Two particular perspectives inform this wide-ranging and richly illustrated survey of the art produced in England, or by English artists, between ca. 600 and ca. 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 it endure as such, as well as questions about the work that art does in the creation of peoples, cultures, nations and histories.

Product Description: 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...read more

Product Description: As Volume One in the Sancta Crux/Halig Rod series, this collection of new research offers fascinating glimpses into how the way the cross, the central image of Christianity in the Anglo-Saxon period, was textualized, reified, visualized, and performed...read more

Product Description: 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...read more

In the introduction to this study the editors argue that the Anglo-Saxon visual and literary arts can not be defined by a single style, but that Anglo-Saxon styles are characterised by ambiguity and a love of complex pattern and surface ornament and, through social and political messages, are meant to stimulate furtehr enquiry from their audience. Using style as a critical tool for investigating the period, the fourteen essays presented here discuss minor arts, monuments, stone scultpure, ivory carvings, manuscripts, poetry and other literary forms. In doing so they seek ways of defining and classifying style, draw attention to how styles can conflict, how it can transmit ideas, symbolise affiliation, they discuss why styles were copied and imitated in art and literature and also look at personal rather than collective or group style. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: Initially concerned exclusively with death and burial, this volume grew to encompass the role of the living and the towns they inhabit. The ten papers take an informal, relaxed tone, seeking to inspire discussion rather than provide a definitive summary...read more

A generously illustrated collection, The Insular Tradition explores the various ways in which tradition becomes part of our definition of insular culture and cultural history. The essays are the outcome of a conference held within the Medieval Academy of America meeting at Kalamazoo in 1991. Scholars from America, Scandinavia, Britain, and Ireland came together to discuss the latest research on the remarkable Christian art which flourished among the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon peoples in the Early Medieval Period. New discoveries and a renewed research interest are shedding light on the splendid manuscript illuminations, sculpture, and metalwork of the time. Historical sources are reanalyzed and, together with modern approaches to interpretation, provide fascinating new insights into the social, economic, and spiritual background of the creative artists. This book presents a number of challenging reinterpretations of landmark achievements such as the Book of Kells, the Irish High Crosses, and the enigmatic symbolic and decorative systems of the Pictish people of Scotland. The contributors discuss the processes of creativity, the way in which influences are transmitted, the cross-fertilization of the arts in different media, and the role of trade and exchange and of the patron. Extensive illustrations, some of them difficult to source elsewhere, and comprehensive up-to-date bibliographies make the volume especially useful to those wishing to find a suitable point of entry into this expanding and ever-changing field.