Textiles and Textile Imagery in Early Medieval English Literature

Identifies and analyses a wide range of textile metaphors and imagery from peace-weaving in Beowulf to word-crafting in Elene . Textile metaphors, or metaphors involving the process and product of cloth-making, occur widely in literary traditions around the world. The same phenomenon holds true among the peoples of early medieval England. As close observers of a long and culturally significant textile tradition, pre-Conquest English writers drew upon their close familiarity with spinning and wea