Wilton and Stowe (Temple of the Worthies)
The Building as Narrative ;
The Neo-Platonic Staircase at Saragossa University.

9. From Right to Left, BOUSTROPHEDONIC
THE MAYAN CODEX AS SEQUENCE- "OLD STRIPE EYE"

BOOKLIST for STRIPE EYE
.
Diaz and Rodgers; The Codex Borgia; A Full Colour Restoration of the Ancinet Mexican manuscript; Dover NY 1993.

Zelia Nuttal, The Codex Nuttal, A Picture Manuscript from Ancient Mexico,Dover NY 1975

F.Anders, Codex Tro-Cortesianus ,Phaidon London 1967

S.D.Houston, Reading the Past; Maya Glyphs, British Museum Publications, London 1979

Friedrich Katz, Ancient American Civilisations ,Weidenfeld and Nicholson London 1989; the best study of the Meso-American civilisation before the Spanish invasion.

John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas, Macmillan London 1970, the standard work on the decimation of Indian culture.

James and Oliver Tickell, City of the Maya, Tauris Parke London 1991; excellent tourist orientated study of monuments and inscriptions.

Marilyn Bridges, Sacred and the Secular, A Decade of Aerial Photography , ICP NY 1990; photographs of the buildings from above.

Jay A.Levenson, Circa 1492, Art in the Age of Exploration , National Gallery of Art,Washington Yale Univ.Press, 1991; see III "The Americas; The Aztec Empire -Realm of the Smoking Mirror"; and "The Aztec Gods How Many ?"