 |
 |
 |
‘Cisons’ is the reading of the Ruskin Library Transcript T7B at Notebook M2 p.3back, and that looks a possible reading both at Notebook M2 p.3back and at Notebook M2 p.135. Similarly ‘Cisors’, which is the reading of T7B at Notebook M2 p.135, looks a possible reading of the manuscript. There do not seem to be any other references elsewhere in Ruskin’s work to either Cisors or Cisons, and there are no obvious places in France of either name.
Ruskin had visited Gisors in October 1848 (Works, 8.xxix), and the Church of St-Gervais-St-Protais there would fit the sense of the passages in M2, and the reference to the Plantagenets at Notebook M2 p.135 might give some limited support to that view. The fortress of Gisors was associated with Henry II Plantagenet, though the ‘extravagances’ of Gisors to which Ruskin referred at Notebook M2 p.135 are not of that period. Murray (1847a) p.28 refers to its ‘abundance of uncouth sculptures’ and the portal ‘richly carved is of the latest style of French florid Gothic and much overladen with ornament’.
However the first letter is unlike Ruskin's usual capital ‘G’.
|
|
|
[Version 0.05: May 2008]