THE INVENTION[TITLE OF ENGLAND: OF THE THESIS/DISSERTATION] DANES AND IDENTITY IN MEDIEVAL ROMANCE by by [Author’s full name] Daniel Wollenberg [undergraduate degree, institution, year] B.A., The George Washington University, 2001 [Master degree, if applicable, institution, year] M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2006 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of [name of school] in partial fulfillment Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of of the requirements for the degree of [e.g. Master of Arts / Doctor of Philosophy] Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh University of Pittsburgh [year] 2011 i UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Daniel Wollenberg It was defended on May 5, 2011 and approved by David Brumble, Professor, English Kellie Robertson, Associate Professor, English Dissertation Co-Advisor: Hannah Johnson, Associate Professor, English Dissertation Co-Advisor: John Twyning, Associate Professor, English ii THE INVENTION OF ENGLAND: DANES AND IDENTITY IN MEDIEVAL ROMANCE Daniel Wollenberg, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2011 This dissertation explores the relationship between the emergence of English romance and rhetoric of English nationalism in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Four historical romances set in England’s past – Havelok the Dane, Guy of Warwick, Of Arthur and Merlin, and Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild – are my primary focus. The concepts of England and Englishness that emerged in the late medieval and early modern periods were not the inevitable outcome of the Middle Ages, but the result of complex mediations explored in historical romances. Historical romances offered the primary stage for popular dramatizations of a national community bound by its shared triumphant history, and it is in such romances that ethnic, regional, and national identities were forged and disseminated. My project argues that a vital, though generally unrecognized, aspect of Middle English romance narratives was the castigation and delegitimization of the Scandinavians, or the “Danes,” who became anathema to England and Englishness even as they settled throughout the British Isles in potentially massive numbers, as recent archeological and linguistic evidence has suggested. In the post-Conquest process of reconciliation between Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Saxon historiographical traditions, the Danes represented a philosophy of non-Christian “might is right” that was opposed to the God-ordained English system of rightful rule by proper, lawful inheritance. As secular texts written in the vernacular and designed to appeal to a wide range of the public, the historical material in Middle English romances has been perceived as reflective of the historical consciousness of the non- iii elite. However, my project argues that thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Middle English historical romances were not representative of a gradual emergence of long-buried folk-memory, but were themselves producing a national historical framework stressing continuity over fractures. While it has often been taken for granted that the frequent appearance of the Danes in many Middle English historical romances must have been based on lingering “folk memory” of pagan invasions centuries earlier, my project shows that historical romances were crafted so as to seem like they were recording popular traditions about the past, when in fact they were creating such traditions themselves. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE .................................................................................................................................. VII 1.0 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 A SINGLE NATION ................................................................................................... 1 1.2 THE DANES .............................................................................................................. 10 1.3 THE “ABSENT PRESENCE” OF THE DANES ................................................... 25 2.0 BLOOD AND BELONGING: HAVELOK THE DANE AND HISTORICAL MEMORY ........................................................................................................................... 39 2.1 ETHNICITY AND NATIONALISM IN HAVELOK ............................................. 40 2.2 LINCOLNSHIRE CONTACT WITH THE DANES ............................................. 52 2.3 RIGHT RULE AND DANISH SETTLEMENT: GAIMAR, LINCOLNSHIRE CHRONICLES, AND HAVELOK ........................................................................... 65 2.4 A LOCAL LEGEND ................................................................................................. 77 3.0 THE TRANSFORMATIVE KNIGHT: GUY OF WARWICK AT THE CROSSROADS OF ROMANCE AND HISTORY ......................................................... 82 3.1 NATIONS AND HEROES ........................................................................................ 82 3.2 ROMANCE HISTORY AND IDENTITY: ETHNOGENESIS IN THE ANGLO- NORMAN GUI DE WAREWIC ............................................................................... 87 v 3.3 FROM ROMANCE TO CHRONICLE AND BACK AGAIN: THE DANES AND ENGLISH IDENTITY .............................................................................................. 97 3.4 “TO THE HERMITAGE, WHEN THEY COME”: GUY’S CLIFFE AND THE MAKING OF A HISTORICAL GUY ................................................................... 119 4.0 OUR BLOOD AND OUR KING: ARTHUR AND MERLIN AND THE ENTERNAL ENGLISH .......................................................................................................................... 128 4.1 ENGLISHING ARTHUR ....................................................................................... 133 4.2 LANGUAGE AND PATRIOTISM ........................................................................ 135 4.3 TWO TRADITIONS ............................................................................................... 142 4.4 HYBRIDITY: HENGIST/ANGYS AND THE SAXONS/DANES ..................... 145 4.5 DEFENDING THE REALM .................................................................................. 162 5.0 REMEMBERING THE DANES: HORN CHILDE AND MAIDEN RIMNILD AND LITERARY TRADITION ............................................................................................... 174 5.1 DANES IN THE ENGLISH EARTH .................................................................... 174 5.2 “CASTLE, COLONIZATION, AND ENGLISHNESS” ..................................... 181 5.3 THE DANES IN HORN CHILDE .......................................................................... 190 5.4 THE DANES AS A LITERARY PHENOMENON ............................................. 201 5.5 CHRONICLE REALISM AND THE LIBER REGUM ANGLIE ....................... 210 5.6 A TRADITION FLOURISHES: MEMORIES OF THE DANES IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD ................................................................................. 217 6.0 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................ 221 6.1 HOCKTIDE ............................................................................................................. 230 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 235 vi PREFACE I would like to thank Hannah Johnson, John Twyning, Kellie Robertson, and David Brumble for their unflagging support and enthusiasm for this project, their encouragement, and their insightful and valuable feedback. I would especially like to thank Leslie Vega, without whom I would have never finished. vii 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1.1 A SINGLE NATION The world of medieval romance – its violent duels and magical potions, invisible castles and Round Tables, giants and dwarves, questing knights, fairy queens, bumbling kings and evil stewards – is one whose intrinsic worth is often negatively contrasted with the serious work of the real world. Consider Friedrich Engels senior, the father of the co-founder of international communism, who, upon finding some books of romance lying around his fifteen-year-old son’s desk, wrote with obvious displeasure, “Thus today I was again distressed to find in his desk a dirty book which he had borrowed from the lending library, a story about knights in the 13th century. The careless way he leaves such books about in his desk is remarkable. May God watch over his disposition, I am often fearful for this otherwise excellent boy.”1 Romance is set in stark relief against practicality and productivity. For Friedrich senior, it was not only the contents of the “dirty book” that vexed him, but how merely taking an interest in such books might reflect poorly on his son’s reputation and his character, leading the young Friedrich astray from a pious and commercially productive life. Yet the teenage Engels was apparently little dismayed by his father’s disapproval of his “dirty books,” penning poems and articles defending “old popular 1 Marx-Engels Collected Works (New York, 1975-2005), vol. 2, p. 582, quoted in Tristram Hunt, Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Freidrich Engels (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), 20. 1 books with their old-fashioned tone,” which “transport me from our artificial modern ‘conditions, confusions, and fine distractions’ into a world which is much closer to nature.”2 For young Friedrich, the