Postcolonial theories have transformed literary, historical and cultural studies over the past three decades. Yet the study of medieval art and visualities has, in general, remained Eurocentric in its canon and conservative in its approaches. 'Postcolonising', as the eleven essays in this volume show, entails active intervention into the field of medieval art history and visual studies through a theoretical reframing of research. This approach poses and elicits new research questions, and tests how concepts current in postcolonial studies - such as diaspora and migration, under-represented artistic cultures, accented art making, displacement, intercultural versus transcultural, hybridity, presence/absence - can help medievalists to reinvigorate the study of art and visuality. Postcolonial concepts are deployed in order to redraft the canon of medieval art, thereby seeking to build bridges between medievalist and modernist communities of scholars. Among the varied topics explored in the volume are the appropriation of Roman iconography by early medieval Scandinavian metalworkers, multilingualism and materiality in Anglo-Saxon culture, the circulation and display of Islamic secular ceramics on Pisan churches, cultural negotiation by Jewish minorities in Central Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Holy Land maps and medieval imaginative geography, and the uses of Thomas Becket in the colonial imaginary of the Plantagenet court.

A powerful claim for the virtues of a more thoughtful and collegiate approach to the academy today. This book offers a response to the culture of metrics, mass digitisation, and accountability (as opposed to responsibility, or citizenship) that has developed in higher education world wide, as exemplified by the UK's Research Excellence Framework exercise (REF), and the increasing bureaucracy that limits the time available for teaching, research, and even conversation and collaboration. Ironically, these are problems that will be solved only by academicsfinding the time to talk and to work together. The essays collected here both critique the culture of speed in the neoliberal university and provide examples of what can be achieved by slowing down, by reclaiming research and research priorities, and by working collaboratively across the disciplines to improve conditions. They are informed both by recent research in medieval studies and by the problematic culture of twenty-first century higher education. The contributions offer very personal approaches to the academic culture of the present moment. Some tackle issues of academic freedom head-on; others more obliquely; but they all have been written as declarations of theacademic freedom that comes with slow thinking, slow reading, slow writing and slow looking and the demonstrations of its benefits. CATHERINE E. KARKOV is Professor and Chair of Art History at the University of Leeds. Contributors: Lara Eggleton, Karen Jolly, Chris Jones, James Paz, Andrew Prescott, Heather Pulliam

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Contents:
Looking back, looking forward - the field of Anglo-Saxon archaeology. Reorganization among the ruins. York 700-1050. Constructions of wood, stone and ink - the churches of 8th-century England. Wearmouth and Jarrow in their continental context, The Anglo-Saxon church at Canterbury. Anglo- Saxon church building - aspects of design and construction. Archaeology and the cult of St Oswald in pre-conquest Northumbria. The Anglo-Saxon cemetary at Sutton Hoo - an interim report. Beowulf and Sutton Hoo - the odd couple. Children, death and the afterlife in Anglo-Saxon England. Repton and the Vikings. An Anglo-Saxon "cunning woman" from Bidford-on-Avon. Questioning the monuments - approaches to Anglo-Saxon sculpture through gender studies. Statements in stone - Anglo-Saxon sculpture, Whitby and the Christianization of the north. Women's costume in the 10th and 11th centuries and textile production in Anglo-Saxon England. The archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England - theory and practice.

A fresh approach to the construction of "Anglo-Saxon England" and its depiction in art and writing. This book explores the ways in which early medieval England was envisioned as an ideal, a placeless, and a conflicted geography in works of art and literature from the eighth to the eleventh century and in their modern scholarly and popular afterlives. It suggests that what came to be called "Anglo-Saxon England" has always been an imaginary place, an empty space into which ideas of what England was, or should have been, or should be, have been inserted from the arrival of peoples from the Continent in the fifth and sixth centuries to the arrival of the self-named "alt-right" in the twenty-first. It argues that the political and ideological violence that was a part of the origins of England as a place and the English as a people has never been fully acknowledged; instead, the island was reimagined as a chosen land home to a chosen people, the gens Anglorum. Unacknowledged violence, however, continued to haunt English history and culture. Through her examination here of the writings of Bede and King Alfred, the Franks Casket and the illuminated Wonders of the East, and the texts collected together to form the Beowulf manuscript, the author shows how this continues to haunt "Anglo-Saxon Studies" as a discipline and Anglo-Saxonism as an ideology, from the antiquarian studies of the sixteenth century through to the nationalistic and racist violence of today.

37 studies of the adoption of Christianity across northern Europe over1000 years, and the diverse reasons that drove the process. In Europe, the cross went north and east as the centuries unrolled: from the Dingle Peninsula to Estonia, and from the Alps to Lapland, ranging in time from Roman Britain and Gaul in the third and fourth centuries to the conversion of peoples in the Baltic area a thousand years later. These episodes of conversion form the basic narrative here. History encourages the belief that the adoption of Christianity was somehow irresistible, but specialists show theunderside of the process by turning the spotlight from the missionaries, who recorded their triumphs, to the converted, exploring their local situations and motives. What were the reactions of the northern peoples to the Christian message? Why would they wish to adopt it for the sake of its alliances? In what way did they adapt the Christian ethos and infrastructure to suit their own community? How did conversion affect the status of farmers, of smiths, of princes and of women? Was society wholly changed, or only in marginal matters of devotion and superstition? These are the issues discussed here by thirty-eight experts from across northern Europe; some answers come from astute re-readings of the texts alone, but most are owed to a combination of history, art history and archaeology working together. MARTIN CARVER is Professor of Archaeology, University of York.

This Element covers the art produced in early medieval England from the departure of the Romans to the early twelfth century, an art that shows the input of multi-ethnic artists, patrons, and influences as it develops over the centuries. Art in early medieval England is an art of migrants and colonisers and the Element considers the way in which it was defined and developed by the different groups that travelled to or settled on the island. It also explores some of the key forms and images that define the art of the period and the role of both material and artist/patron in their creation. Art is an expression of identity, whether individual, regional, national, religious, or institutional, and this volume sheds light on the way art in early medieval England was and continues to be used to define particular identities, including that of the island on which it was produced.

The Anglo-Saxon period was crucial to the development of the English landscape, but is rarely studied. The essays here provide radical new interpretations of its development. Traditional opinion has perceived the Anglo-Saxons as creating an entirely new landscape from scratch in the fifth and sixth centuries AD, cutting down woodland, and bringing with them the practice of open field agriculture, and establishing villages. Whilst recent scholarship has proved this simplistic picture wanting, it has also raised many questions about the nature of landscape development at the time, the changing nature of systems of land management, and strategies for settlement. The papers here seek to shed new light on these complex issues. Taking a variety of different approaches, and with topics ranging from the impact of coppicing to medieval field systems, from the representation of the landscape in manuscripts to cereal production and the type of bread the population preferred, they offer striking new approaches to the central issues of landscape change across the seven centuries of Anglo-Saxon England, a period surely foundational to the rural landscape of today. NICHOLAS J. HIGHAM is Professor of Early Medieval and Landscape History at the University of Manchester; MARTIN J. RYAN lectures in Medieval History at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Nicholas J. Higham, Christopher Grocock, Stephen Rippon, Stuart Brookes, Carenza Lewis, Susan Oosthuizen, Tom Williamson, Catherine Karkov, David Hill, Debby Banham, Richard Hoggett, Peter Murphy.

Examinations of the use of diagrams, symbols etc. found as commentary in medieval texts. In our electronic age, we are accustomed to the use of icons, symbols, graphs, charts, diagrams and visualisations as part of the vocabulary of communication. But this rich ecosystem is far from a modern phenomenon. Early medievalmanuscripts demonstrate that their makers and readers achieved very sophisticated levels of "graphicacy". When considered from this perspective, many elements familiar to students of manuscript decoration - embellished charactersin scripts, decorated initials, monograms, graphic symbols, assembly marks, diagrammatic structures, frames, symbolic ornaments, musical notation - are revealed to be not minor, incidental marks but crucial elements within the larger sign systems of manuscripts. This interdisciplinary volume is the first to discuss the conflation of text and image with a specific focus on the appearance of various graphic devices in manuscript culture. By looking attheir many forms as they appear from the fourth century to their full maturity in the long ninth century, its contributors demonstrate the importance of these symbols to understanding medieval culture. Michelle P. Brown FSA is Professor Emerita of Medieval Book History at the School of Advanced Study, University of London and was formerly the Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library; Ildar Garipzanov is Professor of Early Medieval History at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo; Benjamin C. Tilghman is Assistant Professor of Art History at Washington College. Contributors: Tina Bawden, Michelle P.Brown, Leslie Brubaker, David Ganz, Ildar H. Garipzanov, Cynthia Hahn, Catherine E. Karkov, Herbert L. Kessler, Beatrice Kitzinger, Kallirroe Linardou, Lawrence Nees, Eric Palazzo, Benjamin C. Tilghman.

This book explores the complex interrelationship between texts and drawings in the late tenth or early eleventh-century Junius II manuscript, the only surviving illustrated Anglo-Saxon poetic manuscript. The book, which contains a plate section of sixty-one illustrations, focuses on the way in which the drawings both illustrate the text and translate it into a new visual language. Poems and illustrations work to create a carefully crafted and unified manuscript, but both also use formulaic language, iconography and compositions to construct a web of intertextual and intervisual references that open the poems to readings far more diverse than those of the biblical books on which they are based. Together poems and drawings create a new and unique version of biblical history, and suggest ways in which biblical history relates to Anglo-Saxon history and the manuscript's Anglo-Saxon audience - a process which has been extended by the manuscript's many editors to include contemporary history and the contemporary reader.

A fresh approach to the construction of "Anglo-Saxon England" and its depiction in art and writing. This book explores the ways in which early medieval England was envisioned as an ideal, a placeless, and a conflicted geography in works of art and literature from the eighth to the eleventh century and in their modern scholarly and popular afterlives. It suggests that what came to be called "Anglo-Saxon England" has always been an imaginary place, an empty space into which ideas of what England was, or should have been, or should be, have been inserted from the arrival of peoples from the Continent in the fifth and sixth centuries to the arrival of the self-named "alt-right" in the twenty-first. It argues that the political and ideological violence that was a part of the origins of England as a place and the English as a people has never been fully acknowledged; instead, the island was reimagined as a chosen land home to a chosen people, the gens Anglorum. Unacknowledged violence, however, continued to haunt English history and culture. Through her examination here of the writings of Bede and King Alfred, the Franks Casket and the illuminated Wonders of the East, and the texts collected together to form the Beowulf manuscript, the author shows how this continues to haunt "Anglo-Saxon Studies" as a discipline and Anglo-Saxonism as an ideology, from the antiquarian studies of the sixteenth century through to the nationalistic and racist violence of today.

Postcolonial theories have transformed literary, historical and cultural studies over the past three decades. Yet the study of medieval art and visualities has, in general, remained Eurocentric in its canon and conservative in its approaches. 'Postcolonising', as the eleven essays in this volume show, entails active intervention into the field of medieval art history and visual studies through a theoretical reframing of research. This approach poses and elicits new research questions, and tests how concepts current in postcolonial studies - such as diaspora and migration, under-represented artistic cultures, accented art making, displacement, intercultural versus transcultural, hybridity, presence/absence - can help medievalists to reinvigorate the study of art and visuality. Postcolonial concepts are deployed in order to redraft the canon of medieval art, thereby seeking to build bridges between medievalist and modernist communities of scholars. Among the varied topics explored in the volume are the appropriation of Roman iconography by early medieval Scandinavian metalworkers, multilingualism and materiality in Anglo-Saxon culture, the circulation and display of Islamic secular ceramics on Pisan churches, cultural negotiation by Jewish minorities in Central Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Holy Land maps and medieval imaginative geography, and the uses of Thomas Becket in the colonial imaginary of the Plantagenet court.

Fresh assessments of Edgar's reign, reappraising key elements using documentary, coin, and pictorial evidence. King Edgar ruled England for a short but significant period in the middle of the tenth century. Two of his four children succeeded him as king and two were to become canonized. He was known to later generations as "the Pacific" or"the Peaceable" because his reign was free from external attack and without internal dissention, and he presided over a period of major social and economic change: early in his rule the growth of monastic power and wealth involved redistribution of much of the country's assets, while the end of his reign saw the creation of England's first national coinage, with firm fiscal control from the centre. He fulfilled King Alfred's dream of the West Saxon royalhouse ruling the whole of England, and, like his uncle King AEthelstan, he maintained overlordship of the whole of Britain. Despite his considerable achievements, however, Edgar has been neglected by scholars, partly becausehis reign has been thought to have passed with little incident. A time for a full reassessment of his achievement is therefore long overdue, which the essays in this volume provide. CONTRIBUTORS: SIMON KEYNES, SHASHI JAYAKUMAR, C.P. LEWIS, FREDERICK M. BIGGS, BARBARA YORKE, JULIA CRICK, LESLEY ABRAMS, HUGH PAGAN, JULIA BARROW, CATHERINE KARKOV, ALEXANDER R. RUMBLE, MERCEDES SALVADOR-BELLO

A fresh appraisal of the art of Anglo-Saxon England, focusing on art as an aesthetic vehicle and art as an active political force. Two particular perspectives inform this wide-ranging and richly illustrated survey of the art produced in England, or by English artists, between c. 600 and c.1100, in a variety of media, manuscripts, stone and wooden sculpture, ivory carving, textiles, and architecture. Firstly, from a post-colonial angle, it examines the way art can both create and narrate national and cultural identity over the centuries during which England was coming into being, moving from Romano-Britain to Anglo-Saxon England to Anglo-Scandinavian England to Anglo-Norman England. Secondly, it treats Anglo-Saxon art as works of art, works that have both an aesthetic and an emotional value, rather than as simply passive historical or archaeological objects. This double focus on art as an aesthetic vehicle and art as an active political force allows us to ask questions not only about what makes something a work of art, but what makes itendure as such, as well as questions about the work that art does in the creation of peoples, cultures, nations and histories. Professor Catherine Karkov teaches in the School of Fine Art, University of Leeds.

The cataclysmic conquests of the eleventh century are here set together for the first time. Eleventh-century England suffered two devastating conquests, each bringing the rule of a foreign king and the imposition of a new regime. Yet only the second event, the Norman Conquest of 1066, has been credited with the impact and influence of a permanent transformation. Half a century earlier, the Danish conquest of 1016 had nonetheless marked the painful culmination of decades of raiding and invasion - and more importantly, of centuries of England's conflict and cooperation with the Scandinavian world - and the Normans themselves were a part of that world. Without 1016, the conquest of 1066 could never have happened as it did: and yet disciplinary fragmentation in the study of eleventh-century England has ensured that a gulf separates the conquests in modern scholarship. The essays in this volume offer multidisciplinary perspectives on a century of conquest: in politics, law, governance, and religion; in art, literature, economics, and culture; and in the lives and experiences of peoples in a changing, febrile, and hybrid society. Crucially, it moves beyond an insular perspective, placing England within its British, Scandinavian, and European contexts; and in reaching across conquests connects the tenth century and earlier with the twelfth century and beyond, seeing the continuities in England's Anglo-Saxon, Danish, Norman, and Angevin elite cultureand rulership. The chapters break new ground in the documentary evidence and give fresh insights into the whole historical landscape, whilst fully engaging with the importance, influence, and effects of England's eleventh-centuryconquests, both separately and together. LAURA ASHE is Professor of English Literature and Fellow and Tutor in English, Worcester College, Oxford; EMILY JOAN WARD is Moses and Mary Finley Research Fellow, Darwin College, Cambridge. Contributors: Timothy Bolton, Stephanie Mooers Christelow, Julia Crick, Sarah Foot, John Gillingham, Charles Insley, Catherine Karkov, Lois Lane, Benjamin Savill, Peter Sigurdson Lunga, Niels Lund, Rory Naismith, Bruce O'Brien, Rebecca Thomas, Elizabeth M. Tyler, Elisabeth van Houts, Emily Joan Ward.

Essays on the brief but tumultuous reign of Harold II, and one of our most important sources of knowledge of the time - the Bayeux Tapestry. Harold II is chiefly remembered today, perhaps unfairly, for the brevity of his reign and his death at the Battle of Hastings. The papers collected here seek to shed new light on the man and his milieu before and after that climax. They explore the long career and the dynastic network behind Harold Godwinesson's accession on the death of King Edward the Confessor in January 1066, looking in particular at the important questions as to whether Harold's kingship was opportunist or long-planned; a usurpation or a legitimate succession in terms of his Anglo-Scandinavian kinships? They also examine the posthumous legends that Harold survived Hastings and lived on as a religious recluse.The essays in the second part of the volume focus on the Bayeux Tapestry, bringing out the small details which would have resonated significantly for contemporary audiences, both Norman and English, to suggest how they judged Harold and the other players in the succession drama of 1066. Other aspects of the Tapestry are also covered: the possible patron and locations the Tapestry was produced for; where and how it was designed; and the various sources - artistic and real - employed by the artist. Contributors: H.E.J. Cowdrey, Nicholas J. Higham, Ian Howard, Gillian Fellows-Jensen, Stephen Matthews, S.L. Keefer, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Chris Henige, Catherine Karkov, Shirley Ann Brown, C.R. Hart, Michael Lewis. GALE OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester.

Studies and editions of Anglo-Saxon apocryphal materials, filling a gap in literature available on the boundaries between apocryphal and orthodox in the period. Apocrypha and apocryphal traditions in Anglo-Saxon England have been often referred to but little studied. This collection fills a gap in the study of pre-Conquest England by considering what were the boundaries between apocryphaland orthodox in the period and what uses the Anglo-Saxons made of apocryphal materials. The contributors include some of the most well-known and respected scholars in the field. The introduction - written by Frederick M. Biggs, one of the principal editors of Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture - expertly situates the essays within the field of apocrypha studies. The essays themselves cover a broad range of topics: both vernacular and Latin texts, those available in Anglo-Saxon England and those actually written there, and the uses of apocrypha in art as well as literature. Additionally, the book includes a number of completely new editions of apocryphal texts which were previously unpublished or difficult to access. By presenting these new texts along with the accompanying range of essays, the collection aims to retrieve these apocryphal traditions from the margins of scholarship and restore tothem some of the importance they held for the Anglo-Saxons. Contributors: DANIEL ANLEZARK, FREDERICK M. BIGGS, ELIZABETH COATSWORTH, THOMAS N. HALL, JOYCE HILL, CATHERINE KARKOV, PATRIZIA LENDINARA, AIDEEN O'LEARY, CHARLES D. WRIGHT.

Essays centred round the representation of weaving, both real and imagined, in the early middle ages. The triple themes of textile, text, and intertext, three powerful and evocative subjects within both Anglo-Saxon studies and Old English literature itself, run through the essays collected here. Chapters evoke the semantic complexities of textile references and images drawn from the Bayeux Tapestry, examine parallels in word-woven poetics, riddling texts, and interwoven homiletic and historical prose, and identify iconographical textures in medieval art. The volume thus considers the images and creative strategies of textiles, texts, and intertexts, generating a complex and fascinating view of the material culture and metaphorical landscape of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. It is therefore a particularly fitting tribute to Professor Gale R. Owen-Crocker, whose career and lengthy list of scholarly works have centred on her interests in the meaning and cultural importance of textiles, manuscripts and text, and intertextual relationships between text and textile. MAREN CLEGG HYER is Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator in the Department of English at Valdosta State University; JILL FREDERICK is Professor of English at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Contributors: Marilina Cesario, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Martin Foys, Jill Frederick, Joyce Hill, Maren Clegg Hyer, Catherine E. Karkov, Christina Lee, Michael Lewis, Robin Netherton, Carol Neuman de Vegvar, Donald Scragg, Louise Sylvester, Paul Szarmach, Elaine Treharne.

Analysis of a group of images of kingship and queenship from Anglo-Saxon England explores the implications of their focus on books, authorship and learning. Between the reign of Alfred in the late ninth century and the arrival of the Normans in 1066, a unique set of images of kingship and queenship was developed in Anglo-Saxon England, images of leadership that centred on books, authorship and learning rather than thrones, sword and sceptres. Focusing on the cultural and historical contexts in which these images were produced, this book explores the reasons for their development, and their meaning and functionwithin both England and early medieval Europe. It explains how and why they differ from their Byzantine and Continental counterparts, and what they reveal about Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards history and gender, as well as the qualities that were thought to constitute a good ruler. It is argued that this series of portraits, never before studied as a corpus, creates a visual genealogy equivalent to the textual genealogies and regnal lists that are so mucha feature of late Anglo-Saxon culture. As such they are an important part of the way in which the kings and queens of early medieval England created both their history and their kingdom. CATHERINE E. KARKOV is Professorof Art History at the University of Leeds.

Fresh assessments of Edgar's reign, reappraising key elements using documentary, coin, and pictorial evidence. King Edgar ruled England for a short but significant period in the middle of the tenth century. Two of his four children succeeded him as king and two were to become canonized. He was known to later generations as "the Pacific" or"the Peaceable" because his reign was free from external attack and without internal dissention, and he presided over a period of major social and economic change: early in his rule the growth of monastic power and wealth involved redistribution of much of the country's assets, while the end of his reign saw the creation of England's first national coinage, with firm fiscal control from the centre. He fulfilled King Alfred's dream of the West Saxon royalhouse ruling the whole of England, and, like his uncle King AEthelstan, he maintained overlordship of the whole of Britain. Despite his considerable achievements, however, Edgar has been neglected by scholars, partly because his reign has been thought to have passed with little incident. A time for a full reassessment of his achievement is therefore long overdue, which the essays in this volume provide. CONTRIBUTORS: SIMON KEYNES, SHASHIJAYAKUMAR, C.P, LEWIS, FREDERICK M. BIGGS, BARBARA YORKE, JULIA CRICK, LESLEY ABRAMS, HUGH PAGAN, JULIA BARROW, CATHERINE KARKOV, ALEXANDER R. RUMBLE, MERCEDES SALVADOR-BELLO.

Cross and Cruciform in the Anglo-Saxon World: Studies to Honor the Memory of Timothy Reuter is edited by Sarah Larratt Keefer, Karen Louise Jolly, and Catherine E. Karkov and is the third and final volume of an ambitious research initiative begun in 1999 concerned with the image of the cross, showing how its very material form cuts across both the culture of a society and the boundaries of academic disciplines - history, archaeology, art history, literature, philosophy, and religion - providing vital insights into how symbols function within society. The flexibility, portability, and adaptability of the Anglo-Saxon understanding of the cross suggest that, in pre-Conquest England, at least, the linking of word, image, and performance joined the physical and spiritual, the temporal and eternal, and the earthly and heavenly in the Anglo-Saxon imaginative landscape. This volume is divided into three sections. The first section of the collection focuses on representations of ""The Cross: Image and Emblem,"" with contributions by Michelle P. Brown, David A. E. Pelteret, and Catherine E. Karkov. The second section, ""The Cross: Meaning and Word,"" deals in semantics and semeology with essays by Helen Damico, Rolf Bremmer, and Ursula Lenker. The third section of the book, ""The Cross: Gesture and Structure,"" employs methodologies drawn from archaeology, new media, and theories of rulership to develop new insights into subjects as varied as cereal production, the little-known Nunburnholme Cross, and early medieval concepts of political power. Cross and Cruciform in the Anglo-Saxon World: Studies to Honor the Memory of Timothy Reuter is a major collection of new research, completing the publication series of the Sancta Crux/Halig Rod project. Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies in Honor of George Hardin Brown.

New research into the liturgy of Anglo-Saxon history, with important implications for church history in general. The essays in this volume offer the fruits of new research into the liturgical rituals of later Anglo-Saxon England. They include studies of individual rites, the production, adaptation and transmission of texts, vernacular gospeltranslations, liturgical drama and the influence of the liturgy on medical remedies, poetry and architecture; also covered are the tenth-century Benedictine Reforms and the growth of pastoral care. It will be valuable for anyoneinterested in later Anglo-Saxon England as well as medieval liturgy and church history.

This book reveals the interrelationship of text and picture in the only surviving illustrated Anglo-Saxon poetic manuscript. It locates the manuscript within the broader cultural contexts in which it was produced and read, and documents the way in which it was transformed by poets, artists, and modern scholars and editors from a collection of biblical poetry to a national historical narrative.