The Bayeux Tapestry

In the past two decades scholarly assessment of the Bayeux Tapestry has begun to consider issues beyond its sources and analogues dating origin and purpose and site of display. This volume demonstrates the utility of more recent interpretive approaches to this famous artefact especially with regard to newer concepts of gender materiality reception theory cultural criticism performativity spatial narrative New Historicism and post-structuralism. The essays it contains frame vital issues for the future of Tapestry scholarship: they provide original perspectives and engage with myriad critical concerns: the (New-) historical layering of meaning representational systems of gender difference visuality memory and architecture modern obsessions with author-like patronage post-colonial notions of territory and saintly relics and the function of historiography and media. An exhaustive bibliography of three centuries of critical writings completes the work.