Textiles, Text, Intertext : Essays in Honour of Gale R. Owen-Crocker

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.

MAREN CLEGG HYER teaches at Snow College in Ephraim, Utah. She specializes in researching textiles and other elements of material culture in the literary imagery of early medieval England.

CATHERINE E. KARKOV is Professor Emeritus of Art History, University of Leeds.

CHRISTINA LEE has been thinking about the ways in which people experienced illness and disability in Early Medieval England and Medieval Scandinavia for well over a decade. Her research outputs include how we may define disability in a very different culture, the ways in which illness is used in literature, but also a practical exploration of a medieval remedy as part of the AncientBiotics project. She is working with archaeologists, historians, colleagues in bioscience and engineering.

Robin Netherton is a costume historian specializing in Western European clothing of the Middle Ages and its interpretation by artists and historians.