Henry II (left) Eleanor of Aquitaine (right)

The vogue of French literature in medieval England during the era of Henry II and the flamboyant Eleanor of Aquitaine will be the topic of a lecture by professor Ian Short of Birkbeck College, University of London, Thursday, November 2. “Cultural Encounters: French Literature in Twelfth-Century England,” to be held at 8 pm in the New York Room of Mary Woolley Hall, is sponsored by the French department at Mount Holyoke and will be presented in English. The lecture is named for a retired MHC professor, Ruth J. Dean, and marks the publication of Dean's new text, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, printed this year by the Anglo-Norman Text Society, Birkbeck College, London.

Ian Short, an Anglo-Norman specialist, is a professor of French who has authored, edited, and translated numerous books in his field. He is president of the Anglo-Norman Text Society, which publishes books and promotes the study of Anglo-Norman language and literature through its publications. Ruth Dean was among the founding members of the society.

Margaret Switten, MHC professor of French, notes that the Anglo-Norman era, an obscure period to many, in fact figures prominently in the culture of both Britain and France. “After the Norman Conquest established Duke William of Normandy as the king of England, French culture and language were infused into English culture,” she says. “French knights came to Britain; French religious orders formed branches there; and French town dwellers settled there. And, of course, the English court was French speaking.” The Anglo-Norman regnum was a unique and privileged locus of multiculturalism—French, Latin, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon—a rich matrix from which came, among other things, the legends of King Arthur. Short's lecture will focus on twelfth-century Britain as a cultural melting pot and as the place where French literature, to all intents and purposes, began.

Dean's book serves as a guide to the texts, manuscripts, and critical studies of nearly one-thousand works composed in Anglo-Norman, a form of French spoken in England after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. A long-awaited reference book, the text is the most comprehensive guide to be published since Johan Vising's pioneering Anglo-Norman Language and Literature of 1923. Dean, a specialist in paleography (the study of ancient writings) and Anglo-Norman, taught at Mount Holyoke until 1967. At that time, the College established the lecture series in her name. Since then, the French department has brought a number of outstanding medievalists to campus. Dean's distinguished career as a medievalist led to her election as the first woman president of the Medieval Academy of America.

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A Fragment of Anglo-Norman History Right Here at MHC

Mount Holyoke is home to a unique artifact documenting the historic war that brought French culture and a new language—Anglo-Norman—to medieval England. The College's hand-painted paper copy of the famous Bayeux tapestry depicts in dramatic detail the conquest of England by Duke William of Normandy, France, in 1066. One of only two extant Victorian copies, the MHC scroll is now on view in the Williston Memorial Library courtyard in an exhibition of texts relating to the Anglo-Norman period. The scroll was acquired in 1957, and reproduces the imagery from a tapestry made for the bishop of Bayeux, France, in the eleventh century. The original 230-foot masterpiece offers a rare glimpse at the equipment used in warfare at the close of the Middle Ages. A minutely detailed embroidery, the tapestry is noted for its distinctly sophisticated arrangement of scenes, skillful composition, and impressive narrative vitality.

The MHC version recreates the Bayeux narrative in watercolor and pen and and ink. The artists used as their source engravings by Victor Sansonnetti, after drawings by Charles Stothard, who was commissioned by the Society of Antiquaries of London to copy the tapestry in 1816. The scroll reproduces with great accuracy and remarkable detail the human figures, horses, animals, weaponry, architectural elements, and Latin names and phrases in the elaborate original work. The nineteenth-century artists, however, employed distinctly Victorian sensibilities, as they edited out genitalia depicted on horses in the Bayeux original. Details such as an arrow piercing an eye and a mustache on a fallen king were also omitted from the drawn copy, a sign of editing or an indication that these details may have no longer been visible on the tapestry at the time it was copied. (The tapestry was subsequently restored.) And though the tapestry features a palette dominated by blue, rust, and gold threads, the scroll artists opted for pigments of blue, red, and green.

One-third the height of the original work, MHC's scroll is ten inches high and just over sixty-eight feet long. It is displayed in two-foot sections in a custom-built case, and is usually exhibited in special collections in the library's Miles-Smith Science Wing. The copy has been the subject of classroom discussions and viewings by visiting scholars, according to Nancy Birkrem, cataloguing and special collections librarian. Birkrem notes that the item came from the estate of Charlotte Yonge, a novelist who lived in Winchester, England. Facts about the scroll's creators are not known, but Birkrem says the work was sold to the College with two notebooks containing lectures about the tapestry by Mark Anthony Lower (1813–76), a schoolmaster and antiquarian at the Lewes Mechanics Institute in Sussex, England.

The late Joseph Bottkol, who taught in the English department at MHC from 1945 to 1975, urged the College to buy the scroll, which he had noticed in a rare books and manuscripts catalogue. The Gertrude Carr Craig Fund provided for its purchase from England for fifty pounds, and the Barbara Kohler Ellis Fund financed its restoration in the 1990s. The second Victorian copy of the tapestry is at the Society of Antiquities of Newcastle-on-Tyne, England.