The Bayeux Tapestry: new interpretations. Edited by Martin K Foys, Karen Eileen Overbey and Dan Terkla. 240mm. Pp xvi+216, 35 col, 10 b&w ills. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009. ISBN 9781843834700. £50 (hbk)

摘要

So much is written about the Bayeux Tapestry that offering new interpretations seems to invite hubris. The editors of this collection of ten essays and a ‘selective’ up-to-date bibliography seek to incorporate the ‘explosion of new approaches and interpretations with a bevy of new methodologies and arguments’ and to stress the ‘value of applying current theoretical modes’ to the Bayeux Tapestry (p xiv). Yet post-colonialism, post-structuralism and gender analysis are not exactly new, and the book includes some tired old jargon like (New-)historical, (Re)producing, (dis)placement and imag(in)ed. Mercifully, the Tapestry’s back (though itself shamefully neglected) is broad enough to bear such a weight of expectation. Some of the papers originated in a Yale seminar of 2005, others in the 2006 Leeds International Medieval Congress