The Bayeux Tapestry: Its English connection and its peripheral narrative PDF
Preview The Bayeux Tapestry: Its English connection and its peripheral narrative
INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photo graph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, arid improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are re produced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. These are also available as one exposure on a standard 35mm slide or as a 17" x 23" black and white photographic print for an additional charge. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. University Microfilms International a Ben & liowen information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Order Number 8905616 The Bayeux Tapestry: Its English connection and its peripheral narrative Wissoiik, Richard David, Ph.D. Duquesne University, 1988 U M I 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The Bayeux Tapestry: Its English Connection and Its Peripheral Narrative yf A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of Duquesne University As Partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Richard David Wissolik October 19, 1988 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 ABSTRACT The Bayeux Tapestry: Its English Connections and Its Peripheral Narrative The Bayeux Tapestry is an 11th century English embroidery which commemorates the Norman Conquest of England, and it is considered to be one of the primary authorities for the study of the Conquest and the events leading up to it. The Tapestry's overt narrative pattern seeks to emphasize the perjury of King Harold and to legitimize Duke William of Normandy's claims of legitimacy to the English throne. The English designer of the Tapestry, under the orders of a Norman patron, was constrained by circumstances from placing in the main narrative of his work any "English" view of events that might have been uncongenial to his Norman overlords. The designer of the Tapestry, therefore, deliberately constructed a "peripheral” narrative in the embroidery's borders, especially in select areas and beneath certain scenes whose historical background was politically sensitive, the indiscreet handling of which would have proved inimical to Norman claims of justification and legitimization. This historical background concerned specifically the reasons for Earl Harold's journey to Normandy in c. 1064, the relationship into which he entered with Duke William, and the nature and the circumstances of the oath he swore to Duke William while there. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 This "peripheral" narrative consists of verbal/visual puns, allusions to Aesopic Fables, Old English and Scriptural proverbs, classical and folk mythology, and the like, all combining to produce a distinctly "English view" of events. In other words, the Bayeux Tapestry contains two narratives, main and peripheral; the first presenting a Norman view, and the second, presenting an opposite, covert English view. We see the English view of the Bayeux Tapestry reflected in the Historia Novorum in Anglia of Eadmer, an English monk of Christ Church, Canterbury (in which city the Tapestry was made), and who began to write at least by 1090. Eadmer, at Canterbury since 1060, would have been anywhere between fourteen and thirty years of age during the time (1070-1087) the Tapestry was being produced. He was in an excellent position, therefore, to have acquainted himself with local tradition, eye-witness accounts, and would have become familiar with any purely English accounts that might have been set down, but have since become lost. He would also have learned much from Wulfnoth,* confessor of Earl Harold, and from Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, men whom he knew well, especially Anselm, whose biographer and constant companion he came to be. The nature and the development of the Tapestry's "peripheral" narrative, its "code-1anguage" of a subject people, is established through a systematic study of Old English etymology, Germanic and Latin cognates, Old English glosses, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 literary elements, and Aescpic Fables, several of which are identified and discussed for the first time, in this study. The appendices contain new observations which add to the body of proofs that the Tapestry was produced in Canterbury. Plates from the BM. MS. Harley 603 from Christ Church are offered in support of these observations. These plates represent previously rejected illustrations from the center portion of the MS which contain anomalies too compelling to be overlooked. They appear in their entirety, reproduced for the first time. Also included in the appendices is a comprehensive, annotated, bibliography of the Bayeux Tapestry and related studies. It may be concluded, then, that the Bayeux Tapestry does not represent a purely Norman view of the events of 1064-1066, but contains, as well, an English view in its borders (usually considered to be purely decorative), placed there by an English designer through the use of covert devices, representing a view inimical to Norman claims of legitimacy to the English crown. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Name Richard David Wissolik Dissertation Title The Baveux Tapestry: Its English Connections and Peripheral Narrative Degree Doctor of Philosophy in English Date October 31. 1988 APPROVED ; I Frank T. Zbozny, , Professor of English APPROVED ..._________ _____________________________ ^Bernard F. Befanek^ Ph. D., Associate Professor of English APPROVED CE^seph'J. g&enaifc, Jr., Ph.D., Associate Professor of English and Chairman, English Department ACCEPTED_ Michael P. Weber, D.A., Dean, Graduate School of Liberal Arts and Sciences Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE In 1976, during a discussion of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale in my Medieval Studies class, a student related that another professor insisted that no form of feudalism existed in England before the Norman Conquest. Never a "normanophile," nor a true-believer in the myth of the Norman "catalyst theory," I set out for the college library to gather for my young charge some of the more recent and enlightening studies by such writers as Warren Hollister, Christopher Brooke, and Eric John, scholars who had been bringing the idea of "English feudalism," and "cavalry warfare," into rather less biased focus, and into a more realistic balance between the "gradualist" and "catalyst" views of the transition from pre- to post-1066 Anglo- Norman history. In a time before the learned, but undisciplined scholarship of Freeman, the "anglo-phile," and the ad baculum arguments of Round, the "normanophile," the early translators of Old English literature, Thorpe among them, had little difficulty in translating such words as cniht or thegnas into "knight" and eoh into "war-horse." Since Round, and persisting into Stenton and R. Allen Brown, the words are translated as "boy," "earl," and simply "horse." The formula is a simple one: no horse, no knight, no knight, no feudalism. One of the results, in terms of dominant Tapestry scholarship, is that the Tapestry has always been seen from the Norman point of view, as that view may be found in contemporary Norman chronicles, and any antithetical English view, as may be seen through the accounts of such writers as Eadmer, has largely remained ignored, despite strong argument to the contrary from such commentators as Amyot, Brooke, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Description:The list of books you might like
