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‘Without any Letter’: Some History Outside the Library
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
Abstract
In her recent study of the Bayeux tapestry, Suzanne Lewis argues persuasively that we cannot use only the simple Latin tags on this long embroidery (it is not a tapestry) to come to know its story. The more we attend to the exceptionally detailed images, the more we see ambiguity and complexity. Why does Harold have two hands on reliquaries for oath-taking? Why does he look in one direction while a ship leaves in the other? Why does the Fable of the Fox and the Crow appear three times?
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1 Suzanne, Lewis, The Rhetoric of Power in the Bayeux Tapestry (Cambridge, 1999).Google Scholar
2 The Latin label above is SACRAMENTUM. The critical part of the coronation ceremony is, of course, the oath-taking; at this time, when the number of the sacraments was not fixed, the coronation was a sacrament.
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14 There are early descriptions of embroidery for Mary's Bed of State.
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21 This grouping (and the larger question of choice of statuary) needs further work.
22 See my ‘The Triumphs of Clementina’, in Peter, Davidson and Jill, Bepler, eds., The Triumphs of the Defeated: Early Modern Festivals and Messages of Legitimacy (Wiesbaden, 2007): 149–172.Google Scholar
23 MSS Add. 34638 f 247.