CMEMS Colloquium

"The Franks Casket Speaks Back"

Abstract: ‘Literature’, derived from Latin ‘litteratura’ meaning ‘use, or systems, of writing’, is represented in its earliest English form in inscriptions on artistic objects of iconic significance. One such is the eighth-century rectangular whalebone casket, discovered in the nineteenth century and mostly now in the British Museum (one panel is in Florence). Illustrative scenes of Germanic and Christian subjects carved in relief on the panels are framed by lines of runes and roman letters that create a beautiful but perplexing text overall. Made in Northumbria, the Franks Casket has caused great debate among scholars, who have tried to discern the meaning of the artefact. This lecture will spend time exploring the object’s own voice, because the issues it raises can illuminate both the creation of early postcolonial England and the artistic expression of the Middle Ages as a whole.

Bio: Catherine E. Karkov is Professor of Art History at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on the art and archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, concentrating especially on questions of gender, materiality, the postcolonial, and the relationship between text or voice and image or object. Her publications include: The Art of Anglo-Saxon England (Boydell, 2011) and Text and Picture in Anglo-Saxon England: Narrative Strategies in the Junius 11 Manuscript (Cambridge, 2001), along with the co-edited volumesConversion and Colonization in Anglo-Saxon England (MRTS, 2006) and Theorizing Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture (Morgantown, WV, 2003). She is currently completing work on an edited volume entitled Postcolonising the Medieval Image. She is also working on two additional research projects: Reading the Mother Tongue, which explores the intersection of female agency, place and language in Anglo-Saxon England, and Written in Stone, a study of the use of stone as a postcolonial statement in the north of England ca. 400–1100. She is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the English Association, and sits on numerous editorial and advisory boards.