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Considers the definitions and implications of style in Anglo-Saxon art and literature.
Art historian Meyer Schapiro defined style as "the constant form-and sometimes the constant elements, qualities, and expression-in the art of an individual or group." Today, style is frequently overlooked as a critical tool, with our interest instead resting with the personal, the ephemeral, and the fragmentary. Anglo-Saxon Styles demonstrates just how vital style remains in a methodological and theoretical prism, regardless of the object, individual, fragment, or process studied. Contributors from a variety of disciplines-including literature, art history, manuscript studies, philology, and more- consider the definitions and implications of style in Anglo-Saxon culture and in contemporary scholarship. They demonstrate that the idea of style as a "constant form" has its limitations, and that style is in fact the ordering of form, both verbal and visual. Anglo-Saxon texts and images carry meanings and express agendas, presenting us with paradoxes and riddles that require us to keep questioning the meanings of style.
"The value of this book is … that leading scholars in Anglo-Saxon cultural studies have produced new insights into their specialist fields under the stimulus of facing common problems. This should encourage other Anglo-Saxonists to do likewise." — Speculum
"Karkov and Brown are to be congratulated on recruiting for their collection a distinguished array of scholars with interesting essays on Anglo-Saxon art and artifacts (both great and small), architecture, scribal activity, and literature." — Journal of English and Germanic Philology
"…a gracefully synthesized portrayal of the arrays and meanings of style in Anglo-Saxon culture." — CHOICE
"This is one of the few books attempting to synthesize our knowledge on Anglo-Saxon culture in new and interesting ways by finding a bridge between art and literature in the word 'style.'" — Patrick W. Conner, author of Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A Tenth-Century Cultural History
"I like the sweep and ambition of this book and the wide variety of forms/arts that it encompasses. There is something for every Anglo-Saxonist here. I also like the general acknowledgment of the idea of a 'multiplicity of co-existing styles' and the inappropriateness of imposing unitary forms on a culture that is truly syncretic and disparate in ways that have been overlooked by many previous critics." — Gillian R. Overing, coauthor of Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Encrypted Visions: Style and Sense in the Anglo-Saxon Minor Arts, A.D. 400-900
LESLIE WEBSTER
2. Rethinking the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Monuments: Some Deprecation of Style; Some Consideration of Form and Ideology
FRED ORTON
3. Iuxta Morem Romanorum: Stone and Sculpture in Anglo-Saxon England
JANE HAWKES
4. Beckwith Revisited: Some Ivory Carvings from Canterbury
PERETTE E. MICHELLI
5. Style in Late Anglo-Saxon England: Questions of Learning and Intention
CAROL FARR
6. House Style in the Scriptorium, Scribal Reality, and Scholarly Myth
MICHELLE P. BROWN
7. Style and Layout of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts
WILLIAM SCHIPPER
8. What We Talk about When We Talk about Style
NICHOLAS HOWE
9. "Either/And" as "Style" in Anglo-Saxon Christian Poetry
SARAH LARRATT KEEFER
10. Eating People Is Wrong: Funny Style in Andreas and its Analogues
JONATHAN WILCOX
11. Aldhelm's Jewel Tones: Latin Colors through Anglo-Saxon Eyes
CARIN RUFF
12. The Discreet Charm of the Old English Weak Adjective
ROBERTA FRANK
13. Rhythm and Alliteration: Styles of Aelfric's Prose up to the Lives of Saints
HARUKO MOMMA
14. Both Style and Substance: The Case for Cynewulf
ANDY ORCHARD
List of Contributors
Index
Index of Manuscripts Cited