Bayeux Tapestry Research Articles

Palette, Pigments and Pictorial Narrative in 11th-Century England: The Use of Colour in the Bayeux Tapestry and the Old English Hexateuch

This article examines how colour was used as a tool of pictorial narrative in the Bayeux Tapestry and the illustrated Old English Hexateuch, the two longest such cycles to survive from 11th-century England. The dyes employed for the former and the pigments of the latter are identified; the palettes that they permitted their respective artists to realize are set out; the colouring of cognate scenes are compared; and the general principles (such as they were) that affected the deployment of colour in the two works are explained.

The Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry Revisited

ABSTRACT This article revives the suggestion, previously made by Otto Werckmeister and Shirley Ann Brown, that the Bayeux Tapestry was intended to act as part of a petition to free Bishop Odo of Bayeux from imprisonment at the hands of his half-brother, William the Conqueror, and that it was commissioned by the three knights named in it, Turold, Wadard and Vitalis, perhaps with the support of Abbot Scolland of St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury. It argues that the role played by these three knights has been too quickly dismissed, and in so doing asks wider questions including about how political petitions were made and whether any attempt to deny Harold Godwinson a royal title and a reign had been successfully communicated to the population at large.

Inclusion for Cultural Education in Museums, Audio and Touch Interaction.

Inclusive access to culture for all people in institutions, such as museums, is an important issue specified in French laws and is also recognized internationally. This article investigates inclusion of blind and partially blind visitors in museums. The pilot study conducted involves blind, partially blind, and sighted people and observes their perception of audio descriptions and different tactile representations within a museum. 12 participants were asked to experience three different conditions for 3 scenes of the Bayeux Tapestry using inclusive and co-created audio descriptions, simplified swell paper representations, and high relief representations. Overall, a high level of interest was found across all conditions, with multimodality through audio and tactile stimulus found to have enriched participants' experience. However, more guided tactile exploration would be better. From participants' feedback, some observations have emerged which could be explored for the development of new technologies to better respond to museum visitors' expectations.

Early Medieval English Life Courses: Cultural-Historical Perspectives ed. by Thijs Porck and Harriet Soper

Reviewed by: Early Medieval English Life Courses: Cultural-Historical Perspectives ed. by Thijs Porck and Harriet Soper Timothy D. Arner thijs porck and harriet soper, eds., Early Medieval English Life Courses: Cultural-Historical Perspectives. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xii, 369. isbn: 978–90–04–49929–4. $194. Early Medieval English Life Courses: Cultural-Historical Perspectives literally considers some age-old questions: how does the human body change throughout its lifetime? What is the relationship between physical, emotional, and intellectual maturity? How is the biological process of aging conditioned by one’s social environment? The essays in this volume look for answers in a range of sources from pre-Conquest England, and, in so doing, provide a rich account of perspectives on the stages of human development. The collection helpfully groups the essays into four sections with three essays in each. Part I is dedicated to ‘Defining and Dividing the Life Course,’ with the first two essays examining how stages of the human life course were classified in early medieval English texts. Thijs Porck’s ‘The Ages of Man and the Ages of Woman in Early Medieval England: From Bede to Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Tractatus de quaternario’ describes different approaches to categorizing life stages in Old English [End Page 102] and Anglo-Norman manuscripts. Tracing aging schemata as represented through three key works, Porck demonstrates that ‘early medieval English authors stuck to a flexible but uniform definition of the human life course’ (p. 45), and he identifies a significant shift in this paradigm during the twelfth century. Daria Izdebska’s essay surveys vocabulary for describing the stages of life throughout the Old English corpus, linking the various words used to describe infancy, youth, maturity, and old age to their Latin equivalents and to the Old English lexemes associated with these phases. These essays are followed by a discussion of an individual’s particular and influential understanding of aging and maturity, as Darren Barber’s ‘Alcuin and the Student Life Cycle’ highlights Alcuin’s writings about how one’s development through the stages of youth allows greater possibilities for moral and spiritual education. The second set of essays on ‘The Life Course and the Human Body’ considers the discourse around significant bodily changes or events. Jacqueline Fay’s ‘Treating Age in Medical Texts from Early Medieval England’ offers the field’s first look at ‘how, or even if, Old English medieval remedies are inflected by age’ (p. 118) and how these texts define normative and non-normative bodies with regard to age, gender, and bodily strength. Caroline R. Batten examines Old English obstetric remedies, demonstrating how the pregnant female body is more consistently associated with death than the creation and nurturing of life. In ‘The Theology of Puberty in Early Medieval England,’ Elaine Flowers shows how ‘the biological process of puberty in pre-Conquest England . . . generated theological consequences associated with leaving an age of spiritual innocence behind’ (p. 160). Focusing almost exclusively on the male body as a pubescent subject, theological discourse describes sexual temptation as both a challenge and opportunity for young men to demonstrate moral understanding and self-control. The essays in ‘Part III: Intergenerational Dynamics’ concern how names, knowledge, and goods are passed down to create a sense of individual identity within a community. James Chetwood’s essay on naming and renaming demonstrates how names were bestowed not only at birth but throughout one’s life to signal familial and social bonds. Just as Flowers’ essay in Part II considers the theological discourse regarding bodily processes, Katherine Cross examines how eighth- and ninth-century ecclesiastical texts refer to the weaning of infants as both a natural life process and a metaphor for spiritual instruction. Amy Faulkner’s essay on treasure describes how Genesis A presents an ideal model for aristocratic inheritance that Beowulf shows to be prone to disruption. The volume’s final section considers ‘Life Beyond the Human.’ Gale R. Owen-Crocker demonstrates how object biography can reveal ‘The Life Course of Artefacts’ as she examines the Orkney Hood, the Bayeux Tapestry, the Sutton Hoo Hanging Bowl and Shield, and early English manuscripts. The final essay places the linear life course of human development alongside the...

Bayeux Tapestry: First use of early synthetic dyes for the restoration of a masterpiece

The earliest examples of the use of synthetic dyestuffs in the domain of art and conservation are still poorly documented. Here we show that the use of a database of reflectance spectra collected between 400 nm and 800 nm on pieces of dyed fabric attached in chemistry books printed at the beginning the 1870s and reference samples dyed with natural colourants, enables the non-invasive identification of the earliest artificial dyes present in these books. By applying this methodology on restored parts of the Bayeux Tapestry, it is possible to prove a major restoration of the textile artefact occurred between the years 1866 and 1872 and then to observe the very early acceptance of the use of artificial dyestuffs for the conservation of historical artefacts.

EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL POTENTIAL OF INCLUSIVE COMICS

The article deals with the research on comics' educational and cultural potential, particularly inclusive comic books, and their influence on inclusive culture formation. Inclusive graphic stories have long been part of the readership abroad. Gradually, this tradition is becoming popular in the Ukrainian cultural space. The chronology of the implementation of inclusive education in Ukraine is established, a brief overview of the regulatory framework is given. There is more and more inclusive literature on the Ukrainian book market: it is both translations and works of domestic writers, it is literature for the youngest, teenagers, adults, and it is fiction and nonfiction. In 2019 the first inclusive comic book "Friends 2.0" appeared. It was published with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation within the framework of the Inclusive Art program. The comic book "Friends 2.0" is an illustrative material for the analysis. The given research identifies the features of inclusive literature and clarifies its role in forming a tolerant society. The main evolutionary steps of comics are conveyed (Egyptian drawings in the burial chambers, "Ocelot's Claw", The Bayeux Tapestry, William Hogarth’s caricatures, stories in drawings by Rodolphe Töpffer, "Max und Moritz" by Wilhelm Busch, "The Yellow kid" by Richard Outcault and others). The basic terms and concepts of comic book culture are explained, taking into account the specifics of their translation. The history of Ukrainian comics is written daily, undergoes great changes, forms the main slogans and ideas in which it operates and develops. Currently, Ukrainian comics are established as a separate literary and art genre. Inclusive "Friends 2.0". comics are five stories based on real events. Every story is a story of struggle and victory. These are the first inclusive stories in the Ukrainian cultural space. They proclaim that everyone in the world is important, that disability is not a sentence, the importance of adaptation and inclusion, faith and dreams that come true. The article highlights the structural and semantic components of the stories in the comic book "Friends 2.0", analyzes the role of the motto in the content of the stories of this book, the background of panels, characters, and more. The analysis of inclusive comic strips as achievements of comic book culture and as examples of graphic texts in which the inclusive component dominates is offered. It helps to identify a special type of superhero in "Friends 2.0". The educational potential of such comics and their influence on the context of inclusive culture are identified.
 Keywords: inclusive literature, inclusive comics, comic book, diegesis, narrative, encapsulation, motto, superhero.

Anglo-Norman Studies XLIII: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2020 ed. by S. D. Church

Reviewed by: Anglo-Norman Studies XLIII: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2020 ed. by S. D. Church Lindsay Diggelmann Church, S. D., ed., Anglo-Norman Studies XLIII: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2020, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2021; hardback; pp. 216; 6 line, 10 colour illustrations; R.R.P. £50.00; ISBN 9781783276059. The latest volume of Anglo-Norman Studies continues the tradition, dating back to 1978, of publishing the proceedings of the annual Battle Conference in a series that has long since become indispensable for scholars of the Norman period. Now under the editorship of Stephen Church, the 2021 edition—based on the 2020 conference held online—contains a fascinating array of essays on Norman affairs. As is customary, the opening chapter is based on the Allen Brown memorial lecture, given by an invited eminent scholar. Martin Aurell examines the possibilities for mixed marriages between members of the Christian and Moslem nobilities during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He takes as his starting point the proposed union between Joan of England, sister of Richard the Lionheart, and Al-ʿÂdil, brother of Saladin, as part of the negotiations to bring an end to the Third Crusade in 1191. Joan refused to take part in the deal, which anyway would have been impossible under canon law. Aurell asks whether any similar marriages did in fact occur, and what conditions would have allowed them to proceed. Using imaginative literature as well as chronicle sources, he offers some limited but intriguing evidence to suggest that diplomatic marriages could, on occasion, occur across religious boundaries. Perhaps the most significant contribution for scholars of the Normans is Christopher Norton’s essay on the Bayeux Tapestry. It makes a compelling argument that the famous artefact (actually an embroidery) was intended for display at Bayeux Cathedral, and was created under the patronage of Odo, Bishop [End Page 231] of Bayeux, and perhaps of William the Conqueror himself. Odo has been the traditional consensus candidate, but his role in the Tapestry’s creation has been challenged in recent years, as has the object’s likely location. Using architectural and archaeological evidence, Norton shows how the Tapestry could have been displayed in a way that fit perfectly with the contours of Bayeux Cathedral, as it existed in the eleventh century before later reconstruction. Other studies span the range of the period associated with the Normans, from Charles Insley’s examination of Lancashire in the early tenth century to Richard Barton’s scrutiny of judicial and ecclesiastical inquests (enquêtes) in western France during the thirteenth century. Insley argues that pre-Domesday Lancashire, an area relatively neglected in scholarship, is best understood as part of an ‘Irish Sea cultural zone’ (p. 122). Barton is concerned to rescue records of inquests from the theoretical approach of legal scholars and to find instead the basis for a rich social history, while also using them to question the longstanding ‘progressive scholarly narrative of administrative kingship and state formation’ (p. 196). A strength of the volume is that emerging scholars are recognized alongside their established peers. Hannah Boston and Gabriele Passabì, winner and runner-up of the Marjorie Chibnall Essay Prize (Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies), contribute essays on topics with a long tradition in Norman historiography: post-Conquest lordship and chronicle writing. Boston argues for the possibility of multiple tenancies in the Norman feudal model, boldly challenging both the received wisdom on the ‘tenurial revolution’ dating back at least to F. M. Stenton, and the more recent rejection of feudalism itself as a useful term. Passabì examines a little-known text, the Continuatio Ursicampina, to show how Geoffrey of Monmouth’s pseudo-historical but highly influential Historia regum Britanniae, with its appealing Arthurian core, could be both questioned by and integrated within later historical writing. Remaining essays deal with connections between forests and the siting of elite residences, using Cheshire as a case study (Rachel Swallow); Harold II’s coinage, reappraised in light of a substantial hoard unearthed as recently as 2019 in the Chew Valley near Bath (Gareth Williams); the coronation of the Conqueror’s wife, Mathilda of Flanders, as the first Anglo-Norman queen at Pentecost in 1068 (Laura Gathagan...

Review: The Invention of Norman Visual Culture: Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition

Review: <i>The Invention of Norman Visual Culture: Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition</i>

Makerspaces: Combining Information Literacy with Pattern Design for Fiber Art through Digital Images

This article shares a practice of using digital images to create patterns for embroidery with aspects of information literacy within makerspaces. The author shares her enjoyment of a fiber art practice born of using digital images to create fiber art patterns from rare illuminated manuscripts. The author suggests that because images from these manuscripts are often considered hidden images, offering a program for pattern design will increase research discovery and opportunities for scholarship. This autoethnography offers one librarian’s experience using digital images from rare illuminated manuscripts and the ancient embroidery technique laid work to create colorful fiber copies of musical instruments and musicians for her art piece “The Medieval Screen.” Laid work is documented from the famous Bayeux Tapestry, and fiber copies of hidden images are one vibrant way to display forgotten images. The author asks if there will be a significant increase in downloads and views of historical digital images from offering makerspaces to teach this method combined with information literacy.

HAROLD-AS-AENEAS? THE INFLUENCE OF THE AENEID ON A RESCUE SCENE IN THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY

A scene in the Bayeux Tapestry (c. 1072–7 ce) shows Earl Harold ‘Godwinson’ of Wessex (c. 1022–66), future king of the English (r. 1066), rescuing two Normans from drowning in the quicksand of the River Couesnon as they cross into Brittany on military campaign (see figure 1; Bayeux Tapestry Scene 17). Harold (Bayeux Tapestry Figure 152) is depicted standing more or less upright, upon embroidered lines that represent the waters of the Couesnon. As is typical for the representation of Anglo-Saxons in this, the earlier part of the embroidery, he has a ‘pudding-bowl’ haircut and is moustached. These features distinguish Harold from the Normans he saves, who have the backs of their heads shaven and are without facial hair. Harold carries one of the men ‘piggyback’ and drags the other, who has almost fallen on his back, up by his right hand. The Latin inscription above this scene is brief, but nonetheless tells us most of what we need to know to understand the imagery beneath: hIC VVILLEM DVX ET EXERCITVS EIVS VENERVNT AD MONTE[M] MIChAELIS ET hIC TRANSIERVNT FLVMEN COSNONIS. hIC hARLOLD DVX TRAhEBAT EOS DE ARENA (‘Here Duke William and his army came to Mont St Michel, and here they crossed the River Couesnon. Here Duke Harold pulled them out of the sand’).

Imagining the medieval face of battle: the ‘Malfosse’ incident and the battle of Hastings, 1066–1200*

Abstract One hundred years after the battle of Hastings (1066), two historians wished to ask new questions about what the experience of the battle was like. Their approach – both sophisticated and seemingly modern – supplemented existing knowledge with imaginative recreation to fashion a fuller historical account of the battle. This article analyses the reporting of the ‘Malfosse’ incident, a deadly quasi-legendary episode in the encounter, in Wace’s Roman de Rou and the anonymous Chronicle of Battle Abbey, in relation to their sources and the Bayeux Tapestry. It argues that the prospect of historical detachment galvanized chroniclers into narrating the battle in a way that centred on experience.

Studies in Medieval Star-Gazing

This article considers human acts of looking at the stars or at what were thought to be stars. Star-gazing is aligned with richly generative literary works of naming, translation, word-play, with cosmological speculation, and with cultural practices. The problem of the star and of the constellation is exposed through examples from Arthurian texts, the Cicero-Aratus, the Bayeux Tapestry, and works by Geoffrey Chaucer. (SMA)

Transformation in Anglo-Saxon Culture: Toller Lectures on Art, Archaeology and Text ed. by Charles Insley and Gale R. Owen-Crocker

Reviewed by: Transformation in Anglo-Saxon Culture: Toller Lectures on Art, Archaeology and Text ed. by Charles Insley and Gale R. Owen-Crocker Greg Waite Insley, Charles, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, eds, Transformation in Anglo-Saxon Culture: Toller Lectures on Art, Archaeology and Text, Oxford and Philadelphia, Oxbow Books, 2017; paperback; pp. xviii, 136; 30 colour and 16 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £38.00; ISBN 9781785704970. This volume contains five lectures delivered at Manchester University between 2009 and 2014, with an introduction by Gale Owen-Crocker, and an index. As proclaimed in the title, 'transformation' is a key theme explored in the lectures, highlighting the Anglo-Saxon capacity for 'adaptation to new circumstances' (p. xv). All contributors have long and distinguished careers and the experience and breadth of vision necessary to explore successfully such a theme. In different ways, each lecture provides a window into and a summation of their respective research interests. John Hines's contribution is titled 'A New Chronology and New Agenda: The Problematic Sixth Century'. This lecture arises out of the large-scale, multi-authored research report edited by Hines and Alex Bayliss, Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries ad: A Chronological Framework (England Society for Medieval Archaeology, 2013). Hines discusses the team's revision of major material-cultural dates bounding the period of particular types of furnished burial, previously placed with the period c. 570–720, but, under the revised chronology, considered to span the period c. 530–680. Within the first half of this period, observed shifts in material culture in both male and female graves raise new questions about the environmental and sociopolitical circumstances that may lie behind the steep decline in burial with grave-goods around 570, followed [End Page 261] by a resurgence, particularly for female graves, after the first quarter of the seventh century. In 'Anglo-Saxon Art: Tradition and Transformation', Leslie Webster draws on themes explored in her major study, Anglo-Saxon Art (Cornell University Press, 2012). Ranging over six centuries of Anglo-Saxon art, from zoomorphic decoration and figural decoration on the earliest metalwork (and the brooding pottery figure on a cremation urn lid from Spong Hill) to the Bayeux Tapestry, Webster focuses on the nature of visual literacy and the decoding (as in riddles) of artistic motifs in the pagan period, running through their adaptation and fusion with imported traditions mainly introduced with the advent of Christianity. Both before and after this watershed in artistic traditions, the Anglo-Saxons succeeded in transforming traditions unique to their particular insular environment. Barbara Yorke's 'King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred' assesses the degree to which Alfred had transformed himself into a philosopher king (as his biographer Asser portrays him) in relation to the traditional expectations of a war leader. The appeal to Alfred of heroic and martial figures like Weland and Hercules, either already present or inserted into his translations, and his idiosyncratic treatment of free will in the translation of Boethius suggest (together with his portrayal in the Chronicle) that he wished to present himself as a martial figure as much as if not more than an intellectual one. Michelle Brown, in a wide-ranging lecture titled 'Strategies of Visual Literacy in Insular and Anglo-Saxon Book Culture', explores the 'complex cognitive challenges of fully integrated word, sound and image' (p. 99) initiated in book culture in early medieval Britain and Ireland. Brown's mastery of her field is evident in, for example, her exegesis of the Ezra portrait in Codex Amiatinus as encapsulating the dynamics of scholarship and pastoral care in early book production. In 'The Vercelli Book as a Context for The Dream of the Rood', Éamonn Ó'Carragáin examines how the poem fits into a context of thematically selected texts dealing with approaching death and Judgement. He considers the manuscript to be an old-fashioned one, reflecting the culture of pre-Benedictine reform houses of canons. Equally interesting is the author's discussion of the other two texts of the Dream in context: that is, on the Brussels Cross and the Ruthwell Cross respectively. This book will be essential...

King John

Reviewed by: King John Gemma Miller King JohnPresented by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon. 09 24, 2019- 03 21, 2020. Directed by Eleanor Rhode. Design by Max Johns. Lighting Design by Lizzie Powell. Music composed by Will Gregory. With Rosie Sheehy (King John), Bridgitta Roy (Queen Elinor), Charlotte Randle (Constance), Michael Abubakar (The Bastard), Tom McCall (Hubert), David Birrell (King of France), Katherine Pearce (Cardinal Pandulph), and others. Although King Johnhas a far patchier performance history than many of Shakespeare's plays, particularly in the past one hundred years, it is not difficult to see its contemporary relevance. From fake news to breaks with Europe, broken vows to divisive politics, this is most certainly a play that speaks to Britain in the twenty-first century. Director Eleanor Rhode and designer Max Johns gave their 2019/20 production for the Royal Shakespeare Company a 1960s aesthetic of clashing colors which gradually descended into a darker, more medieval feel throughout the second half. This collision of historical settings simultaneously conveyed a sense of timelessness while also suggesting that the post-war boom was a high point in history—one from which we have seen an unstoppable decline ever since. The play opened with a hungover King John (Rosie Sheehy) staggering across the stage shading his eyes and wincing. From a transistor radio nestled between two old-fashioned dial telephones, the clipped voice of a reporter announced news of an impending war with France. John broke a raw egg into a tall glass, topped it up with tomato juice, stirred it vigorously, and drank it down whole. As he slammed the empty glass down onto the table, his courtiers entered dancing exuberantly, seemingly oblivious to threats of a "fierce and bloody war" (1.1.17) from Europe. This opening sequence was a riot of sound, provided by a live five-piece band, vibrant costumes, and psychedelic lighting that established John's rule as one of complacency and decadence. [End Page 259] The set was dominated throughout by a large tapestry hanging over the back wall depicting John at its center, besieged by threats from all sides. It was a historical patchwork of mafia-styled men toting machine-guns, Elizabethan archers wearing pantaloons, a particularly grumpy looking Plantagenet lion, and Chinook helicopters. The aesthetic was a similar pastiche of styles—think the Bayeux tapestry crossed with Grayson Perry. Above the center of the thrust stage was suspended a large metallic coronet with a fleur-de-lys pattern repeated around its circumference. At first the coronet hung unobtrusively over the stage, but as parley descended into physical conflict, it was periodically lit from within with a bloody red light. This was particularly effective when it coincided with lines such as Blanche's "The sun's o'ercast with blood" (3.1.326). The coronet descended in the second half to hang a foot above the stage, functioning as an increasingly insistent and repressive symbol of violence. The blinding of Arthur, which opened the second half, was played out inside the lowered crown. Nurses wearing surgical masks lit candles around the top of the coronet which created flickering shadows around the darkened stage. As Hubert, similarly styled in a hospital white coat, carefully selected implements from a trolley and approached the boy, the coronet added to Arthur's sense of entrapment in a most sinister way. John's claim that his order to murder Arthur was inspired by Hubert's "abhorred aspect" (4.2.224) was literalized by having half of Hubert's face marked with burn scars. He was, like Arthur himself, a victim scarred by tyranny and trapped in the play's harsh and unremitting power struggles. The blinding scene excepted, much of the violence underpinning the play was presented in a farcical way. The initial confrontation between France and England began as a dance-off and then transformed into a boxing match, with foam fingers liberally distributed among the audience. The citizens of Angers, three women positioned on a balcony at the back of the stage, tucked into popcorn as they enjoyed the spectacle. At Blanche and Lewis's wedding, Anglo-French relations broke down...

THE FRANCO-NORMAN CAVALRY IN 11th – BEGINNING 12th BENTURIES AND ORIGIN OF MOUNTED SHOCK COMBAT IN VISUAL SOURCES

The article deals with the complex of visual sources of the XI - the beginning of the XII century, connected with the Franco-Norman armored cavalry. Namely, miniatures of the Roda Bible and the Ripoli Bible Bibles (both of North Catalan origin related to the scripture of St. Peter's Monastery in Ripol), the so-called the Bayeux Tapestry (72 meters long, made in the last third) XI century depicting the prehistory and the course of the Norman conquest of England with special emphasis on the Battle of Hastings (1066), as well as reliefs of the facade of St. Peter's Cathedral in Angouleme. The article analyzes the weapons and equipment depicted, the military practices for their use in battle, and also traces the dynamics of their changes, recorded by visual sources. These sources clearly and consistently capture the innovations in rider and equestrian weapons that emerged during the XI century - stirrups with long bows and a saddle with high bows, the first allowed the rider to straighten his legs and rest his lower back in the back bow of the second, which gave the combatant much more reliable support; an almond-shaped shield, which began to be worn not in the hand but in the neck strap, which released the left hand of the combatant for more precise control of the horse; biting the spear and ramming it. The role of the Franco-Normans in the dissemination of these techniques to the remotest corners of the Christian world was crucial.

The reconstruction of the Bayeux tapestry panorama as a reference tool for a spatialised system of documentary information. Image-processing algorithms devoted to panorama construction and plotting of images on this panorama

L’Etat et la Ville de Bayeux s’associent a l’Universite de Caen-Normandie et au CNRS pour la conception et le developpement d’un outil numerique d’etude et de valorisation de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, broderie medievale du XIe siecle, classee au titre des monuments historiques. Il consiste en un « systeme d’information documentaire spatialisee » (SIDS), s’inspirant d’un SIG (systeme d’information geographique) classique, cree a l’echelle de l’œuvre. Cet outil permettra l’exploitation des donnees documentaires et scientifiques sur l’œuvre, georeferencees sur une representation haute definition de la Tapisserie. Sa realisation repond a differentes problematiques comme le traitement des images pour la creation de ce fond de reference, obtenu a partir d’une suite de cliches numeriques. Construire ainsi un panorama est une problematique connue dans le domaine de l’analyse et le traitement de l’image. Cependant, cette broderie presente certaines contraintes, comme son support non rigide et sa taille exceptionnelle, de pres de 70 m, soit une image totale de 480 000 x 6 000 pixels qui rend ces algorithmes existants obsoletes. En contact direct avec les equipes de l’Universite de Caen impliquees, le GREYC a developpe une approche basee sur le matching des points d’interets SIFT et un algorithme de fusion base sur un modele de deformation geometrique elastique afin de conserver la structure de l’œuvre. Cette approche conserve la qualite des images, sans limite de nombre ou de types, et permet aujourd’hui un acces facilite a cette œuvre majeure.

Det stof som middelalderen er gjort af – Om Game of Thrones-tapetets middelaldermediering

The Game of Thrones Tapestry is a hand-woven and hand-embroidered tapestry which depicts key moments from the HBO TV series Game of Thrones in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry. By analysing particular aspects of its imagery and materiality, the article states that the Game of Thrones Tapestry confirms the way that the Middle Ages are also depicted in the TV series as a time of brutality, barbarism and permeable grotesque bodies, or in short, as the contrast to Modernity. With reference to Art historian Hans Belting’s image theory, it is suggested that one way in which the tapestry confirms this idea of the Middle Ages is through the properties of its medium because as a symbolic body it resembles the Grotesque Body by being permeable and transformable. Because of the tapestry’s ability to mediate the conception of the Middle Ages that characterises the fictional world of Game of Thrones in general, the article proposes that the tapestry can be regarded as a very suitable medium for the images of Game of Thrones which may also explain why this tapestry was created.

Return on display: memories of postcolonial migration at Maizuru

In September 2015, the Maizuru Repatriation Memorial Museum (Kyoto Prefecture) reopened to the public after renovation and an extensive rethink of its displays. The following month, after three years of hard work, the museum staff received the news that they had long been hoping to hear. UNESCO had agreed to inscribe a selection of the Museum’s documents in the Memory of the World (MoW) International Register, alongside other inscriptions such as the Bayeux Tapestry, Beethoven’s ninth Symphony and the Diaries of Anne Frank. Based on interviews conducted with those involved in putting together the Museum’s current and former displays, this paper examines the process by which the display at Maizuru has been produced and updated over time. We apply the concepts of ‘regimes’ and ‘repertories’ of migration in order to comprehend the multitude of factors, both contemporary and historical, that have influenced the production of a display treating the complex and sensitive topic of postcolonial migration. We argue that in this case migration regimes, especially the national state and local government, ultimately had the greatest influence on how historical memory of postcolonial migration has been produced.

Viewing the Bayeux Tapestry, Now and Then

Plans to redisplay the Bayeux Tapestry raise anew the questions as to where and how it was originally intended to be displayed. Analysis of the linen fabric provides new insights into the tapestry’s design and manufacture, and enables its original length to be calculated. Re-examination of the (largely destroyed) 11th-century cathedral at Bayeux and of its liturgical layout demonstrates that the tapestry would have fitted neatly into the nave west of the choir screen. Its narrative falls into three discrete sections that reflect the way in which it would have been hung within the building, and the arrangement of the scenes takes account of the uneven bay-spacings of the nave arcades and the positions of the doorways. It can therefore be concluded that the tapestry was designed for a particular location within the nave of Bayeux cathedral. The cathedral’s liturgical traditions shed light on the way in which the tapestry would have been viewed in the Middle Ages, and the wider implications for the way in which it could and should be viewed today are briefly considered.

Elizabeth Carson Pastan and Stephen D. White. The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contexts: A Reassessment.

This jointly authored volume presents a carefully integrated case for a reassessment of much that is conventionally accepted about the Bayeux Tapestry—or Embroidery, as it is termed with an intentionally jarring precision everywhere other than in the title. In The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contexts: A Reassessment, Elizabeth Carson Pastan and Stephen D. White accept the case first elaborated by Francis Wormald, that many motifs in the Tapestry are derived from manuscript models distinctive of the library of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, in the later eleventh century, but they go on to develop the close connection with the abbey in a novel way. They demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the Tapestry’s main account of events prior to the Battle of Hastings is not the straightforward pictorial recapitulation of Duke William’s claim that it has often been taken to be, but is instead far more equivocal and ambivalent. Other scholars have made suggestions along similar lines, particularly by drawing attention to the parallels between the Tapestry and Eadmer’s Historia novorum, written close by, at Christ Church, Canterbury. The authors pursue this line of argument by showing the extent to which the allusions in the borders of the Tapestry to Phaedrus’s adaptations of Æsop’s fables are intended as a commentary on the action taking place in the main frame above or below. They show that all the fables alluded to had been carefully selected to invoke in the minds of well-read viewers three integrated themes: predation, which often goes awry, with the biter ending up bitten; deceit; and betrayal. These themes clearly represent the view of the Norman Conquest taken by the designer, if we accept that the Tapestry, the borders as well as the main scenes, was conceived by a single mind. The whole is so carefully and consistently orchestrated that we must. Many of these Æsopian marginal allusions are clearly meant to be disquieting, even disturbing. They still are.