The Visual Logic of Medieval Memory Techniques and of Medieval Sexual Badges (2026)

Abstract The activity of creating memorable images can draw on historically, culturally, and linguistically specific signifying conventions for creating symbolically and semiotically freighted, recallable images and places. “Drastic Images: The Visual Logic of Medieval Memory Techniques and of Medieval Sexual Badges” presents a historically specific archive of varied, distinctive, abject, drastic images: late medieval sexual and obscene badges found primarily in the Low Countries and northern France. These objects fulfill the criteria of abject images: they are histrionically theatrical and obscene, performatively drastic, sometimes ugly, sometimes comedically witty, and always memorable. The article introduces medieval badges as a distinct category of object and presents the subset of badges relevant to its topic: sexual, obscene badges. It goes on to argue that the visual logic of sexual and obscene badges resonates with the idea of imagines (meaning the mental images constructed by the rhetorician to encode his speech) and loci (meaning the spots or landscapes designed by the rhetorician to place his imagines). The article concludes by reflecting on the possibilities for making sense of the coexistence of similar visual logics from such apparently disparate late medieval social worlds: on one hand, the world of vernacular carnival and fabliaux; on the other, the world of clerical, Latin learning.

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