The Bewilderment Principle

Abstract

Ornamentation is a well-established area of research in early medieval art and archaeology with many formalist studies focussing on questions related to style and motif. Only rarely discussed, however, are the material and aesthetic properties of early medieval ‘ornament’ and ‘surface’. In terms of the ‘Germanic’ early Middle Ages, it is most often animal art or animal style that is considered in scholarship. The initial aim of this chapter was similarly to address such art, but the work has developed into an analysis of agency and aesthetics informing ornament and surface beyond specific stylistic boundaries. The chapter argues that variety (varietas) was an influential and important aesthetic principle in the early Middle Ages.