Illuminating the Word in the Early Middle Ages

Illuminating the Word in the Early Middle Ages
Author: Lawrence Nees
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 589
Release: 2023-07-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1009239554

This richly illustrated study addresses the essential first steps in the development of the new phenomenon of the illuminated book, which innovatively introduced colourful large letters and ornamental frames as guides for the reader's access to the text. Tracing their surprising origins within late Roman reading practices, Lawrence Nees shows how these decorative features stand as ancestors to features of printed and electronic books we take for granted today, including font choice, word spacing, punctuation and sentence capitalisation. Two hundred photographs, nearly all in colour, illustrate and document the decisive change in design from ancient to medieval books. Featuring an extended discussion of the importance of race and ethnicity in twentieth-century historiography, this book argues that the first steps in the development of this new style of book were taken on the European continent within classical practices of reading and writing, and not as, usually presented, among the non-Roman 'barbarians'.

The Insular Tradition

The Insular Tradition
Author: Catherine E. Karkov
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 1997-10-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1438408374

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.

Early Medieval Text and Image Volume 1

Early Medieval Text and Image Volume 1
Author: Jennifer O'Reilly
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2019-06-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000008711

When she died in 2016, Dr Jennifer O’Reilly left behind a body of published and unpublished work in three areas of medieval studies: the iconography of the Gospel Books produced in early medieval Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England; the writings of Bede and his older Irish contemporary, Adomnán of Iona; and the early lives of Thomas Becket. In these three areas she explored the connections between historical texts, artistic images and biblical exegesis. This volume brings together nine studies of the Insular Gospel Books. One of them, on the iconography of the St Gall Gospels (Essay 9), was left completed, but unpublished, on the author’s death. It appears here for the first time. The remaining studies, published between 1987 and 2013, examine certain themes and motifs that inform the Gospel Books: their implicit Christology, their harmonisation of the four Gospel accounts, the depiction of Christ crucified, and the portrayal of St John the Evangelist. Two of the Books, the Durham Gospels and the Gospels of Mael Brigte, receive particular attention. (CS1079).

Peopling Insular Art

Peopling Insular Art
Author: Cynthia Thickpenny
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-07-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789254574

The International Conference on Insular Art (IIAC) is the leading forum for scholars of the visual and material culture of early medieval Ireland and Britain, including manuscript illumination, sculpture, metalwork, and textiles, and encompassing the work of Anglo-Saxon-, Celtic- and Norse-speaking artists. The present volume contains a selection of papers presented at the eighth IIAC, which took place in Glasgow 11-14 July 2017. The theme of IIAC8 - Peopling Insular Art: Practice, Performance, Perception - was intended to focus attention on those who commissioned, created, and engaged with Insular art objects, and how they conceptualised, fashioned, and experienced them (with ‘engagement’ covering not only contemporary audiences, but later medieval and modern ones too). The twenty-one articles gathered here reflect the diverse ways in which this theme has been interpreted. They demonstrate the intellectual vibrancy of Insular art studies, its international outlook, its interdiscplinarity, and its openness to innovative technologies and approaches, while at the same time demonstrating the strength and enduring value of established methodologies and research practices. The studies collected here focus not only on made objects, but on the creative processes and intellectual decisions which informed their making. This volume brings Insular makers – the illuminators, pattern-makers, rubricators, carvers, and casters – to the fore.

Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Art

Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Art
Author: Derek Hull
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780853235491

Much of early medieval Celtic and Anglo-Saxon art is based on the display of motifs – key, interlacing, spiral and zoomorphic – in well-defined panels in simple and complex arrays. A study of the arrangement of the panels and the fine detail of the motifs indicates that the artists relied on geometric methods and principles first used by Egyptians and Greeks. This book reflects Derek Hull’s life-long interest in interpreting the exciting and exotic patterns revealed by scientific studies using light and electron microscopes. His interest in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon art started with a casual observation of an interlacing pattern on an early medieval stone cross set in a churchyard. There followed many years of exploration of art in metal, stone and vellum from all parts of the British Isles and Ireland, resulting in some fascinating discoveries. Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Art reveals new and intriguing facets of these works that add to our appreciation of the beauty of the art and the skills of the artists. "This is a book for lovers of Celtic art, design and calligraphy, and will both delight and captivate... A must-have for both the cognoscenti and enthusiasts of Celtic religious art."—Cambria

The Age of Migrating Ideas

The Age of Migrating Ideas
Author: Michael Spearman
Publisher: Alan Sutton Publishing
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1993
Genre: Art
ISBN:

This volume contains the proceedings of the second International Conference on Insular Art held in the National Museums of Scotland in 1991. It covers the latest research by over 30 of Europe and America's leading scholars on the sculpture, metalwork and manuscripts of early-medieval northern Britain and Ireland. The book provides a detailed investigation into styles and influences, with keynote papers from Ernst Kitzinger, George Henderson, R.K.B. Stevenson and Isobel Henderson.

Angels in Early Medieval England

Angels in Early Medieval England
Author: Richard Sowerby
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198785372

In the modern world, angels can often seem to be no more than a symbol, but in the Middle Ages men and women thought differently. Some offered prayers intended to secure the angelic assistance for the living and the dead; others erected stone monuments carved with images of winged figures; and still others made angels the subject of poetic endeavour and theological scholarship. This wealth of material has never been fully explored, and was once dismissed as the detritus of a superstitious age. Angels in Medieval England offers a different perspective, by using angels as a prism through which to study the changing religious culture of an unfamiliar age. Focusing on one corner of medieval Europe which produced an abundance of material relating to angels, Richard Sowerby investigates the way that ancient beliefs about angels were preserved and adapted in England during the Anglo-Saxon period. Between the sixth century and the eleventh, the convictions of Anglo-Saxon men and women about the world of the spirits underwent a gradual transformation. This book is the first to explore that transformation, and to show the ways in which the Anglo-Saxons tried to reconcile their religious inheritance with their own perspectives about the world, human nature, and God.

Early Medieval Text and Image Volume 2

Early Medieval Text and Image Volume 2
Author: Jennifer O'Reilly
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2019-06-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 100000872X

When she died in 2016, Dr Jennifer O’Reilly left behind a body of published and unpublished work in three areas of medieval studies: the iconography of the Gospel Books produced in early medieval Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England; the writings of Bede and his older Irish contemporary, Adomnán of Iona; and the early lives of Thomas Becket. In these three areas she explored the connections between historical texts, artistic images and biblical exegesis. This volume brings together seventeen essays, published between 1984 and 2013, on the interplay of texts and images in medieval art. Most focus on the manuscript art of early medieval Ireland and England. The first section includes four studies of the Codex Amiatinus, produced in Northumbria in the monastic community of Bede. The second section contains seven essays on the iconography and text of the Book of Kells. In the third section there are five studies of Anglo-Saxon Art, examined in the context of the Benedictine Reform. A concluding essay, on the medieval iconography of the two trees in Eden, traces the development of a motif from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages.(CS1080)

Prophecy, Fate and Memory in the Early Medieval Celtic World

Prophecy, Fate and Memory in the Early Medieval Celtic World
Author: Professor Jonathan Wooding
Publisher: Sydney University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2020-03-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1743326955

Prophecy, Fate and Memory in the Early and Medieval Celtic World brings together a collection of studies that closely explore aspects of culture and history of Celtic-speaking nations. Non-narrative sources and cross-disciplinary approaches shed new light on traditional questions concerning commemoration,sources of political authority, and the nature of religious identity. Leading scholars and early-career researchers bring to bear hermeneutics from studies of religion and literary criticism alongside more traditional philological and historical methodologies. All the studies in this book bring to their particular tasks an acknowledgement of the importance of religion in the worldview of antiquity and the Middle Ages. Their approaches reflect a critical turn in Celtic studies that has proved immensely productive across the last two decades.