Anglo-Norman literature and culture

This paper examines William of Malmesbury's  (c.1090—c.1142) detailed description of ancient Roman remains at Carlisle in northern England. This remarkable passage features in his 'Gesta pontificum Anglorum' (Book III ch. 99) and has been much commented upon by previous scholars as an instance of personal observation.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to indicate the pervasive influence of textual sources that mediated William’s description of these Roman ruins. Second, to demonstrate how William carefully projects his own 'romanitas' (Romanness) onto his description of these archaeological remains. Through close textual reading and literary analysis it is shown that this scene is not a straightforward example of antiquarianism based upon personal observation, but instead a complex passage of literary inclination which indicates the wider cultural associations of Rome and 'romanitas' within William of Malmesbury's historical writings.

Medieval languages existed in a state of constant contact and interaction with other languages. In this project, I argue that thirteenth- and fourteenth- century English trilingual manuscripts show the coalescing of distinctive approaches to the literary and pragmatic possibilities of multilingual clusters of texts. In particular, the construction of parallel-text translations becomes a catalyst for the generation of Early Middle English poetry. Through examination of three manuscripts linked to the vibrant West Midlands literary ecosystem (Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.14.39; William Herebert’s preaching notebook, British Library MS Additional 46919; and British Library MS Harley 913, the “Kildare manuscript”), I demonstrate how the production of paired translations fueled the development of English religious verse.
Interpreting medieval texts’ manuscript contexts is essential to understanding their meaning. This is especially true of paired translations, where the capacity of each language to reflect and comment on the other(s) is embedded in their material form. Whether a translation is inserted between the lines of its source text, interwoven with it in alternating stanzas, or copied in an adjacent column, these visual frameworks place the parallel texts and the registers associated with each of the languages in conversation with themselves.

This is a complete copy of my doctoral dissertation, completed in 1995 and defended in 1996, and supervised by Jonathan J. G. Alexander. Thanks to all of you who have expressed an interest in it. Since 1996 it  has been available via UMI and ProQuest. If you do use information from it, please do acknowledge it. You may also wish to consult my articles on Egerton 2781, the Neville of Hornby Hours (1997/98, 1999), and my 2003 book, 'Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England,' which include additional interpretations of and information about Egerton 2781 and other manuscripts.

Studies of Irish surnames and by-names have been based on the assumption that the language used in creating the surname represented the ethnic background of those who used it. This examination of records from 13th and 14th C Limerick makes it clear that the same individual could have his surname recorded in a variety of different languages and that suranme analysis is therefore no guide to original ethnic identity.

Consider the difference between text and speech. Of these, only text occupies material space. Text expresses as a durable manifestation of language and speech and must exist in a physical form. Speech may be transformed into text through transcription, but it exists in the now, mostly phonologically, and is transient. It is impossible for contemporaries to experience the speech of history. Historical speech can be grounded in text through transcription, and potentially performed by contemporaries; however, such a performance is the creation of contemporary speech and, at best, only an emulation of historical speech. Such an emulation would result in the creation of contemporary speech grounded in contemporary culture.

The material nature of text allows for the analysis of the interactions between narratives within the text and their relationship to culture through an approximation of speech. As artifacts of material culture provide insights into Antiquity, artifacts found in texts have a similar utility. By means of their narratives, stories, and discourses, they provide insights into the expression of social and cultural constructs. These textual artifacts can illuminate constructs of human relations such as power relations.

Reaching back into the early definitions of anti-Semitic tropes and attempting to unearth expressions of power relations that function within the narrative provides insight into the enduring and recurring nature of this discourse. Is the resurgence of an anti-Semitic discourse the product of its relationship between other narratives to which it has been bound through a binary opposition expressed in power relations? This analysis posits--yes. It is power relations that root narratives within the social body.

The Legend of Theophilus of Adana is a story important to the development of two prominent narratives in Western Culture: 1) the intercessory salvation, and 2) the intercessory damnation. The expression of these two narratives in binary opposition fuses them into a single anti-Semitic discourse. The comparison of three versions of The Legend of Theophilus of Adana and their narratives across time and language tests the idea that this recurring anti-Semitic discourse is expressed by power relations fusing narratives through binary opposition.

La Terre des Sarazins (LTS), a little-known memento of the Fifth Crusade, is identified as a letter to Pope Innocent III by an unnamed patriarch of Jerusalem. The report describes the Ayyubid hierarchy, including also a portrayal of the Holy Land and a geography of Egypt. An amalgam of several genres, LTS offers an engaging and colorful account of the extended family of Saladin and the topography of Muslim lands.
Four versions of LTS in Anglo-Norman survive in eight known manuscripts. The formation of the amplified version occupied several generations; it is tentatively concluded that it dates from the 1330s. The present contribution sheds new light upon LTS by publishing, for the first time, a critical edition and modern English translation of the amplified version.
A broad swath of our text reads like a travel narrative or guide for pilgrims. After surveying the domains of Saphadin and his sons, the geographical program of the amplified version begins in Egypt with brief profiles of its chief cities. The focus then shifts to Palestine and its places, particularly as these are related to biblical people and events, followed by entries on Galilee, Arabia, Idumaea, Phoenicia, and Syria. The biblically significant places of Jerusalem are described in detail, with emphasis on the life of Christ, especially the events of Holy Week and its aftermath. After excursions to Samaria and Judaea, the narrative concludes with concise descriptions of the miracle-working image at Saydnaya and of the Assassins.

This paper was published in 2011 as part of a Festschrift for the British scholar, Henrietta Leyser. It surveys the corpus of Latin, Anglo-Norman, and early Middle English texts on women's medicine in England up through the 14th century.

Feel free to contact me via email to request a copy of the paper: monica.h.green@gmail.com.

The text edited here is an Anglo-Norman version of the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem, or Lettre d’Alexandre sur les merveilles de l’Inde. The Lettre is a fictional epistle attributed to Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), when campaigning in India, writing to his mentor, the philosopher Aristotle, who has remained in Greece near the conqueror’s sisters and mother. The Lettre is presented as one of several missives that ‘Alexander’ sent to Aristotle and family members.

This document is a transcription of the folio 5 of the Holkham Bible, an illustrated collection of biblical and apocryphal stories in Norman French.
Specific anglo-norman words are linked to their Anglo-Norman Dictionary entries, and a translation in intermediate French is provided.
In appendix, a description of the page by Pearl Finkelstein Braude, extracted from "Cokkel in oure Clene Corn": Some Implications of Cain's Sacrifice.

This article examines the Life of a twelfth-century English holy woman, Christina of Markyate – particularly its account of a vision that she had in which she was crowned in the likeness of a bishop’s miter – within the context of campaigns undertaken by English monasteries in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries to obtain the papal privilege of full exemption from the sacramental and juridical control of their diocesan bishop. Reading Christina’s vision in view of the bids for independence made by St. Albans – the community responsible for commissioning and writing her Life – especially helps to shed light on why the Life seems to figure her in a distinctly episcopal cast. Significantly, the Life’s account of this vision may have been shaped by a miniature cycle of the passion and miracles of St. Edmund, produced by Bury c. 1125, seemingly in an effort to provide further confirmation of the abbey’s exempt status. In a miniature depicting Edmund’s apotheosis, the saint divinely receives a miter-like crown, which is nearly identical in its ornamentation to the one that Christina would later receive. Ultimately under investigation in this article is whether St. Albans’ campaign for exemption was one of the influences dictating the composition of Christina’s Life.

Present research has been carried out within the framework of comparative historical linguistics an semantic reconstruction. 
Germanic trade vocabulary found in Gothic and Anglo-Saxon translations of the Bible is regarded as the object for the study. The choice of the languages is determined by the fact that both these archaic languages belong to Eastern and Western branches of the Germanic language family, which provides more specific data on proto-words referring to the Germanic language family period.
The subject of the study — restored meanings of Proto-Germanic words serving as reflexes for the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon trade vocabulary.
The present study has been triggered by the following hypotheis: the semantic foundation of the Germanic trade vocabulary sprouts from sacral practices of the  community.
The purpose of the study is to restore initial meanings of Proto-Germanic words related to the trade vocabulary presented in the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon biblical texts.

Il presente volume, partendo dal racconto delle origini storiche dei Normanni e degli Anglosassoni, ripercorre le varie tappe che portarono alla battaglia di Hastings del 14 ottobre 1066 e alla storica vittoria di Guglielmo, potente Duca di Normandia che passò dal ruolo di “bastardo” a quello di “Conquistatore”. Il racconto di quegli eventi si accompagna a una dettagliata analisi tecnica  (e storicoartistica) del celebre Arazzo di Bayeux, soffermandosi in ultimo sugli importanti elementi di novità portati da Guglielmo una volta asceso al trono d’Inghilterra.

In this text is researched the relation between the Brunanburh poem that appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles under the year 937 and Völuspá the Icelandic poem of the Prophecy. The Brunanburh poem describes the Battle of Brunanburh between an English army and their allies and a combined army of Scots, Vikings and Britons. The poem celebrates the English victory. The poem is known for traditional elements and its authenticity. Völuspá  is the first and best known poem of the Poetic Edda. The poem tells the story of the creation of a society and its coming end. The poem is preserved whole in the Codex Regius and Hauksbók manuscripts while parts of it are quoted in the Prose Edda. The first mention of the poem is in the year 960 but the poem is assumed to be an older and is most likely older poem than the Brunanburh poem and most likely it is from the years between 880 to 890  when people are moving to Iceland searching for freedom from Royalty and Christianity.

[Now available through open access from Speculum: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1017/S0038713415002316]

Among those witnesses of John Gower's works that are known to have been produced during his lifetime, the Trentham manuscript (London, British Library, Additional MS 59495) stands out for its remarkable design as a seemingly planned trilingual collection. The manuscript, usually dated to the first year of Henry IV's reign, exclusively contains Gower's poetry—showcasing his virtuosity in English, French, and Latin. A number of its poems are either addressed to or invoke Henry, yet nothing is known about the history of this manuscript before the seventeenth century. As a result, scholarship on the Trentham manuscript (henceforth Trentham) tends to foreground the question whether this compilation was ever presented to Henry. I will adduce fresh evidence to establish the early provenance of Trentham and show that the manuscript remained in Southwark until the middle of the sixteenth century. Second, I will offer a new context for the composition of Trentham by reading the collection against the background of Anglo-French relations during the first months of Henry's rule. Finally, I will argue for Gower's personal involvement in and continued ownership of this manuscript.

Sebastian Sobecki (2015). Ecce patet tensus: The Trentham Manuscript, In Praise of Peace, and John Gower's Autograph Hand. Speculum, 90, pp 925-959. doi: 10.1017/S0038713415002316.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0038713415002316

Ely, Cambridgeshire, is known to tourists as an incredible city steeped in myth and legend and dominated by the Norman Cathedral, a masterpiece of medieval architecture. There have been many popular books written about the Isle, but in 'Ely: A Hidden History' the approach is to look at the longue duree of life on the isle focusing on continuity and change in cultural practices.  The work combines the latest archaeological discoveries to tell the story of the settlement of the Isle from its earliest beginnings through to the seventeenth century. With vivid illustrations, the authors trace the origins of life in Ely, and bring the most recent archaeological excavations alive.

Topics covered include: the geological origins of the Isle of Ely, the first prehistoric settlement, including important archaeological sites at Haddenham, Wilburton and Barway. The foundation of the monastic centre by St Etheldreda, and the archaeological evidence for the Anglo Saxon foundations of the city, together with current thoughts on the site of St Etheldreda's first settlement. The story of Hereward the Wake, and his resistance against the Norman invaders. The Norman foundation of the cathedral and castle.

Key features of the book are discussion and synthesis of the latest research on the nationally important later Bronze Age hoard from Wilburton, and the Iron Age bog body from Soham, which highlight the importance of the Isle of Ely to British archaeology. The findings from Channel 4’s Time Team excavation of the medieval Broad Street are included, with illustrations, as are the stories of Hereward the Wake. Richly illustrated and extensively researched, this is a fascinating look at the early history of an amazing city.

In this article I will consider the influence of female readers of Virgil‟s Aeneid on two medieval
adaptations of Virgil‟s text, namely, the C11th Latin Encomium Emmae Reginae, and the C12th Old
French Roman d’Enéas. In these two texts female readership of Virgil is manifested in two ways;
the Roman is tailored to a female audience and the Encomium is tailored for a female patron.

The Gesta Stephani chronicles the turbulent reign of King Stephen (1135-1154), the last of the Norman kings. Although it is anonymously written and an incomplete manuscript, it provides important insight into the chaos and turmoil that led England to become ‘a home of perversity, a haunt of strife, a training-ground of disorder, and a teacher of every kind of rebellion.’

The primary goal of this paper is to pinpoint and examine Anglo-Norman female stereotypes and gender constructions through a close reading of the text, using the Gesta Stephani as a case study. The Gesta is split into two books and I will examine the women in each independently, and then conclude with general thoughts and impressions on the text as a whole.

In the writings of Norman and Anglo-Norman authors of the twelfth century, the pre-Conquest English aristocracy are often depicted as boisterous drunkards, and their table manners are pictured as unfit for a civilized people. On the other hand, the study of late Anglo-Saxon sociability practices shows that nobles’ table manners were more similar than not on both sides of the Channel. This article argues that Anglo Norman clerical authors, moralists first and foremost, built such an image of the pre-Conquest English in order to stigmatise the vices of their own times: first those of the common people, who still practiced cries and gestures most certainly rooted in ancient drinking customs, and those of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, whose manners they found unacceptable. A good way of condemning those manners was thus to attribute them to “the English”, that is to a former ruling class that had been displaced and scorned by the ancestors of those very aristocrats they were trying to reform.

On the meaning of the Pantokrator in the apse of the Cathedral of Cefalù, where the King (Roger II) had his seat below the Pantokrator. A similar situation is found in San Marco in Venice where the Doge had his seat in the choir, opposite a wall with the representation of Christ Pantokrator.

Conférence de clôture de

« France-Angleterre 700-1200 : manuscrits médiévaux de la Bibliothèque nationale de France et de la British Library, un programme de la Fondation Polonsky ».

21-23 novembre 2018
Auditorium Colbert (2 rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris)

Organisation scientifique : Charlotte Denoël et Francesco Siri

Inscription gratuite mais obligatoire / Free but mandatory registration https://polonsky.sciencesconf.org/

Traduzione in italiano con testo latino a fronte della Topographia Hibernica di Giraldo Cambrense, completato da note storiche e introduzione (pp. 7-48).

Original text in Latin with parallel Italian translation; introduction (pp. 7-48) and critical matter in Italian.

Deuxième Congrès de l'Association pour les Études nordiques, 14-16 juin 2017 - Université de Caen Normandie

Résumé : Les sagas islandaises du XIIIe siècle rapportent un témoignage surprenant au sujet de Mathilde, l’épouse du duc de Normandie Guillaume le Bâtard. Juste avant la traversée de la Manche par l’armée normande en 1066, la duchesse le supplie de ne pas partir combattre Harold Godwinson. Furieux, il lui donne un coup d’éperon qui la tue aussitôt. Cette histoire entre évidemment en contradiction avec nos connaissances de la vie de Mathilde qui meurt en réalité de causes naturelles en 1083. Nous proposons donc dans cette communication de réfléchir à l’origine et l’évolution de cette légende dans la littérature islandaise. Après avoir détaillé les textes nordiques la mentionnant, nous reviendrons vers les documents normands et anglo-normands ayant pu constituer des source directes ou indirectes pour les auteurs islandais. Plus généralement, ce sujet invitera à s’interroger sur les transferts de matières littéraires entre les régions et l'écriture de l’histoire dans la Scandinavie médiévale.

The article views Marie within the frame of insular history in order to argue that in seeking to preserve the Celtic stories of the Lais, Marie was enacting a form of ‘salvage anthropology,’ the salvage of cultural materials under threat of colonial incursion and loss, while giving expression to anxieties over her own shifting cultural boundaries.

Muscio’s Gynecology was a work on women’s medicine written in North Africa probably some time in the fifth or sixth century.  Why it came to play such an important role in the development of gynecology and obstetrics in England is a function of many lines of development that the text underwent between the 11th and 15th centuries.  At the end of the Middle Ages, the text existed in many different forms in England:  full text, abbreviated text, text with images, images extracted from text.  Although there is no evidence that the text ever circulated in French, it was available in both Latin and English versions.  It was hardly a “static” text.  Instead, it was repeatedly manipulated to allow it to better serve the interests that both clerics and medical practitioners developed in women’s medicine and childbirth in the later Middle Ages. 

I argue specifically that the particular function of Muscio’s Gynecology and its derivative texts was that it provided obstetrical knowledge not otherwise available in the more widely circulating Trotula texts.  Although obstetrical information was also available in al-Zahrawi’s (Albucasis’s) Surgery and in Guy de Chauliac’s Surgery, in neither case were those sections extracted for special circulation. Rather, it was the Muscian texts that were turned to repeatedly for obstetrical instructions, in part, I argue, because the fetal images that sometimes accompanied the text gave the material a particular guarantee of importance.  Particularly, I argue that incorporation of obstetrics was important to practicing surgeons (likely male), who give increasing evidence of involvement in obstetrical interventions.

(Note that the PDF includes the first pages only.)

This essay explores how female characters in historical literature written in high to late medieval England shape land claims, political history, and genealogy through their acts of childbirth. Recent scholarship has shown how medieval writers frequently imagined virginal female bodies – religious and secular – in relation to land claim, but less work exists on how they also used the non-virginal bodies of mothers and vivid descriptions of childbirth to assert rights to land and lineage. This essay examines three birth stories associated with conquest or claims to contested lands from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum, and the anonymous ancestral romance Fouke le Fitz Waryn. In these principally high medieval texts, there is little of the squeamishness around parturition sometimes found in later French and Middle English romances. Rather, female characters give birth outdoors, underground, on contested borders, and accompanied by visions of conquest. The writers attribute the women with effort, activity, and political astuteness, as these political and figurative acts of childbirth shape the women’s relationships to land and those of their descendants.

In this text we want to show how the Viking merchant ship Knarr was displayed as a symbol of hope, freedom and independence as well as a transporter of the dead on their last trip to the other world. This can be seen in old Icelandic and English poems. We focus on three known poems that display knarr in that relation, that is the Brunanburh poem and  the Old Icelandic poem Völuspá and a poem in Egil’s saga. The Völuspá is thought of as the oldest and then the poem in Egil‘s saga as he allegedly made it when he was seven years old. The poems are older than the written text of the saga and are thought to be the work of Egill Skallagrímsson himself. The latest of these poems is the Brunanburh poem which is thought to have been composed in the year 937. All in all, these poems might well have been made within a timeframe of ca. 50 years apart.

In this text we want to focus attention to the possible sites for the Battle of Brunanburh by paying extra attention to the two primary sources known for the battle.
We focus on two known poems that describe the events in detail; that is the Brunanburh poem and the poems in Egil’s saga.
The Brunanburh poem is thought to be close to the primary source of the events and we refer to the Parker manuscript in Cambridge . The poems in the Egil’s saga are contemporary with the events as well, even though the saga was written in the 13th century, the poems are older and are thought to be the work of Egill Skallagrímsson himself. We also use other references that conform to elements in other known sources like the issue of silver in this time.