Disjunctive Images in Renaissance Books MARIAN ROTHSTEIN V olumes that contain both pictures and words are normally referred to as illustrated books, and we are usually justified in assuming that the two modes provide complementary visual and verbal representation of the same material. But in the first century or so of printing, editions of histories, romances, vernacular versions of the classics, in fact, the kinds of books most likely to contain pictures, often appear with text and image sharing the page just as travellers in the period might have shared a bed at an inn: proximity, even contact, implies neither contamination nor intimate con- nections. To call such pictures illustrations would be to participate in etymological paradox since they cannot be said to shed light on the text they accompany. They will be referred to here as "disjunctive pictures." The discussion that follows examines some of the questions raised by the presence of disjunctive pictures in early printed books. ^ Scholars have noted—generally in passing— the phenomenon of the disjunctive picture. It tends to be treated either with benign neglect or malicious interference. Some scholars note as a neutral fact that picture and text appear unrelated; more generally a generic link—battle scene for joust in text—is considered satisfactory explanation for the choice and placement of a woodcut Eisenstein, noting the "notoriously inappropriate uses to which many woodcuts and engravings were put," does not perceive this as defining a problem, and categorizes them simply as errors.^ Ong has urged that the picture be understood as relief from the labors of the text, a point of view that might easily require that one consider a disjunctive picture functionally superior to an illustration.^ One immediate difficulty with this assumption is that, rather than decorating the pages of philosophical or legal treatises, disjunctive pictures tend to accompany texts that themselves were considered to have an element of recreation.'* It has been suggested that a major function of pictures may have been to help the reader find his place on a page crowded with print, in volumes that admittedly are rarely properly paginated.^ This would be more convincing if a given woodcut did not so often appear three, five or more times in the same volume.^ Others Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 2 (1990) 101