Studies the interrelationship of text and picture in the only surviving illustrated Anglo-Saxon poetic manuscript.

Images of monstrosities pervade art and culture in the Middle Ages, and for medieval people they must have been a tantalizing suggestion of unknown worlds and unthinkable dangers.

In the present volume, the two essays that frame the book provide exciting insight into the mental world of the Anglo-Saxons by showing on the one hand how they understood the processes of reading and assimilating knowledge and, on the other, how they conceived of time and the passage of the seasons. In the field of art history, two essays treat two of the best-known Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The lavish symbol pages in the 'Book of Durrow' are shown to reflect a programmatic exposition of the meaning of Easter, and a posthumous essay by a distinguished art historian shows how the Anglo-Saxon illustrations added to the 'Galba Psalter' are best to be understood in the context of the programme of learning instituted by King Alfred. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

Art in England fills a void in the scholarship of both English and medieval art by offering the first single volume overview of artistic movements in Medieval and Early Renaissance England. Grounded in history and using the chronology of the reign of monarchs as a structure, it is contextual and comprehensive, revealing unobserved threads of continuity, patterns of intention and unique qualities that run through English art of the medieval millennium. By placing the English movement in a European context, this book brings to light many ingenious innovations that focused studies tend not to recognize and offers a fresh look at the movement as a whole. The media studied include architecture and related sculpture, both ecclesiastical and secular; tomb monuments; murals, panel paintings, altarpieces, and portraits; manuscript illuminations; textiles; and art by English artists and by foreign artists commissioned by English patrons.