The bayeux tapestry

Fülszöveg

THG BAYGVXTAPGSTRY
David M. Wilson
In a museum in the small town of Bayeux in Normandy, specially devised to hold this single object, is a strip of linen nearly a thousand years old. It is 230 feet long - and about 20 inches high. On it, embroidered in brightly coloured wool, are figures of men, animals, buildings and ships. In a series of vivid scenes, with a running explanatory text in Latin, it relates the invasion of England by William of Normandy and his victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Nothing remotely like the Bayeux Tapestry exists anywhere else, yet comparatively few people have been to Bayeux to see it and appreciate how totally absorbing it is. This book, which reproduces the Tapestry in full colour, has made it accessible as never before.
The story told in the Tapestry has all the ingredients of an epic poem and a cast of characters that includes King Edward the Confessor, his liegeman Duke Harold and William, Duke of Normandy. When Edward dies, Harold... Tovább

Fülszöveg

THG BAYGVXTAPGSTRY
David M. Wilson
In a museum in the small town of Bayeux in Normandy, specially devised to hold this single object, is a strip of linen nearly a thousand years old. It is 230 feet long - and about 20 inches high. On it, embroidered in brightly coloured wool, are figures of men, animals, buildings and ships. In a series of vivid scenes, with a running explanatory text in Latin, it relates the invasion of England by William of Normandy and his victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Nothing remotely like the Bayeux Tapestry exists anywhere else, yet comparatively few people have been to Bayeux to see it and appreciate how totally absorbing it is. This book, which reproduces the Tapestry in full colour, has made it accessible as never before.
The story told in the Tapestry has all the ingredients of an epic poem and a cast of characters that includes King Edward the Confessor, his liegeman Duke Harold and William, Duke of Normandy. When Edward dies, Harold succeeds him as king. William, who has a better dynastic claim, invades England, and at the Battle of Hastings Harold is defeated and killed. Here the Tapestry breaks off, but it probably originally concluded with William's coronation -the beginning of a sequence of monarchs that has continued virtually unbroken until today, and of the English nation as we know it.
The Tapestry is reproduced in full colour over 146 pages, with captions on a fold-out page for easy reference. A second reproduction of the Tapestry in black and white has a detailed accompanying commentary. Sir David Wilson provides an up-to-date summary of the historical evidence, explaining, each episode and covering related topics such as the costumes, armour, ships, buildings and customs.
As history the Tapestry is one of the primary sources for the period. As a social document it is of incalculable value. As a work of art the Tapestry is the sole survivor of a form that may once have been widespread, the wall-hanging commemorating the deeds of a great man. Vissza