Melissa Sara Herman

Bio: Melissa Sara Herman is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) & Iconography. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 90 citations.

Iconography in Dialogue: Negotiating Tradition and Cultural Contact in the Art of Seventh Century Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract: The seventh century in Anglo-Saxon England offers a particularly rich historical period in which to examine the material effects of cultural contact between disparate cultures. As it lacks close contemporary textual accounts of the events taking place and the cultural response to the resultant changes, the material record becomes the site upon which that dialogue plays out. This study is primarily concerned with the art of what might be considered a transitional period in Anglo-Saxon England, the seventh century, between the arrival of the papal mission from Rome in 597 CE and the beginning of the eighth century when Christianity seems to have become well established throughout much of the region. At its core, this study is intended to present an iconographic, art historical examination of the artwork produced in this historical period, focusing predominantly on decorated metalwork, specifically personal ornament, as a medium for the transmission of iconography. To that end, given the scope of the historical events and material artefacts encompassed within that time period, it will focus primarily on traditional iconography, the so-called Germanic motifs, and their persistence and resurgence in response to the incoming Mediterranean influences. The artwork, specifically the metalwork, demonstrates a valuation and retention of longstanding traditions, both iconographic and aesthetic, which seem to be in direct response to the introduction of a competing culture. This embracing of tradition does not mean that significant cultural change was occurring throughout the seventh century, nor does it necessarily indicate a societal resistance to that change; however it does reveal that there was a level of uncertainty about the changes taking place and a resultant desire for the familiar, symbolic and significant traditions of the remembered past.

The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society

Abstract: From the impact of the first monasteries in the seventh century, to the emergence of the local parochial system five hundred years later, the Church was a force for change in Anglo-Saxon society. It shaped culture and ideas, social and economic behaviour, and the organization of landscape and settlement. This book traces how the widespread foundation of monastic sites ('minsters') during c.670-730 gave the recently pagan English new ways of living, of exploiting their resources, and of absorbing European culture, as well as opening new spiritual and intellectual horizons. Through the era of Viking wars, and the tenth-century reconstruction of political and economic life, the minsters gradually lost their wealth, their independence, and their role as sites of high culture, but grew in stature as foci of local society and eventually towns. After 950, with the increasing prominence of manors, manor-houses, and village communities, a new and much larger category of small churches were founded, endowed, and rebuilt: the parish churches of the emergent eleventh- and twelfth-century local parochial system. In this innovative study, John Blair brings together written, topographical, and archaeological evidence to build a multi-dimensional picture of what local churches and local communities meant to each other in early England.

Thinking through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Abstract: Thinking Through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective By Carl Knappett (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005 Pp ix + 202, preface, maps, photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index $4995 cloth) "Material culture"-the phrase, not the thing to which it refers-has recently generated a considerable buzz in art history, where it identifies the ground against which the varied figures of aesthetically charged objects may be arrayed and compared Building upon well-established morphologies, anthropologists who produce ethnographies of contemporary cultures continue to find "material culture" a useful term And folklorists who embrace the concept of "folklife" have for some time applied the phrase to segment the range of cultural expressions found in any community, designating some as spoken, some as sung, some as gestural, some as material A course that Don Yoder taught at the University of Pennsylvania for many years was titled "Material Aspects of American Folk Culture" There was (and is) both precision and balance in the phrase: a whole thing-even so very large and complex a thing as American folk culture-could be dissected and clarified by aligning one of its apparent characteristics with its ontological equivalent Finding friends among cultural geographers, linguists, and genealogists, to name just a few, Yoder, Warren Roberts, and other American folklorists who first championed folklife studies used "material culture" to suggest the vast reaches of tradition to be found within and beyond it A half-generation later, Henry Glassie's groundbreaking Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (1968) organized what had come before and charted a course for what would come next Classic's early work was pointedly not about material culture; the first word in his book's title identified its true subject Pattern's investigation of material folk culture was almost wholly concerned with pinning down the "folk" in material folk culture, not the "material" This was (and is) certainly consistent with the arguments that preoccupied folklorists in the twentieth century In the scramble to establish folklife studies, history seems a solid thing-too solid, perhaps, but understood if not assumed Popular historians, Daniel Boorstin, for example, who write about folklore may seem a bit off m their identification of materials, in locating where the action is (1973) But archeologists have seemed to understand folklore, to choose examples that play to both historical and social scientific sensibilities …

Traditional Oral Epic: The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Serbo-Croatian Return Song

Abstract: John Miles Foley offers an innovative and straightforward approach to the structural analysis of oral and oral-derived traditional texts. Professor Foley argues that to give the vast and complex body of oral \"literature\" its due, we must first come to terms with the endemic heterogeneity of traditional oral epics, with their individual histories, genres, and documents, as well as both the synchronic and diachronic aspects of their poetics. Until now, the emphasis in studies of oral traditional works has been placed on addressing the correspondences among traditions--shared structures of \"formula,\" \"theme,\" and \"story-pattern.\" Traditional Oral Epic explores the incongruencies among traditions and focuses on the qualities specific to certain oral and oral-derived works. It is certain to inspire further research in this field.

Ancient landscapes and the dead: the reuse of prehistoric and Roman monuments as early anglo-saxon burial sites: the reuse of prehistoric and Roman monuments as early anglo-saxon burial sites

Abstract: THE MANY HUNDREDS of known early medieval cemeteries dated between the late 5th and early 8th centuries A.D. from southern and eastern England have largely been studied in terms of artefacts and human remains. The reuse of prehistoric and Roman structures by these burial sites has received much less attention and discussion. It is suggested that the landscape context of early Anglo-Saxon burial rites provides considerable evidence for the social and ideological significance of the dead in early Anglo-Saxon society.