Bibliography - Professor Stephen D. White
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The Beasts who Talk on the Bayeux Embroidery: The Fables Revisited, by S. D. White and edited by D. Bates, published 19 July 2012 in Anglo-Norman Studies XXXIV: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2011 (article, pp.209-236, Boydell Press, ISBN-13: 9781843837350)   View Online

Just as the central frieze of the Bayeux Embroidery depicts Harold dux Anglorum and his milites leaving a second-story banquet hall at Bosham, boarding ship and sailing out to sea, the lower border shows the first in an uninterrupted series of Aesopian fables, the last of which appears just as the English reach land and are captured by a lord called Guy (W 4-8). Previous writers on the embroidery are generally agreed that the series includes eight fables, referred to here as the ?canonical' eight to distinguish them from other fables also represented, but rarely if ever noticed. They can be summarized as follows. In Fox and Crow - which reappears first in the lower border, after Harold meets with William, duke of the Normans (W 18), and then in the upper one, as he returns to England (W 27-8) - the crow found a piece of cheese, but the fox tricked him into dropping it and ate it himself. The wolf in Wolf and Lamb met the lamb drinking from a stream and made false charges against him, which the lamb rebutted. But the wolf ate him anyway. Bitch and Puppies - which the lower border shows again, shortly before the battle of Hastings (W 59-60) - tells how one bitch loaned her lair to another who was pregnant and later allowed her to keep it until her puppies were older.

Is the Bayeux embroidery a record of events ?, by Stephen D. White, published 2014 in The Bayeux Tapestry and its contexts (article, pp.33-58)

The Bayeux Tapestry and Its Contexts: A Reassessment, by Elizabeth Carson Pastan, Stephen D. White and Kate Gilbert, published 18 November 2014 (xxvi + 415 pp. 32 pp. of plates, Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, ISBN-10: 1843839415 & ISBN-13: 9781843839415) accessible at: British Library

Aspects of the Bayeux Tapestry (in fact an embroidered hanging) have always remained mysterious, despite much scholarly investigation, not least its design and patron. Here, in the first full-length interdisciplinary approach to the subject, the authors (an art historian and a historian) consider these and other issues. Rejecting the prevalent view that it was commissioned by Odo, the bishop of Bayeux and half-brother of William the Conqueror, or by some other comparable patron, they bring new evidence to bear on the question of its relationship to the abbey of St Augustine's, Canterbury. From the study of art-historical, archeological, literary, historical and documentary materials, they conclude that the monks of St Augustine's designed the hanging for display in their abbey church to tell their own story of how England was invaded and conquered in 1066. Elizabeth Carson Pastan is a Professor of Art History at Emory University; Stephen D. White is Asa G. Candler Professor of Medieval History (emeritus), Emory University, and an Honorary Professor of Mediaeval History at the University of St Andrews.