Textiles and textile imagery in Old English literature

grantor: University of TorontoAs in many other cultures, textiles and textile production figured significantly in the everyday life of the Anglo-Saxons. The literary result of this important craft was the use of textile imagery, in particular, textile metaphor in Old English literature, including the following: peace-weaving, death-weaving, fate-weaving, creation- and water-weaving, word-weaving, and spider-weaving. While the occurrence of textile metaphor in the Old English corpus has been noted in the past, this study is unique in that it seeks first to analyze and reconstruct the material culture of textile production among the Anglo-Saxons from archaeological and textual records as a crucial step in understanding the full range of Old English textile metaphors and what they might have meant to the Anglo-Saxons. This study is also unique in that it compiles the Old English textile metaphors and analyzes their resonance in direct relationship to the material culture of textiles. In the dissertation, I compile a number of the significant analogues which may or may not have influenced the development of textile metaphor in Old English literature. This dissertation argues that textile metaphors and images in Old English literature are linked by a common resonance which may be the product of an understanding of the material culture of textiles of Anglo-Saxon times as a visual analogue. The examination of Old English textile imagery has interesting implications for textile imagery which occurs in great profusion in virtually all cultures which have cotidiarian contact with textile production.Ph.D

Veil and shroud: Eastern references and allegoric functions in the textile imagery of a twelfth-century gospel book from Braunschweig

This article discusses two medieval textile-inspired images that evoke the repeat of Eastern silk, and argues that so-called textile-pages in illuminated German manuscripts are not merely a sophisticated form of decoration, but that textile imagery generates iconological meaning in certain contexts and serves specific functions. The article proposes an iconological reading of two textile-pages in the Aegidien Gospels, a twelfth-century manuscript. It identifies one textile image as a visual commentary on the allegory of scripture as a veil of revelation, and the other as a representation of the shroud, which is shown to have mnemonic and contemplative functions in relation to the historic narrative and sacred truth of Christ’s death and resurrection. A kufesque inscription in the image of the shroud marks the depicted textile as an object of Eastern origin, and can be interpreted as a reference to the Holy Land in particular. By visually evoking the holy site of Christ’s tomb, the shroud image participates in a transfer of loca sancta from Jerusalem to twelfth-century Braunschweig, and in turn, connects with other holy sites that mark a larger sacred landscape of medieval Saxony. Interpreting the two textile-pages in the Aegidien Gospels from the viewpoint of recent approaches towards medieval court culture, textile imagery in this manuscript is shown to not be the result of the passive copying of textile patterns; rather, it is a distinct artistic contribution and form of appropriation that reflects the spiritual needs of the twelfth-century Saxon audience