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‘Without any Letter’: Some History Outside the Library

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2015

Abstract

In her recent study of the Bayeux tapestry, Suzanne Lewis argues persuasively that we cannot use only the simple Latin tags on this long embroidery (it is not a tapestry) to come to know its story. The more we attend to the exceptionally detailed images, the more we see ambiguity and complexity. Why does Harold have two hands on reliquaries for oath-taking? Why does he look in one direction while a ship leaves in the other? Why does the Fable of the Fox and the Crow appear three times?

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2010

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References

Notes

1 Suzanne, Lewis, The Rhetoric of Power in the Bayeux Tapestry (Cambridge, 1999).Google Scholar

2 The Latin label above is SACRAMENTUM. The critical part of the coronation ceremony is, of course, the oath-taking; at this time, when the number of the sacraments was not fixed, the coronation was a sacrament.

3 Annette, Weiner, Cloth and Human Experience (London, 1989);Google Scholar Clifford, Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973).Google Scholar

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5 Natalie, Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, MA., 1983).Google Scholar

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8 Michael, Bath, Emblems for a Queen: the Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots (London, 2009).Google Scholar

9 Michael, Neill, ‘“Amphitheaters in the Body”: Playing with Hands on the Shakespearian Stage’, Shakespeare Survey 48 (1995): 2349.Google Scholar

10 Michael, Bath, Emblems for a Queen: the Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots (London, 2009).Google Scholar

11 See Santina, Levey, An Elizabethan Inheritance: The Hardwick Hall Textiles (London, 1998),Google Scholar and Embroideries at Hardwick Hall: A Catalogue (London, 2007).Google Scholar

12 These hangings have their own significance. See Thomas, P. Campbell et alia, Tapestries in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (New York, 2002),Google Scholar but see my review in Textile History 22 (1991), 6782.CrossRefGoogle Scholar These tapestries, rich in iconography, could be as much of a teaching tool as stained glass windows. But there are some mistakes in the Latin and the commentary on the iconography is sometimes defective. Dr. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, told me some time ago that Henry VIII ordered new tapestries during the Reformation, with Protestant subjects. See Thomas, Campbell, Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Tapestries at the Tudor Court (New Haven and London, 2007).Google Scholar

13 Bath, Emblems, ‘The surviving corpus: what and where?’ 9–17.

14 There are early descriptions of embroidery for Mary's Bed of State.

15 Annette, H. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping While Giving (Berkeley, 1992).Google Scholar

16 The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Halls, W. D. (London, 1990);Google Scholar Natalie, Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth Century France (Oxford, 2000).Google Scholar

17 Richard, Helgerson, ‘The Land Speaks: Cartography, Chorography and Subversion in Renaissance England’, Representations 16 (1986): 5182;Google Scholar ‘Nation or Estate? Ideological Conflict in the Early Modern Mapping of England’, Cariographica 30 (1992); See also C. Grant Head, ‘The Map as Natural Language: A Paradigm for Understanding’, in Christopher Board (ed.) ‘New Insights in Cartographic Communications’, Cariographica 21 (1984),

Matthew, H. Edney, ‘Mapping the Early Modern State: The Intellectual Nexus of Late Tudor and Early Stuart Cartography’, Cariographica 29 (1992): 8993.Google Scholar

18 See Ebenezer, Henderson, Annals of Dumferline (Glasgow, 1879): 401–2.Google Scholar

19 See Geoffrey, Scott, ‘“Sacredness of Majesty”: The English Benedictines and the Cult of James II’, Royal Stuart Papers 12 (1998);Google Scholar Bernard, et Monique Cottret, ‘La Sainteté de Jacques II out Les Miracles du'un Roi Défunt (vers 1702)’, Revue de la Bibliothèque Nationale 46 (1992): 2231.Google Scholar See also Gabor, Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses:Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe, translated Eva, Palmai (Cambridge, 2002).Google Scholar

20 Patricia, Briickmann, ‘“Men, Women and Poles”: Samuel Richardson and the Romance of a Stuart Princess’, Eighteenth-Century Life 27 (2003): 3152.Google Scholar See also my ‘Desdemona's Strawberries and Clementina's Ark’, in Eighteenth Century Historical Essays Presented to Phillip Harth (Madison, Wisconsin, 2001), 207–30.Google Scholar The heroine is sent out to get a book, but she returns with a half-finished textile, the image of Noah and the Ark. Wanting to be married to the Protestant hero, she opts, the scene seems to tell us, for the faith of Noah, in all its iconographical meanings.

21 This grouping (and the larger question of choice of statuary) needs further work.

22 See my ‘The Triumphs of Clementina’, in Peter, Davidson and Jill, Bepler, eds., The Triumphs of the Defeated: Early Modern Festivals and Messages of Legitimacy (Wiesbaden, 2007): 149172.Google Scholar

23 MSS Add. 34638 f 247.