You students of Latin might be familiar with the Bayeux Tapestry, a beautiful work of eleventh century art that illustrates the Battle of Hastings (1066 AD) with annotations in a fairly easy to understand Latin. It is huge - 20 inches wide and 230 feet (!) long.
A frame by frame look at the tapestry can be found here. And if you'd like to read the Latin and English texts, they can be found here.
Thanks to computer technology and YouTube, the Bayeux Tapestry comes to life in the form of a movie:
Now, how cool is that?
Fr. Hollywood:
ReplyDeleteGreat find! Awesome to see what technology can do for an already lively piece of historical artwork. (Too bad the latest Beowulf rendition couldn't have remained truer to its epic source. Maybe this should be made into a full-length feature of some sort.) The soundtrack compilation of martial music from various movies was a good touch by the filmmaker.
Always interesting to see how kings/nobles were involved in battle. Much different than today. Perhaps a return to that should occur.
LTZ
A fascinating battle and a pivotal moment in the history of the English language! Harold the Unready was killed by an arrow to the eye, which you can just barely make out in the last few seconds of the movie. Great find!
ReplyDeleteLuke:
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen Beowulf, but heard a lot of the same disappointment. The comment about nobles being involved in battle reminds me of how Chinese airline officials are required to fly on their own company's planes. Sounds like a great idea to me!
Mike:
Yep. Linguistics and jistory are all fun and games until...
:-) or should that be .-( ?