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Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century

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Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century LITERARY APPROPRIATIONS OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS FROM THE THIRTEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY edited by DONALD SCRAGG AND CAROLE WEINBERG University of Manchester published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011±4211, USA http://www.cup.org 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia Ruiz de AlarcoÂn 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain # Cambridge University Press 2000 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2000 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in Garamond 11/13pt ce A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century / edited by Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg. p. cm. ± (Cambridge studies in Anglo-Saxon England: 29) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 63215 3 (hardback) 1. English literature±History and criticism. 2. Anglo-Saxons in literature. 3. English literature±Middle English, 1100±1500±History and criticism. 4. Great Britain±History±Anglo-Saxon period, 449±1066±Historiography. 5. Civilization, Anglo-Saxon, in literature. 6. Medievalism±Great Britain±History. I. Scragg, D. G. II. Weinberg, Carole. III. Series. pr151.A53L57 2000 820.9'358±dc21 99±34241 cip ISBN 0 521 63215 3 hardback Contents List of contributors page ix Acknowledgements xi List of abbreviations xii Introduction. The Anglo-Saxons: fact and ®ction 1 donald scragg 1 Victor and victim: a view of the Anglo-Saxon past in 22 LaZamon's Brut carole weinberg 2 Kings, constitution and crisis: `Robert of Gloucester' 39 and the Anglo-Saxon remedy sarah mitchell 3 The South English Legendary: Anglo-Saxon saints and 57 national identity jill frederick 4 King álle and the conversion of the English: the 74 development of a legend from Bede to Chaucer john frankis 5 Saxons versus Danes: the anonymous Edmund Ironside 93 leah scragg 6 New times and old stories: Middleton's Hengist 107 julia briggs 7 Crushing the convent and the dread Bastille: the 122 Anglo-Saxons, revolution and gender in women's plays of the 1790s jacqueline pearson vii Contents 8 Anglo-Saxon attitudes?: Alfred the Great and the 138 Romantic national epic lynda pratt 9 `Utter indifference'?: the Anglo-Saxons in the 157 nineteenth-century novel andrew sanders 10 The charge of the Saxon brigade: Tennyson's Battle of 174 Brunanburh { edward b. irving, jr 11 Lady Godiva daniel donoghue 194 12 The undeveloped image: Anglo-Saxon in popular 215 consciousness from Turner to Tolkien t. a. shippey Index of Anglo-Saxons mentioned in the text 237 Index of authors and works cited 239 viii Victor and victim: a view of the Anglo-Saxon past in LaZamon's Brut CAROLE WEINBERG The purpose of LaZamon, parish priest of Areley-Kings towards the end of the twelfth and/or beginning of the thirteenth century, in writing the Brut was ± as he tells us himself ± to recount wat heo ihoten weoren and wonene heo comen, / a Englene londe ñrest ahten `what they were called and whence they came who ®rst possessed the land of England' (8±9).1 And while his engagement with the past history of the English is evident, his creative imagination was clearly ®red by the content of his main source, Wace's Roman de Brut, a mid-twelfth-century verse history which slotted the Anglo-Saxons into an even earlier period of insular history, a reading of the past in which the Britons held sovereignty over the land before it passed to the Anglo-Saxons. Following Wace, LaZamon recounts in the latter part of his narrative how, during the reign of the post-Arthurian British king, Carric, the Saxons in Britain banded together with a conqueror from Africa called Gurmund, seized the land and besieged Carric at Cirencester. But Carric proved a stubborn defender: Wel ofte Kariches men comen ut of burhZen and rñsden an Gurmunde mid rñZere stren e, and sloZen of his folke feole usende, and sende heom to helle, he ene hundes alle. Karic wes swi e goud cniht and swi e wel he heold his ®ht, 1 All citations are from the Cotton Caligula text of LaZamon's Brut and all translations of this text are from La(amon's `Brut', ed. and trans. W. R. J. Barron and S. C. Weinberg (Harlow, 1995). References to Wace are from Le Roman de Brut de Wace, ed. I. Arnold, 2 vols. (Paris, 1938±1940), while references to Geoffrey of Monmouth are from The `Historia Regum Britannie' of Geoffrey of Monmouth, I, or II (The Variant Version), ed. N. Wright (Cambridge, 1984 and 1988). 22 Victor and victim and faste he heold Chirchestre mid streng e an mñste at ne mihte Gurmund nñuere mñren his ferde ar he lette heom mid ginnen biswiken wi innen. (14,570±7)2 The stratagem used by Gurmund to defeat Carric was to set ®re to Cirencester by having sparrows return to their roosts in the city carrying lit pieces of tinder in nutshells attached to their feet. LaZamon paints a graphic picture of a town ablaze, the wind fanning the ¯ames, the inhabitants trapped and engulfed by ®re (14,614±28). LaZamon's con- temporaries may have been unfamiliar with the story of Gurmund, but the graphic description of a town burning would have struck home. The town of Worcester, only some ten miles downstream from Areley-Kings, suffered at least four devastating ®res between 1113 and 1202, memor- able not only for the damage they caused, but also for the part they played in the campaign for the canonization of an Anglo-Saxon bishop. In 1113 a major ®re broke out in Worcester, the ¯ames spreading throughout the town and setting the roof of Worcester Cathedral alight. While the interior of the church was destroyed, amazingly, it seemed, the tomb of Wulfstan, the last Anglo-Saxon bishop of Worcester (1062±1095) survived unscathed. In 1147 ®re once again engulfed Worcester and the cathedral was badly damaged. Bernard, bishop of St David's, in Worcester at the time, testi®ed to the miraculous fact that, while the ®re consumed all in its path, the tapestry spread over Wulfstan's tomb remained untouched by the ¯ames. In 1189 yet another devastating ®re set Worcester ablaze, and again in 1202, when the cathedral suffered damage once more.3 It was after this ®re, coinciding with the growing 2 `Carric's men repeatedly sallied out from the town and attacked Gurmund with furious might, and slew many thousands of his followers, despatching them, all heathen dogs, to hell. Carric was a very skilful warrior and conducted his defence very successfully, and stoutly defended Cirencester to the utmost of his power so that at no time was Gurmund able to defeat his forces until, by a trick, he caused them to be destroyed from within.' In the Variant Version of Geoffrey's Historia (§186±7), we hear that Gurmund, a pagan African king who has conquered Ireland, is recruited by the Saxons to drive the Britons under the post-Arthurian king, Carric, into Wales, and who then hands the country over to them. This is referred to by both Wace and LaZamon early in their narratives (see pp. 27±8 of this paper and n. 18 below), but described in greater detail in its proper chronological context (lines 14,400±683) as part of the continuing narrative of con¯ict between the Saxons and the Britons for sovereignty of the land. 3 For reference to the ®re of 1189, see H. R. Luard, Annales Prioratus de Wigornia AD 1±1377, Annales Monastici, 4 vols., RS 36 (London, 1869), IV, p. 386. The ®res of 23 Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons interest in the cult of Wulfstan, that Mauger, the Norman bishop of Worcester, after consultation with the chapter, petitioned Pope Innocent III for Wulfstan's canonization. Pope Innocent had a commission of distinguished English clerics appointed to investigate the claims of sainthood. The commission's report, attesting to the miracles worked through Wulfstan's mediation, was conveyed to Rome in person by a delegation of Worcester monks. In April 1203 Wulfstan was canonized, and on 14 May a papal bull declared publicly the circumstances of Wulfstan's elevation, including testimony produced by the citizens of Worcester attesting to the many miracles performed at his tomb.4 Given the proximity of Areley-Kings to Worcester, local interest generated by the canonization of Wulfstan may have been the spur for LaZamon's decision to record the Anglo-Saxon past for his contempor- aries.5 Furthermore he may very possibly have seen the now lost biography of Wulfstan, written in English sometime between 1095 and 1113 by Coleman, Wulfstan's chaplain for the last ®fteen years of the bishop's life. Coleman, it has been argued, chose to write in English at a time when Latin was the commonly used and accepted linguistic medium for hagiographical biography, `as a piece of conscious revivalism to emphasize the merits of Anglo-Saxon England',6 and he could have provided LaZamon with an important precedent for the use of English at a time when Latin and Anglo-Norman were the recognized languages of historical narrative. Regarding LaZamon's ability to read Coleman's eleventh-century English, LaZamon himself used what has been described as an `archaic' form of English harking back to Old English models as his linguistic medium for narrating the early history of this island, and we know that in the early thirteenth century the `Tremulous Scribe' was at work in Worcester Cathedral Library, annotating Old English texts.7 1133, 1147 and 1202 are discussed by E.
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