Broadview Brit Lit Anthology

Review Copy The Medieval Period ow are the boundaries of literary traditions to be do so: the Anglo-Irish poet Seamus Heaney laces his Hdefined? Of necessity we fall back on terms of modern translation of Beowulf, a decidedly “English” convenience such as “British literature” and “English poem, with idiosyncratic Ulsterisms and Celtic turns of literature” for the titles of books or of academic courses, phrase. but it is essential from the outset to appreciate how Finally, the very word “literature” (deriving from the problematic these may be. In any collection of this kind, Latin litterae, “letters”) implies an existence in writing, decisions must be made about what does and does not but a great deal of what remains in written form from “fit,” about lines of influence between works, and about the Middle Ages had a prior existence as, or owes defining the boundaries of a literary tradition. Medieval enormous debts to, oral forms. Most of what we now literature written in England, for instance, was by no read as medieval British literature, from romances to means entirely, nor indeed mostly, written in English; lyrics to sermons, was written to be heard, not read. works in Latin, Anglo-Norman French, Middle Welsh, Texts of vernacular works in the Middle Ages are by no and Old Irish all survive alongside works in the lan- means as solidly fixed—as “textual”—as works of modern guages now known to us as Old and Middle English. literature, or of medieval works in Latin, for that matter; Many of these non-English texts had a profound the circumstances of their creation and reception often influence on the literary tradition in English; to the tend to be performative and communal, not silent and extent that we have had to omit such works here, we solitary like a modern student reading this book. Modern have created gaps in the story this anthology tries to tell. literary culture tends to regard the written text, fixed and Our designation of this literature as “British” raises inert, as the primary or “real” form of a literary work; for a terminological difficulty that is almost as old as the some medieval works, especially those from the earlier Middle Ages itself. “British” and “English” are by no Middle Ages, the written text seems to be almost an means interchangeable terms in the medieval period, afterthought, little more than an aid to the memory of the and the uses of these terms as labels for a language and reader/performer who recreates the “real” work by voicing literary tradition have always been entwined with the text out loud. political realities and national identities. Broadly speak- The concept of an anthology—a collection that ing, the word “British” derives from the Roman name gathers the authoritative examples of a cultural tradi- for early Celtic settlers in what we now call the British tion—would have been very familiar to medieval Isles; “English” refers to the Germanic invaders and readers, who made extensive use of such collections. settlers who began arriving in the fifth century, pushed Medieval manuscripts that contain multiple works may the Celtic inhabitants to the west and the north (now be anything from carefully planned volumes presented Wales and Scotland), and eventually ruled the central to a patron, to somewhat haphazard gatherings of texts, part of the island. For many centuries, the English to collections composed by an individual for his or her defined themselves by their difference from the British, own use; our current knowledge of medieval literary and vice versa. At the same time, th ose who attempted to culture could rightly be said to rest on medieval anthol- claim legitimate rulership of England made strategic use ogies. Thus a reader who first encounters these texts in of the “British” tradition, perhaps most obviously in the an anthologized form will encounter them in a format ongoing traditions surrounding King Arthur, whose not so unlike their original manuscript context. The origins lie deep in British legendary history. But the single-text “monograph”—one work between two intercultural appropriation between “British” and covers—is by no means the most common mode of “English” has often worked both ways and continues to transmission for medieval texts, and the effort to deter- 2 Broadview Anthology of British Literature Review Copy mine the relationships between texts in medieval printing in the later fifteenth century, books became ever manuscripts, the intentions of the creators of such more widely available and the language increasingly compilations, and their effect upon readers is one of the standardized; in the sixteenth century, with the wider most interesting and important areas of contemporary spread of printing in England, the standard became more medieval literary studies. and more fixed, even as the language was rapidly chang- The drawing of artificial lines, wheth er geographical ing again, into what linguists call early Modern English. or temporal, is a profound limitation on one’s under- standing of the history of Western literature. At the same time, we cannot simply ignore the geographical History, Narrative, Culture facts—which are historical and political facts as well, insofar as the unity of the island of Britain was imagined Even a set of very broad periodizations like these raises and achieved—or the differences between one age and questions about the relation between historical events another, although the borders (both of historical periods and literary developments and that between culture and and of kingdoms) may always be contested. This collec- the imagination. Can we understand these literary works tion likewise relies on distinctions—sometimes arbi- better by learning more about their historical context? trary, sometimes necessary, some obvious and some Or can these works of the imagination shed light on that obscure—to provide shape and contour, form and context and help us fill in its blank spaces? Which structure. In English literary history one of the most partner in the inseparable pairing of text and context obvious divisions lies between the literature of the will serve as the solid ground from which we can survey Anglo-Saxons—the English before the Norman Con- the other? Has the human imagination changed so quest (1066)—and that of the English after the Con- much that we only have access to it historically, and not quest. Within these two broadly drawn periods further immediately? On the other hand, what can we really divisions can be made: early Old English literature, as know about the past, except what is said about it? far as we can reconstruct it, differs markedly from These questions vexed the minds of many medieval literature after the reign of Alfred the Great (d. 899), authors as well. Most modern scholars, like their medi- who sought to begin a program of vernacular literacy eval predecessors such as Isidore of Seville (a Spanish and bestowed a certain royal authority on English as a bishop who lived c. 560–636), are careful to note that quasi-official written language. history is not simply “what happened” in the past, but After the Conquest, although English manuscripts the stories we tell about what happened in the past. were produced and read in somewhat reduced numbers, Events, objects, even stories, do not speak for them- Norman French was the language of courtly culture in selves; they have to be arranged and explained, looked at England. In the absence of schools and pedagogical and looked into, and gradually placed in a context traditions, English began to manifest the changes that constructed from our interpretations of other objects, characterize “Middle” English. After this period of events, and stories. In this sense, no matter how great “early” Middle English—roughly from the century after our respect for objectivity or how carefully balanced our the Conquest until the beginning of the fourteenth analysis may be, our study of the past says as much century—English began to take its place alongside the about us as it does about the past we try to study. And culturally more prestigious Latin (the language of the texts help us understand their context as much as church) and French (the language of the court, of law, contexts help us understand texts. and of administration); authors increasingly chose to In his poem Ars Poetica the modern author Archi- write literary texts in English for aristocratic readers. bald MacLeish insisted that “a poem should not mean The fifteenth century saw a gradual redevelopment of a / But be,” but readers of literature from the distant past written “standard” English, and an outpouring of literary cannot indulge in the soothing luxury of that miscon- works (particularly of a devotional nature) that fostered ception. A rock can simply “be”; the remains of a stone and responded to rising literacy rates. With the advent of wall, however, must “mean” something—they mark a The Medieval Period 3 Review Copy boundary, claim a space, indicate a settlement. A rough cultures are on display here. The page insists on the diamond lying underground might “be”; but when it intersection of English, Irish, and Latin cultures—as has been mined, cut, polished, weighed, set, valued, intricately woven together as the knotty patterns of bought, and worn as jewelry, it is no longer “palpable its own design. Looking more closely, we can see an and mute / as a globed fruit”; it has entered the noisy English interlinear gloss to the Latin text, written in world of meaning. Similarly, a poem like Beowulf or Sir much smaller script, added some 200 years later. Its Gawain and the Green Knight does not simply exist as a presence creates yet another layer of meaning and raises self-evident story; like any work of the human imagina- further questions.

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