Anglo-Norman literature and culture

This is not just a book about a battle; it is a book about the biggest battle before Hastings 1066.
This is a battle most people have probably never heard of, but it is a battle where five Scottish and Viking kings and seven earls died, somewhere in the kingdom of Northumbria in late 937. As well as royalty, the bones of tens of thousands of ordinary men from Northern England, Scotland and the Viking territories lie buried in a place which, according to the chroniclers, is no longer known.
This book is about that battle and the search to find the long-lost site. Thousands of pages have been written about the Battle of Brunnenburh, but this book is unique. It is written by descendants of a legendary Viking Egill Skallagrimsson. Thousands of pages have been written about Brunnenburh but all of them are written from the perspective of the victor, King Athelstan of Wessex and Mercia. This book is the closest anyone is likely to get to a Northern Viking account.
Even if you have no real interest in the site of the Battle of Brunnenburh this is worth the effort you will put into it this book to understand it. Take a deep dive into the world and beliefs and times of the competing factions in 10 th century England and beyond, and the battle that first unified the United Kingdom.

The twenty-five poems and eleven metrical charms in this Old English volume offer tantalizing insights into the mental landscape of the Anglo-Saxons. The Wanderer and The Seafarer famously combine philosophical consolation with introspection to achieve a spiritual understanding of life as a journey. The Wife’s Lament, The Husband’s Message, and Wulf and Eadwacer direct a subjective lyrical intensity on the perennial themes of love, separation, and the passion for vengeance. From suffering comes wisdom, and these poems find meaning in the loss of fortune and reputation, exile, and alienation. “Woe is wondrously clinging; clouds glide,” reads a stoic, matter-of-fact observation in Maxims II on nature’s indifference to human suffering. Another form of wisdom emerges in the form of folk remedies, such as charms to treat stabbing pain, cysts, childbirth, and nightmares of witch-riding caused by a dwarf. The enigmatic dialogues of Solomon and Saturn combine scholarly erudition and proverbial wisdom. Learning of all kinds is celebrated, including the meaning of individual runes in The Rune Poem and the catalog of legendary heroes in Widsith.

This book is a welcome complement to the previously published DOML volume Old English Shorter Poems, Volume I: Religious and Didactic.

This paper discusses the depiction of ambushes in chronicles of the High Middle Ages. Identifying ambushes in this period is particularly difficult, as the Latin term 'insidia' could also be used more generically to refer to stratagems, snares and cunning ploys. This paper combines evidence from contemporary chronicles, Patristic and medieval theological writing and Anglo-Norman epic verse to examine the variety of situations in which ambushes were used by medieval combatants and the different lessons that historians drew from tales of warriors ambushed (or ambushing) unawares.

The great misconception of women within the Anglo-Saxon world begins with the failure of contemporary critics to perceive the world from the dark view of violence, alliances, politics, and the code by which the Anglo-Saxons lived by. The female roles within Beowulf are no exception to this misinterpretation. In modern view, women are often seen as voiceless, forced into peace-making marriages that were doomed from the beginning, and left to face the bloody consequences when the peace-pacts failed; this ideal has been grossly exaggerated, romanticized, and stretched to fit the modern critics own outlook. Therefore, the role of women must be looked at through the demanding Anglo-Saxon code of conduct, not a modern one. Females made integral contributions to the Anglo-Saxons and while their role differed from the ideal male's role, both the roles of men and women served to complement one another. Their role was not restricted to arranged marriages but was a vital political and social role that welded communities together. Most importantly, in their duty under the Anglo-Saxon code, its requirements for revenge for blood ties, both males and females were equal.

The idea of a Norman ethnic identity, of a Normannitas, has long been discussed by contemporary historiography. Nonetheless, this field of studies seems always to be caught up between two distinct types of discussion and theoretical basis: one more focused on Late Antiquity/Early Middle Ages and the other on the Late Middle Ages. Stressing connections between 10 th and 11 th century Normandy and the classical past, we propose applying the ethnogenesis concept and the extensive research it spawned on the construction of late antique ethnic identities to deepen our understanding on the forging of an early Norman identity. Acknowledging the extensive discussion over Scandinavian influence or Frankish continuity in the formation and development of the Norman duchy, we propose a different approach to Dudo of Saint-Quentin's Gesta Normannorum, viewing the text more in connection with a late-antique tradition of historical writing on 'barbaric' gentes. Seeing the work through that lens, this paper utilizes recent research by Lesley Abrams, Mark Hagger and Fraser McNair on 10 th century Normandy and attempts to understand how the construction of a gens normannorum identity could have been instrumental to the Norman dukes in their seeking to establish authority over a diverse group of elites, arguing that they did so through an idea of Normanness completely centered on and emanating from the ruling Rollonid lineage.

Now that a fair amount of Anglo-Norman medical literature has been edited (most of it by the Oxford scholar, Tony Hunt), it is possible to give some assessment of the genesis of this unusually early corpus of vernacular medical writing. Like the Anglo-Saxon medical corpus before it, the Anglo-Norman corpus makes a fundamentally Mediterranean system of medicine accessible to readers (and auditors) in the north. In fact, England was one of the biggest markets for southern Italian medicine in the 12th and 13th centuries: of all the Latin medical works circulating in this period, whether new compositions and translations or old classics, England had copies of well over half. Therefore, it becomes of interest to see which of those many works were chosen for translation into the vernacular. Although works of basic therapeutic utility like Roger of Frugardi’s *Chirurgia* and Johannes Platearius’s *Practica brevis* are known in unique copies, the field most represented in Anglo-Norman medical literature is women’s medicine: gynecology and cosmetics. The gynecological texts are all translations of some form or another of the so-called *Trotula* text, which came out of 12th-century Salerno, specifically the *Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum* (Book on Women’s Conditions). Likewise, the two known cosmetics works have clear signs of derivation from southern Italian practices. I hypothesize that these works may have been commissioned by women, who knew of the medical lore coming out of southern Italy through a variety of Norman contacts. Just how new works in “the French of England” interacted with older Anglo-Saxon terminology is an issue still in need of investigation.

The authorship of the Life of the twelfth-century English holy woman, Christina of Markyate (c. 1096–after 1155), has inspired considerable scholarly speculation. Though the writer never once positively identifies himself in extant versions of the text, oblique references locate his activity at the Benedictine monastery of St Albans in Hertfordshire during the 1130s under the patronage of the reigning abbot, Geoffrey de Gorron (1119–46), and intimate the close connections he enjoyed with his narrative’s subjects. Building off of these references, and incorporating clues from related sources from St Albans and Markyate, this article reconstructs the likeliest candidate for the writer—Robert de Gorron (d. 1166), Geoffrey’s nephew, appointed sacristan and later abbatial successor—and assesses his eligibility.

Showcased here is the introduction to the article. For the complete article, follow the link provided.

The conquest of England by the Normans in the year 1066 has been described by the renowned English historian, Frederic William Maitland, as being a catastrophe which determined the entire future of English law. This traditional view of legal history has regarded the primary source of modem English law as being of Anglo-Norman origin and has often overlooked the valuable contributions made to it by the antecedent Anglo-Saxon customary law. The purpose of this article is to rectify this deficiency and to examine, in some detail, the operation of the Anglo-Saxon legal system.

"The Cambridge Songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia) are a collection of Goliardic medieval Latin poems found on ten leaves (ff. 432–41) of the Codex Cantabrigiensis (C, MS Gg. 5.35), now at the Cambridge University Library. The songs as they survive are copies made shortly before or after the Norman Conquest (1066). They may have been collected by an English scholar while travelling on the continent sometime after the last datable song (1039), and brought back with him to the church of Saint Augustine at Canterbury, where they were copied and where the Codex was long kept. The original manuscript was possibly lost in a fire that struck Saint Augustine's in 1168. The dialect of the few vernacular portions found in some of the songs is in the North Rheno-Franconian dialect of Old High German, suggesting that the Goliard(s) who composed them came from the north or middle Rhineland, probably the area between Trier, Cologne, and Xanten. It has been suggested that some of the songs originated in France or Italy. While most of the Cambridge Songs survive only in the Cambridge manuscript, a few are duplicated in a manuscript, W, from Wolfenbüttel.

The Cambridge Songs were long thought to be forty-nine in number, but a missing folio that contained twenty-seven more was discovered in Frankfurt and returned to the University Library in 1982. All these songs were copied in the same hand. Seven songs in a different hand, but occurring in the same Codex (after the first forty-nine) have since been identified as probably part of the collection. The total number of Cambridge Songs is now considered to be eighty-three. Some of the verses are neumed and it is assumed that the entire collection was to be sung. Four of the original forty-nine are called modi (melodies, namely sequences). The purpose of the collection has also eluded scholars. It was probably either a book of instruction on Latin verse, a songbook for wandering minstrels (or the clerici vagabundi, vagabond clerics), or an anthology for private enjoyment.
--Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Songs"

The medieval period is a long period and it is divided into three lesser periods which are the Anglo-Saxon period, the Anglo-Norman period, and the Middle English period. In the following, these periods will be commented on with a focus on historical, cultural, political, economic, and social changes. The literature of each period will be discussed and important authors, their works, dominant genres, and examples will be given.

There has long been a debate among medieval scholars over the precise definition of knighthood and how the Latin term 'miles,' often translated as “knight,” relates to the knight’s identity in the Middle Ages prior to the reign of King Henry II of England (1154-1189). This project offers a systematic analysis of the term 'miles' in the twelfth-century text, the 'Historia Ecclesiastica,' by Orderic Vitalis. I examine the ways in which the historian refers to 'milites,' including their varying socio-economic backgrounds, their involvement in the military households of socially prominent men, and their military equipment, among other issues. This paper argues that Orderic’s usage of the term 'miles' indicates that he believed the 'milites' were professional soldiers and that “knight” is an inappropriate translation of the term 'miles.'

An introduction to Middle English Literature, including: discussion of the historical context from Anglo-Norman period to the 14th Century, the development of the Middle English language, the medieval synthesis of Judeo-Christian faith and classical philosophy, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, and an analysis of Geoffrey Chaucer's "Truth" as representative of the medieval worldview.

Introduction to Andrew Dalby's English translation of the Treatise (Le Tretiz) by Walter of Bibbesworth. The Treatise, a language-learning text in Anglo-Norman and Middle English, was written around 1235 for Dionisie de Munchensi and her children. The translation and commentary, with facing Anglo-Norman text, is available from Prospect Books

As the first cultural history of the sea in medieval English literature, this book traces premodern myths of insularity from their Old English beginnings to Shakespeare's Tempest. Beginning with a discussion of biblical, classical and pre-Conquest treatments of the sea, it investigates how such works as the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St Brendan, the Tristan romances, the chronicles of Matthew Paris, King Horn, Patience, The Book of Margery Kempe and The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye shape insular ideologies of Englishness. Whether it is Britain's privileged place in the geography of salvation or the political fiction of the idyllic island fortress, medieval English writers' myths of the sea betray their anxieties about their own insular identity; their texts call on maritime motifs to define England geographically and culturally against the presence of the sea. New insights from a range of fields, including jurisprudence, theology, the history of cartography and anthropology, are used to provide fresh readings of a wide range of both insular and continental writings.

Details: http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=11797

This paper examines the accounts that describe the death and burial of three successive kings: William the Conqueror, William Rufus, and Henry I. The manner in which the monarch died, and the later treatment of his corpse, provided the opportunity for authors to critique the deceased's reign and present their assessment of his legacy. The conflicting accounts show how authorial biases owing to theological affiliations shaped the expressed view, affecting which details were recorded and which were omitted, and how biblical, historical, and literary allusions were employed to shape historical events into a religious exemplum.

In and around the 870s, Britain was transformed dramatically by the campaigns and settlements of the Great Army and its allies. Some pre-existing political communities suffered less than others, and in hindsight the process helped Scotland and England achieve their later positions. By the twelfth century, the rulers of these countries had partitioned the former kingdom of Northumbria.

This thesis is about what happened in the intervening period, the fate of Northumbria’s political structures, and how the settlement that defined Britain for the remainder of the Middle Ages came about. Modern reconstructions of the era have tended to be limited in scope and based on unreliable post-1100 sources. The aim is to use contemporary material to overcome such limitations, and reach positive conclusions that will make more sense of the evidence and make the region easier to understand for a wider audience, particularly in regard to its shadowy polities and ecclesiastical structures.

After an overview of the most important evidence, two chapters will review Northumbria’s alleged dissolution, testing existing historiographic beliefs (based largely on Anglo-Norman-era evidence) about the fate of the monarchy, political community, and episcopate. The impact and nature of ‘Southenglish’ hegemony on the region’s political communities will be the focus of the fourth chapter, while the fifth will look at evidence for the expansion of Scottish political power. The sixth chapter will try to draw positive conclusions about the episcopate, leaving the final chapter to look in more detail at the institutions that produced the final settlement..

Local and imperial, insular and expansive, both English yet British: geographically and culturally, the sea continues to shape changing models of Englishness. This volume traces the many literary origins of insular identity from local communities to the entire archipelago, laying open the continuities and disruptions in the sea's relationship with English identity in a British context. Ranging from the beginnings of insular literature to Victorian medievalisms, the subjects treated include King Arthur's struggle with muddy banks, the afterlife of Edgar's forged charters, Old English homilies and narratives of migration, Welsh and English ideas about Chester, Anglo-Norman views of the sea in the Vie de St Edmund and Waldef, post-Conquest cartography, The Book of Margery Kempe, the works of the Irish Stopford Brooke, and the making of an Anglo-British identity in Victorian Britain.

Details: http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=13713

The article examines the War in Heaven scene depicting the Fall of the Rebel Angels in the 1200s Anglo-Norman group of illustrated Apocalypse manuscripts, key in the development of Apocalypse illustration as far as quality, quantity, and art historical heritage are concerned. The iconography of the crucial War in Heaven scene shows a variety in the manuscript group; the compositions, divided into three well-defined groups at Satan’s pivotal moment of defeat, are depicted in three principal compositional types: one manuscript group focuses on the narrative of the battle, the second fuses the battle and its victorious result, and the third type focuses on the victory itself. The article establishes further subgroups on the basis of compositional similarities, and results occasionally strengthen or weaken existing theories about the traditional grouping of the manuscripts. The highlighted iconographical similarities provide new material for the reconsideration of the manuscripts’ artistic relations and dating.

A different history of the liturgical ministries that Benedictine women religious performed in central medieval England can be told, one that challenges previous scholarly accounts of these ministries that either locate them exclusively in the so-called “golden age” of double monasteries headed by abbesses in the seventh and eighth centuries, or read the monastic and ecclesiastical reforms of the tenth through twelfth centuries as rendering women completely dependent on the sacramental ministrations of male clerics. Study of the surviving documents of practice from communities of women religious in England that flourished during the central Middle Ages, especially liturgical manuscripts, reveals a different history: women religious continued to perform many of the ministerial acts cited in earlier Anglo-Saxon sources well into the twelfth century, even those acts that came to be defined strictly as sacraments. To demonstrate the persistence of such acts, this article focuses on one liturgical site: the practice of penance. It examines the prayers scripted both for female confessors and for female and male penitents found in prayerbooks and psalters produced from the ninth through the twelfth centuries. These texts suggest that, far from being pushed to the margins of their houses’ ministerial activities by resident or visiting clerics, women religious continued to exercise primary control of and agency in the confessional roles directing their communities. But only by reviewing their practice of penance through their own manuscripts can these women be fully restored to the ministries that they once performed.

Showcased here is the introduction to the article. For the complete article, follow the link provided.

Tra i monumenti letterari che attestano la fase più antica del fortuna-to mito medievale di Tristano e Isotta si colloca il breve testo anti-co-francese in octosyllabes della Folie Tristan, tramandato in due diverse redazioni risalenti al xii secolo: una più corta, detta di Berna (che qui si presenta), l'altra più lunga, detta di Oxford. Travestito da folle, Tristano torna alla corte di re Marco per rivedere l'amata Isotta. Da lei tenta di farsi riconoscere, rievocando con un discorso apparen-temente insensato gli episodi salienti della loro storia. La regina-dapprima diffidente-finirà per cedere, e dopo l'agnizione finale gli amanti riusciranno a ricongiungersi per un'ultima breve stagione. Ennesima maschera tristaniana, la simulazione della follia permette la messa in atto di un geniale dispositivo della "ricordanza", che restitui-sce nella miniatura di un breve poemetto le vicende più note degli amanti di Cornovaglia. Chiara Concina insegna Filologia romanza all'Università di Verona. Si occupa principalmente di lirica antico-francese, di scritture odeporiche e della ricezione francese, italiana e catalana di Boezio in età medievale.

The Fécamp Psalter is a Norman illuminated manuscript produced around the year 1180. It contains a portrait of its patron kneeling in prayer and turned towards the Beatus page. This person is to be identified with a high-ranking woman of the Angevin state. Her appearance and her position in the manuscript, together with certain related contemporary visual examples, permit us to hypothesize about her identity. The study of this artistic commission also helps us to understand better the processes of patronage that operated between individuals and monastic houses in twelfth-century Europe, and enriches our understanding of the concepts of female self-awareness and biblical pre-figuration in medieval art.

Edition and discussion of a short fragment of an Anglo-Norman translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia. It is one of a series of such translations, evidence for Geoffrey's popularity and the liveliness of the vernacular literary tradition in 12th-century England.

On the languages of medieval England and the implications of multilingualism. Published in Tim Machan)

    Chapter 7 - The linguistic repertoire of medieval England, 1100–1500      Edited by Tim William Machan, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
    Book: Imagining Medieval English (2016)

The Old French term "estoire", borrowed from the medieval Latin "historia", probably entered the French language in the late 12th century. The author analyzes the different meanings given to the term in literature. Despite the diversity of these meanings, there exists a constant semantic association of narration + truth: "estoire" always refers to a true testimony. A further analysis focuses on the close relationship between the three terms "estoire", "livre" and "geste".

Examines the formulation of chronology at Durham c. 1100, looking specifically at the integration of Northumbrian chronology with European/pan-English chronology and creation of Durham's origin narrative, Attention is drawn to a number of pieces of independent evidence that might suggest mistakes had been made in this process, and specifically that Cuthbert's body had been at Norham into the eleventh century rather than, as Symeon presented it, at Durham from 995 and Chester-le-Street for the earlier part of the 10th century.

Il manoscritto 450, conservato alla Parker Library del Corpus Christi College di Cambridge, offre alcuni elementi interessanti per lo studio della lirica anglo-normanna. In particolare, ci si riferirà alla sezione finale del codice, che presenta una sequenza di liriche in parte accomunate dall'utilizzo pervasivo delle cosiddette "rime tecniche" 1. Questi componimenti non hanno fino ad ora ricevuto molta attenzione dalla critica e, pertanto, ci si propone qui di ripor-tarli alla luce cercando di comprendere il contesto letterario in cui essi si sono sviluppati.