The Book of Kells: Its Function and Audience

by Carol A. Farr

Created between the seventh and ninth centuries AD, The Book of Kells is one of the great cultural icons of the medieval West. In the past, it has received a great deal of popular and scholarly attention, but only recently has its labyrinth of meaning and references begun to be explored. In The Book of Kells: Its Function and Audience, Carol Ann Farr builds on the work of liturgists, palaeographers, historians, and art historians to go beyond basic analysis to place The Book of Kells in the wider context of use and audience. Farr situates The Book of Kells as part of an evangelical tradition that used the physical appearance of the gospels as a tool of conversion. By examining the manuscript in its political, social, historical, and religious contexts, she provides a fresh perspective on this most famous of insular illuminated texts. In particular, Farr offers new and convincing readings of two of the most difficult images, the 'Temptation' and so-called 'Arrest'.

Genres: Academic, Art

252 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

Carol Ann Farr is an Independent scholar of medieval art history.

Since 1997 she has been an independent scholar based in London, England. She has published articles and a book on the Book of Kells, and other articles on Insular manuscripts and the female audience of Anglo-Saxon sculpture. With Michelle Brown, she co-edited Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Early Medieval Europe. Several projects occupy her time, the largest is a book on early Latin gospel manuscripts and their decoration. Her approach to art history emphasizes public and performative dimensions of early medieval art.

Her PhD dissertation at UT Austin (1989) was on the full-page intratextual pictures in the Book of Kells and their exegetical and liturgical contexts. Before marrying and leaving the US, Farr was Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.