Medieval assumptions about the nature of the representation involved in literary and historical narratives were widely different from our own. Writers and readers worked with a complex understanding of the relations between truth and convention, in which accounts of presumed fact could be expanded, embellished, or translated in a variety of accepted ways.
This volume brings together contemporary popular entertainment, current political subjects, and medieval history and culture to investigate the intersecting and often tangled relations between politics, aesthetics, reality and fiction, in relation to issues of morality, identity, social values, power, and justice, both in the past and the present.
First full-length study of the use and perception of deceit in medieval warfare. Deception and trickery are a universal feature of warfare, from the Trojan horse to the inflatable tanks of the Second World War. The wars of the Central Middle Ages (c. 1000-1320) were no exception. This book looks at the various tricks reported in medieval chronicles, from the Normans feigning flight at the battle of Hastings (1066) to draw the English off Senlac Hill, to the Turks who infiltrated the Frankish camp at the Field of Blood (1119) disguised as bird sellers, to the Scottish camp followers descending on the field of Bannockburn (1314) waving laundry as banners to mimic a division of soldiers. This study also considers what contemporary society thought about deception on the battlefield: was it a legitimate way to fight? Was cunning considered an admirable quality in a warrior? Were the culturally and religious "other" thought to be more deceitful in war than Western Europeans? Through a detailed analysis of vocabulary and narrative devices, this book reveals a society with a profound moral ambivalence towards military deception, in which authors were able to celebrate a warrior's cunning while simultaneously condemning their enemies for similar acts of deceit. It also includes an appendix cataloguing over four hundred incidents of military deception as recorded in contemporary chronicle narratives.
The dynamics of medieval societies in England and beyond form the focus of these essays on the Anglo-Norman world. Over the last fifty years Ann Williams has transformed our understanding of Anglo-Saxon and Norman society in her studies of personalities and elites. In this collection, leading scholars in the field revisit themes that have beencentral to her work, and open up new insights into the workings of the multi-cultural communities of the realm of England in the early Middle Ages. There are detailed discussions of local and regional elites and the interplay between them that fashioned the distinctive institutions of local government in the pre-Conquest period; radical new readings of key events such as the crisis of 1051 and a reassessment of the Bayeux Tapestry as the beginnings of theHistoria Anglorum; studies of the impact of the Norman Conquest and the survival of the English; and explorations of the social, political, and administrative cultures in post-Conquest England and Normandy. The individualessays are united overall by the articulation of the local, regional, and national identities that that shaped the societies of the period. Contributors: S.D. Church, William Aird, Lucy Marten, Hirokazu Tsurushima, Valentine Fallan, Judith Everard, Vanessa King, Pamela Taylor, Charles Insley, Simon Keynes, Sally Harvey, K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, David Bates, Emma Mason, David Roffe, Mark Hagger.
This collection of essays focuses attention on how medieval gender intersects with other categories of difference, particularly religion and ethnicity. It treats the period c.800-1500, with a particular focus on the era of the Gregorian reform movement, the First Crusade, and its linked attacks on Jews at home.
King Arthur is arguably the most recognizable literary hero of the European Middle Ages. His stories survive in many genres and many languages, but while scholars and enthusiasts alike know something of his roots in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin History of the Kings of Britain, most are unaware that there was a Latin Arthurian tradition which extended beyond Geoffrey. This collection of essays will highlight different aspects of that tradition, allowing readers to see the well-known and the obscure as part of a larger, often coherent whole. These Latin-literate scholars were as interested as their vernacular counterparts in the origins and stories of Britain's greatest heroes, and they made their own significant contributions to his myth.
After the success of the first international conference on the medieval chronicle, it was decided that another would be in place. It was held in the summer of 1999, and again drew some 150 participants. There are several reasons why the chronicle is particularly suited as the topic of an international conference. In the first place there is its ubiquity: all over Europe and throughout the Middle Ages chronicles were written, both in Latin and in the vernacular, and not only in Europe but also in the countries neighbouring on it, like those of the Arabic world. Secondly, all chronicles raise such questions as by whom, for whom, or for what purpose were they written, how do they reconstruct the past, what determined the choice of verse or prose, or what kind of literary influences are discernable in them. Finally, many chronicles have been beautifully illuminated, and the relation between text and image leads to a wholly different set of questions. Like its predecessor this volume of conference papers aims to provide a representative survey of the on-going research in the field of chronicle studies, illustrated by examples from specific chronicles from a wide variety of countries, periods and cultural backgrounds. They are introduced by the opening address by David Dumville, on the question What is a chronicle?
This volume is an attempt to discuss the ways in which themes of authority and gender can be traced in the writing of chronicles and chronicle-like writings from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance. With major contributions by fourteen authors, each of them specialists in the field, this study spans full across the compass of medieval and early modern Europe, from England and Scandinavia, to Byzantium and the Crusader Kingdoms; embraces a variety of media and methods; and touches evidence from diverse branches of learning such as language and literature, history and art, to name just a few. This is an important collection which will be of the highest utility for students and scholars of language, literature, and history for many years to come.
