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Celtic Literatures and Multilingualism in the Early Middle English Context

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Celtic Literatures and Multilingualism in the Early Middle English Context Not an Island unto Itself: Celtic Literatures and Multilingualism in the Early Middle English Context Matthieu Boyd Early Middle English, Volume 1, Number 1, 2019, pp. 3-16 (Article) Published by Arc Humanities Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/731648 [ Access provided at 27 Sep 2021 07:41 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] NOT AN ISLAND UNTO ITSELF: CELTIC LITERATURES AND MULTILINGUALISM IN THE EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH CONTEXT MATTHIEU BOYD studying and teaching Early Middle English involves a plea for inclu- siveness (an essential value for our own time) in two respects. First, with respect to the Thecanon: case at the forlevel of the undergraduate survey course, there may be pressure or temp- tation to leap from Beowulf to Chaucer, leaving Early Middle English in the gap. Second, with respect to historical reality in the intervening period, which might lend support to in Latin and French, and then Chaucer came along.” Multilingualism in medieval Britain isa narrativea hot topic like and “For the a couplesubject of of centuries several recent after the books, Conquest,1 focusing all important especially writing on French. was This scholarship invites us to be “no longer wedded to an account of multilingualism in Britain that concentrates on the emergence of English as the national language.”2 To accept the invitation, yet continue to study English at a time when it was decidedly not literary ecosystem. It is to insist, while fully acknowledging Latin and French, that our picturethe national of the language, time and requires place would a willingness be incomplete to look without at the total properly cultural, accounting—in linguistic, and a non-teleological way, of course—for English. - eratures alongside Early Middle English. They are part of the ecosystem. There are The same logic justifies studying and teaching the Celtic languages and their lit thetwo literaturearguments of for multilingual including them:England, one and based we onneed influence, to know and about another the Celtic based cultures on the scope of our subject. The influence argument says that there was Celtic influence on can be shown. The other argument says that our subject, whatever we choose to call it, includesto properly the appreciateCeltic cultures that from influence. the outset. This Thatargument second is perspectivelimited by the is represented influence that by 1 For example, Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100–c.1500, edited by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne with Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, Linne Mooney, Ad Putter, and David Trotter (York: York Medieval Press, in association with Boydell & Brewer, 2009); Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and Its Neighbours, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz and Keith Busby (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010); Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c.800–c.1250, ed. Elizabeth M. Tyler (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011); Jonathan Hsy, Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism, and Medieval Literature (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013); and Elizabeth M. Tyler, England in Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017). An earlier collection of this type was Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, ed. David A. Trotter (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000). 2 Simon Gaunt, review of Kleinhenz and Busby, Medieval Multilingualism, in French Studies 65, no. 4 (2011): 516–17. 4 maTThieu Boyd the new Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain,3 and its mandate English, British, Irish, Pictish, as well as the Latin languages.”4 (For “British,” read the Britishcomes fromCeltic Bede’s languages—Welsh, remark that “there Cornish, are and five Breton—and languages in forBritain “Irish,” […] read These the are Gaelic the ones, which now include Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx.) Norse and French are obvious ways to extend the list, which privileges a sense of geography—Britain or “the Isles”5— as the relevant framework. This carries forward to an interest in the continuing cultural diversity of the Isles since the Middle Ages, and to an inclusive vision of English or Brit- ish literature today; such is one way to demonstrate the relevance of studying medieval literature. I’ve suggested elsewhere6 - erature—geographical (of England); linguistic (in the English language); and ethnic or political (of English people or that the thereEnglish might nation)—and be three ways that ofeach defining of these “English” is compli lit- cated by the other two. More languages than English were used in England; the English language was used outside England, and by non-English people; and nominally English people might use any number of languages other than English. An “Isles” framework doesn’t solve all the problems, given Angevin involvement on the Continent, but it goes a long way towards a full and accurate picture of the relevant dynamics. For some Middle English specialists, thinking in terms of the Isles—and paying more attention to Celtic languages and literatures as a result—will be an adjustment. For others, less so.7 At this stage, the adjustment called for, especially in North America, is not so much theoretical as practical. The theoretical structure is already more or less in place, thanks to the spate of publications that I mentioned. It’s true that as discus- sions of the multilingualism pertaining to “trilingual England” grow ever more detailed and sophisticated, and seek their “most pregnant textual examples rather in border ter- ritories and areas of shifting sovereignties than in hegemonic centres,” a few continue 8 3 Edited by Siân Echard and Robert Rouse (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017). The “in Britain” of the title is not ideal, because the encyclopedia covers Ireland too. 4 Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 17. 5 Compare Norman Davies, The Isles: A History (London: Macmillan, 1999), and Hugh Kearney, The British Isles: A History of Four Nations 6 Matthieu Boyd, “The Languages of British Literature and the Stakes of Anthologies,” Pedagogy 13, (Cambridge University Press: 1989; 2nd ed., 2006). no. 2 (2013): 303–19. 7 I realize that for some of my readers, I am preaching to the choir. The idea is not new: J. R. R. and its philology lack an experience necessary to their business. As necessary, if not so obviously and immediatelyTolkien said inuseful, 1955 asthat a knowledge “English philologists of Norse or […] French” who have (“English no first and­hand Welsh,” acquaintance in The Monsters with Welsh and the Critics and Other Essays, ed. Christopher Tolkien And the 1999 Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature edited by David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) had chapters on “Writing(London: in Wales,” Allen “Writing & Unwin, in 1983), Ireland,” 162–97, and “Writing at 163). in Scotland.” What has changed is that the rationale for this attention has become clearer. 8 Robert Stein, “Multilingualism,” in Middle English: Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 23–37, at 35. 5 noT an island unTo iTself to omit or even actively dismiss the Celtic languages. In those cases, it’s as though some- one built a house with rooms clearly furnished for the needs of certain residents, then let only some of them move in. The very nature of the house should make it apparent that something is missing. Altogether it feels that the work needed now is in the vari- ous kinds of teaching that professors do—graduate training, undergraduate surveys, and writing and speaking for the public—and so this essay is meant primarily for Early Middle English specialists in their role as teachers. Any teaching of the period, I would argue, should follow through in some way on the theoretical commitment to a multilin- gual and cross-cultural perspective that was made in taking on the French of England. It is important to encourage the development of language skills, but even without them, somewhere. andenough promote information them to and consideration analysis to transformby the larger the discipline, field is already including in print students at the appropriateThe challenge level. now Some is to ofrecognize these contributions important contributions deserve to be from foundational specialized texts subfields, for the next generation of scholarship. I am not just suggesting that well-known Irish and Welsh texts like the Book of Lein- ster Táin, Acallam na Senórach - land), or the Four Branches of the Mabinogi should be added to reading lists, although that would be a good start. (Some (The teaching Colloquy anthologies, of the Ancients/Tales notably the of Broadview the Elders Anthol of Ire- ogy of British Literature, recent years.9) The kind of literary studies I have in mind is encapsulated by the list of sixty-seven items in Shrewsburyhave significantly School MS expanded 7 (ca. 12 their70), whichcoverage are ofapparently Celtic texts titles in of Breton lays, including several by Marie de France. The manuscript may have come from Chester, an important border node, and the list, unrelated to the rest of the manu- script, is possibly a plan for a compilation, or a record of the texts a workshop had avail- able to copy. The list includes a number of known lays and romances, and other titles that are distinctly French, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Welsh, and Irish. This list has been known to scholarship for some time,10 by Patrick Sims-Williams that belongs on every graduate reading list.11 The Irish titles but has now been examined in a definitive article matrixthere deserve from which special Middle notice, English but the romance list as emerged.a whole testifies to the rich mix of cultural traditions that occurred within the Anglo­Norman sphere of influence, and formed the 9 See again Boyd, “The Languages.” I am involved with the third edition of the Broadview, which has been coming out with new volumes since 2015; it is a major improvement over the second edition, and would be my preferred anthology in a survey course for the kind of teaching I suggest.
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