british and irish archaeological bibliography
Sex, self-censorship and the Anglo-Saxonist:: Baldwin Brown's 'sheela' at Great Hale
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3 - 6; pls; figs; refs
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Abstract:
Reports on the identification of a sheela-na-gig located behind the bell frame in the tower of the church of St John the Baptist. Although the piece was recorded in 1896 by Gerald Baldwin Brown, he had depicted it as if it were a classical male figure and it was thus overlooked in the recent survey of Early Medieval sculpture. This leads to a discussion of how Baldwin Brown, a normally accurate observer, seems to have fallen victim to his nineteenth-century sensibilities and been unable to accept the sexually explicit nature of the subject. The possibility is also considered that the sheela may have been part of the same pre-Conquest rood screen as the Virgin figure previously described: this is thought unlikely, however. Oetgen, Jeremy
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