Reversing the Tapestry: Prison of Love in Text, Image, and Textile

In the 1520s the internationally popular romance Prison of Love was adapted as a series of tapestries known as L'Histoire de Lerian et Laureolle. This article explores the translation of the romance to a larger-than-lift, three-dimensional narrative object created from sumptuous materials that literally enveloped courtly lift Unlike previous studies of Prison of Love's international reach, this article reads the tapestry chamber as an integral part of the romance's complex history of transmission among the princely courts of Europe in the early sixteenth century. Further, study of the textiles' production, use, and reception will show that the tapestry chamber, though incomplete, is material evidence of a particular sixteenth-century reading of the romance.