2025/09/04 by Benjamin Pohl · 2 voices
Arts and Humanities · #Close reading #Contextualization #Fifteenth #Historical and Religious Studies of Rome #Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies #Medieval Literature and History #Reading (process)
paper · doi:10.1093/hisres/htaf029
openalex publication_date 2025/09/04 · openalex created_date 2025/12/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract This article offers a new contextualization of the Bayeux Tapestry by exploring its use as mealtime reading in a monastic refectory. This conceptual and historical examination helps answer important questions – and even resolve several conundrums and contradictions – surrounding the artefact’s design and materiality, its intended message and target audience, and the remarkable lack of records attesting to its location – or even to its very existence – prior to the fifteenth century. The article reviews the Bayeux Tapestry’s probable place of origin, then makes a case for reading it as moral history, and concludes by revisiting some long-standing enigmas surrounding its provenance.