Robert Rouse | University of British Columbia (original) (raw)

Books by Robert Rouse

"It is often said that the past is a foreign country where they do things differently, and perhap... more "It is often said that the past is a foreign country where they do things differently, and perhaps no type of “doing” is more fascinating than sexual desires and behaviours. Our modern view of medieval sexuality is characterized by a polarizing dichotomy between the swooning love-struck knights and ladies of romance on one hand, and the darkly imagined misogyny of an unenlightened ‘medieval’ sexuality on the other. British medieval sexual culture exhibits such dualities through the influential paradigms of sinner or saint, virgin or whore, and protector or defiler of women. However, such sexual identities are rarely coherent or stable, and it is in the grey areas – the interstices between normative modes of sexuality – that we find the most compelling instances of erotic frisson and sexual expression.
This collection of essays brings together new and established scholars in a wide-ranging discussion of the sexual possibilities and fantasies of medieval Britain as they manifest themselves in the literature of the period. Taking as their matter texts and authors as diverse as Chaucer, Gower, Dunbar, alchemical treatises, and romances, the contributors reveal a surprising variety of attitudes, strategies, and sexual subject positions.
"

In this original look at the world of Arthur, the authors show how the people of medieval Engla... more In this original look at the world of Arthur, the authors show how the people of medieval England engaged with the Arthurian legend. Individual chapters cover Winchester as the site of Camelot, the crown of Arthur presented by Edward I, and the various items associated with Dover, Glastonbury Abbey, and other sites. Far from being credulous and gullible, it is clear that people actively debated Arthurian history. The book concludes with a discussion of the 16th-century antiquarian John Leland and those who followed in his footsteps, continuing to search for the physical remains of Arthur and his court.

The medieval interest in saintly relics is well known, but there are also medieval stories and shrines associated with the relics of Britain’s Arthurian past.
In this original look at the world of Arthur, the authors show how the people of medieval England engaged with the Arthurian legend. Individual chapters cover Winchester as the site of Camelot, the crown of Arthur presented by Edward I, the various items associated with Dover, Glastonbury Abbey and other sites. Far from being credulous and gullible, it is clear that people actively debated Arthurian history. The book concludes with a discussion of the sixteenth-century antiquarian John Leland and those who followed in his footsteps, continuing to search for the physical remains of Arthur and his court.

Papers by Robert Rouse

postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 2016

Forthcoming in _Parergon_ (September 2015)

This article examines two moments in the history of two manuscripts now held in collections in Au... more This article examines two moments in the history of two manuscripts now held in collections in Auckland, New Zealand. The first moment is the flyleaf inscription recording the gift of an early sixteenth-century Book of Hours from one settler to another in the Wellington colony in 1842, while the second is the addition of a faux-medieval decorative scheme to the Awabakal Gospel of St Luke under the orders of Sir George Grey in the early 1860s. Analysis of these two moments of manuscript reinscription are revealing of the way in which nineteenth-century medievalism was deployed in the service of British imperial ideology.

in Sexual Culture in the Literature of Medieval Britain, Eds. Amanda Hopkins, Robert Allen Rouse, and Cory James Rushton (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, forthcoming 2014). pp. 1-12.

The hit HBO cable series Game of Thrones (2011-14) -the fantasy-medieval saga based on George R. ... more The hit HBO cable series Game of Thrones (2011-14) -the fantasy-medieval saga based on George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire novels -has provided more than its fair share of salacious sex scenes. Rape, marital rape, attempted rape, prostitution, group-sex, sodomy (of both heterosexual and homosexual forms), incest, sex leading to castration, sex leading to leechapplication, and even -occasionally -vanilla consensual sex, have appeared on the screen in the first three seasons of the show. The show, while generally well reviewed, has come under sustained criticism from certain sectors of the media for its depiction of a brutal medieval sexuality, a misogynous sexual culture replete with the threat of violent coercion. This popular

in Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative, Ed. Robert T. Tally Jr. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

"Winner of the International Arthurian Society (North American Branch) 2013 James Randall Leader ... more "Winner of the International Arthurian Society (North American Branch) 2013 James Randall Leader Prize for the ‘outstanding Arthurian article’.

Citation:

'We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2013 James Randall Leader Prize for the ‘outstanding Arthurian article’. The Prize goes to the article ‘Reading Ruins: Arthurian Caerleon and the Untimely Architecture of History’ by Robert Rouse.

The central focus of Rouse’s analysis is Gerald of Wales’s complex treatment of Caerleon in the Itinerarium Kambriae, as a polysemantic memorial site for both Roman and Arthurian power. More specifically the article is “in essence, about Gerald reading Geoffrey [of Monmouth] reading Caerleon” (42), and this discussion is placed within a nuanced theoretical framework inspired by the work of Jonathan Gil Harris. Particularly Harris’s notion of ‘untimeliness’ is used to illustrate how a single material historical object or site ⎯ in this case the ruins of Caerleon ⎯ is comprised of multiple, simultaneously available temporalities, and how these are often in a state of tension or conflict with each other. According to Rouse’s analysis, Caerleon’s Roman/Arthurian ruins become for Gerald much more than “a marker of not-quite vanished yet unreachable past” (41); instead Rouse identifies “five operative temporalities that combine to produce a series of layered meanings within his text: [1] Gerald’s moment; [2] Geoffrey’s moment; [3] Arthur’s past postcolonial moment; [4] Rome’s past colonial moment; and [5] the future Welsh postcolonial moment.” (45).

This has the effect of complicating and destabilizing Geoffrey of Monmouth’s treatment of the ruins of Caerleon as a site of Arthurian memorialisation, but also enables Gerald to “open[...] up Arthurian Caerleon as a stage upon which other histories might be explored” (45), particularly future prophetic histories. More specifically Gerald here plays on the double, imperial and ecclesiastical valencies of Roman past/present/future, and gestures towards the possibility of a transference of Episcopal power from Caerleon to St Davids ⎯ a prophecy he rescues from his otherwise dismissive attitude towards Geoffrey’s Historia. This transference is closely associated with the prophesied decline of colonial rule in Wales, the regained independence of the Welsh people, and finally holds out the possibility of Gerald’s own access to the bishopric ⎯ which he had been previously awarded, only to have the election invalidated by Henry II. Punctuated by the rise and fall of Roman, Arthurian, and, it is implied, the future decline of Angevin power in Wales, such a multivalent cyclical history provides an ideal framework for Gerald to reflect on his personal ambition as well as his divided allegiance to Welsh culture, ecclesiastical authority, and the rule of the Angevins themselves. ‘Untimeliness’ here becomes an effective theoretical tool to coax out the complexities of Gerald’s own psychological investment in his layered presentation of the historical site of Caerleon.

The article is particularly successful because it allies such theoretical sophistication with a rare sensitivity to the individual voice of Gerald himself. Economically written, it is also masterfully structured by telescoping its attention from wider, theoretical and historical issues in the first half, to more personal psychological considerations towards the end.'

Sometime between March and November 1481, William Caxton printed Godfrey de Bouillon or the Siege... more Sometime between March and November 1481, William Caxton printed Godfrey de Bouillon or the Siege and Conquest of Jerusalem. Published some 190 years after the fall of Acre and the destruction of the last crusader state in the Levant, this text highlights the enduring attraction of crusade narratives – and of the crusader heroes contained within them – to late-fifteenth century English society. As the first English translation of the First Crusade portions of William of Tyre’s Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, the production of the text has been interpreted as the product of Caxton’s canny awareness of the reading tastes of the English book-buying public. At the heart of the marketability of Godfrey as a text – and of Godfrey as a hero – lies his reputation as the European crusading hero par excellence. Despite the existence of other more specifically English crusader-narratives, such as that of Richard the Lionheart, Godfrey’s appeal as a universal exemplar of a hero of unified Christendom seems to have won out. Celebrated in chronicle accounts and the legendary Chanson d’Antioche and the Chanson de Jerusalem, and elevated to the ranks of the nine worthies, Godfrey represents the epitome of a heroic model that takes on many forms in the literature and culture of medieval Europe. The late-medieval renown of Godfrey is emblematic of the long-held appeal of crusading figures in the medieval popular mind. From the late eleventh-century Chanson de Roland through to Caxton’s Godfrey we find a dizzying array of heroic crusaders brought to life within chronicle, romance and other forms of medieval narrative. Faced with this array of possible heroic figures, Caxton’s decision to print Godfrey rather than a romance of one of the English crusade-heroes is one that demands consideration. I would suggest that at least part of the explanation for the selection of Godfrey instead of insular crusade-text lies in the way in which crusade heroes were represented in England during the later Middle Ages.

While Caxton’s Godfrey recalls the glories of the successful First Crusade for the late fifteenth-century reader, not all English crusade-romance was so adulatory in their depiction of crusaders. The corpus of crusade-romances produced in England in the century following the end of the crusades – the fall of Acre in 1291 – are of a more critical mood, forming part of what Christopher Tyerman has coined ‘recovery literature’. Tyerman describes this textual effusion as a ‘mountain of written advice thrown up in the two centuries after 1291 consistently associating the recovery of the Holy Land or the defence of the church with personal redemption, honour and the resolution of Europe’s internal political, social and religious problems.’ Contributing to the inward turn of this post-crusade Zeitgeist, crusade-romances provided a vehicle for the expression of the frustrated desire for crusade in the fourteenth century, and as such they dwell not only on the heroic and salvational aspects of crusade, but also on the pitfalls and failures of the enterprise. While abortive attempts to resurrect the crusades as a practical project were not infrequent during this period – in England as well as in other parts of Europe – literary fantasies were the only form in which any such endeavour came to successful fruition..."

'‘What can we know of the world? What quantity of space can our eyes hope to take in between our ... more '‘What can we know of the world? What quantity of space can our eyes hope to take in between our birth and our death? How many square centimetres of Planet Earth will the soles of our feet have touched?’

As Georges Perec observes, our personal experience of the world is lamentably finite. As much – or as little – as one seeks to travel, one will never experience the entire world. The only way we can know the world outside of our personal experience is necessarily at a remove. Our geographical knowledge of the overwhelming majority of the world is thus mediated through text, image, narrative. No less true for the modern age, this was particularly the case during the medieval period, where the geographical radii of peoples’ lives, as well as their exposure to geographical media, were commonly more restricted than today. However, just as we today experience the world through National Geographic, travel shows and the aspirational reading of Lonely Planet guidebooks, the people of the medieval period also revelled in travel narratives. In the Auchinleck manuscript narrative of Guy of Warwick, the eponymous protagonist travels throughout Europe, from Warwick to Normandy, through Spain, Germany, Lombardy and thence onwards to more exotic locales such as Constantinople, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Alexandria. His travels chart his development as first a chivalric and later a Christian hero, transforming him from an ideal lover-knight into the embodiment of the pious martial pilgrim. But these places are not simply an arbitrary series of stages through which the romance hero moves. They represent real places, more or less familiar to the text’s audience. As much as it is a narrative of the development of the ideal knight, the romance also participates in the articulation of geographical knowledge. For the medieval audience of these romances, what did these places represent What did the act of journeying to them or through them signify How were these distant and dimly-known cities and lands given meaning by the texts in which they were narrated? Through an analysis of the way in which geography is deployed in
Guy of Warwick, I hope to frame both a series of questions and a methodological approach through which to explore the important role that medieval romance plays within the medieval English geographical imagination....'

'For a post-conquest Latin historiographer such as William of Malmesbury, the Battle of Brunanbur... more 'For a post-conquest Latin historiographer such as William of Malmesbury, the Battle of Brunanburh occupied an important place in the received history of England, and was therefore recorded and embellished as a significant episode in his narrative of England’s formation as a discrete kingdom. Given this initial importance of Brunanburh in post-conquest historiography, it is curious that accounts of the battle play no lasting role in the vernacular narratives of England’s past that begin to appear during the fourteenth century. Patrizia Lendinara goes as far as commenting that:

"The battle of Brunanburh did not feature either in the Middle English romances of the so-called Matter of England or the French chronicles, which do not mention the battle but, in their account of the reign of Athelstan, dwell on more personal and courtly details."

While Lendinara perhaps goes too far in such an assessment, the accounts of England’s past that appear in Middle English romance and chronicle during the fourteenth century point towards the disappearance of the Battle of Brunanburh from the stage of celebrated national history, presenting a fascinating study in the processes of the transformation of cultural memory and history. This chapter will examine the rise of a competing romance narrative tradition to Brunanburh that – for some few hundred years – elides the battle from popular accounts of Athelstan’s reign, and establishes an alternative account of the Anglo-Saxon past within English history: the romance legend of Guy of Warwick and his defeat of the Danes at the behest of Athelstan...'

'The true shape of Arthurian Britain was and remains a contentious battleground: even in our ‘enl... more 'The true shape of Arthurian Britain was and remains a contentious battleground: even in our ‘enlightened’ modern age the search for sites and objects associated with Arthur continues, producing periodic ‘amazing’ discoveries—such as that of the artognou stone found at Tintagel in 1998—that are met with a seemingly inextinguishable degree of enthusiasm from the contemporary media. However, for medieval writers, the locating of Arthurian geography within the actual landscape of the British Isles was not merely of antiquarian interest: rather, it was often a serious matter of political, cultural and institutional importance. Authors writing in numerous languages and hailing from a variety of courts looked towards Britain for indelible signs of that ancient conqueror who could validate the regimes of their own day, interpreting Arthur’s actions through their own contemporary lens: for this was Logres, the legendary Britain of the past over which Arthur had once reigned so gloriously. The Arthurian tales of medieval Europe imagined this landscape as a place of marvels and conflicts, marked with tragic tales of loss and recovery, of the quest for the Grail and of the love of the French knight Lancelot for the British Queen Guinevere. The countryside of medieval Britain was littered with reminders of the past presence of Arthur and his knights, relics of a time of perfect chivalry and overwhelming imperial power. Tom Shippey has argued that ‘England has a kind of mythical geography, a network of associations and oppositions, now dwindled largely to humour and tourism, but once a vital part of the country’s being: a geography which accords special roles to Oxford and Cambridge, to Stratford and Glastonbury, to Wigan and Jarrow.’ The Arthurian tradition plays an important role in the construction and articulation of this mythical landscape, interweaving the aura of the age of Camelot into the palimpsest that is the British landscape.

Arthurian scholars have increasingly begun to read the Arthurian history of Britain as a post-colonial narrative, as a story of multiple ruptures through conquest and repeated attempts to rewrite both history and the landscape in order to legitimatize the invader or to provide consolation to the invaded. Within this malleable historiography Arthur stands as an associative figure of great utility...'

' Popular Romance and Medieval National Identity ‘Who are the English; where do they come from;... more ' Popular Romance and Medieval National Identity
‘Who are the English; where do they come from; what constitutes the English nation?’ Such were the questions regarding Englishness that Thorlac Turville-Petre posed in 1994 when he observed that ‘the establishment and exploration of a sense of a national identity is a major preoccupation of English writers of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.’ Turville-Petre’s work, which found its most expansive form in his seminal study England the Nation, established medieval English nationalism as a vibrant field of interest, and has led to the proliferation of studies of the development of medieval Englishness over the past decade or so. Important work by scholars such as Siobhain Bly Calkin, Geraldine Heng and Kathy Lavezzo – amongst others – illustrate the degree to which the study of nationalism has become embedded within the practice of medieval scholarship.

However, the validity of attempting to discern the origins of the English ‘nation’ within the literature of the medieval period has not been without its critics. Can one read the beginnings of English ‘nationalism’ – in the classic Andersonian sense – in such pre-modern texts? Views on the issue have been polarising: while many scholars have been quick to take up the search for a nascent medieval English national identity, others have remained more cautious. Derek Pearsall, in a response to the profusion of identifications of medieval national sentiment appearing in the late 1990s, comments that ‘while particular circumstances produced a momentary surge in assertions of Englishness around 1290-1340 and again in 1410-20, there was no steadily growing sense of national feeling.’ The debate seems – in essence – to be over what medievalists mean when they use terms such as ‘nationalism’ and ‘national identity’: are they implying ‘momentary surges’ or a ‘steadily growing’ sense of national identity? The question of whether nationalism can indeed be identified as a developing discourse in medieval English texts is further complicated by the postulated post-medieval origins of nationalism itself. Benedict Anderson, in his influential Imagined Communities, sums up the view that it was the Enlightenment that engendered nationalism: ‘in Western Europe the eighteenth century marks … the dawn of the age of nationalism.’ In response to such periodized objections, medievalists have been quick to dismantle Anderson’s temporally-constrained formulation, and have argued for studies on ‘the discourse of the nation’ to be extended back beyond the traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century origins of the modern nation state. Diane Speed, arguing the case for the presence of medieval nationalisms in romance, considers ‘that it could be reasonably taken back to literature of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, especially to the early romances…’

The widening of the use of ‘nation’ as a critical tool has encouraged medievalists such as Geraldine Heng to further challenge the rigorously modern definition of nationalism, arguing that nationalist ideology is discernible in earlier literature...'

'The discourse of national identity in medieval England has been the subject of much critical deb... more 'The discourse of national identity in medieval England has been the subject of much critical debate in the past decade. The publication in 1996 of Thorlac Turville-Petre’s England the Nation established the study of medieval English nationalism as a vibrant and important field of study, and numerous additions to the debate over the origins, development and nature of medieval notions of Englishness have appeared since. Important studies by scholars such as Siobhain Bly Calkin, Geraldine Heng, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Kathy Lavezzo illustrate the degree to which the study of nationalism has become embedded within the practice of medieval scholarship. This chapter seeks to examine the narrative of English identity found in Sir Bevis of Hampton, reconsidering it in the light of two important geographical foci of the romance – the region of Hampshire and the lands of the East – in order to highlight the complexities of identity that are suggested by Bevis’s continual geographical relocation within the romance.

Bevis is, as Turville-Petre has argued, a text that is deeply concerned with the construction of Englishness...'

'The fourteenth-century romance Havelok the Dane begins with a depiction of the ideal state of ro... more 'The fourteenth-century romance Havelok the Dane begins with a depiction of the ideal state of royal rule that was enforced within England under King Athelwold.

It was a king bi are-dawes
That in his time were gode lawes...

... The peace maintained by Athelwold is illustrated through a series of dynamic acts which demonstrate his royal authority: his making and holding of laws; his equanimous extension of these laws to his subjects; his incorruptible pursuit and punishment of law-breakers; and his protection of merchants and travellers. This last motif, the motif of the safety of travel and the peace of the roads, is central to the construction of the legal Golden Age that exists in England under Athelwold. This motif of the safety of the King’s roads has long been recognised as having held a popular place within the medieval English literature. The motif also occurs in another romance setting in the Auchinleck MS version of Guy of Warwick, in this case as part of a demonstration of the peace enforced within the county of Warwick by the Earl’s steward, Sywarde ...

... In this article I will attempt to map the literary archaeology of this motif, and in doing so seek to answer a number of questions: where does the motif originate? In what other textual and cultural contexts does it occur? What meaning might a medieval reader or listener have inferred from the presence of such a motif within a romance? In what fashion would the motif have operated as a familiar signifier within the audience’s ‘horizon of expectation’ regarding the romance genre and literature more generally? The importance of understanding the provenance and development of such long-lived romance motifs has been highlighted by Helen Cooper through her cooption of the notion of the meme ....

"'The late-fourteenth-century romance Sir Launfal narrates the financial, martial and erotic adve... more "'The late-fourteenth-century romance Sir Launfal narrates the financial, martial and erotic adventures of one of the lesser-known knights of the Arthurian court. In Thomas Chestre’s popularised version of Marie de France’s Breton Lai (Lanval), our hero’s woes begin when he is excluded from the Arthurian court’s largesse after he refuses the predatory Guinevere’s sexual advances. Shamed by his resulting poverty, which is only amplified by the financial demands of his role as Arthur’s royal steward, Launfal takes his leave of the court and departs for Caerleon, where he vainly seeks succour at the hands of the city’s mayor, who has benefited in the past from Launfal’s own generosity. However, a knight out of favour in the royal court is of no current use to the mayor, who begrudgingly offers only meagre lodgings, and this is only forthcoming after Launfal sarcastically rebukes him regarding the value of past loyalties. Denied not only the company of men due to his poverty, but also access to the Church, as he lacks clean clothing in which to visit it, Launfal is approaching the depths of despair. After a final humiliation of being excluded from the invitations to a Trinity feast hosted by the mayor, Launfal rides out into the forest to seek refuge both from the ridicule of the townsfolk and from his own sense of shame.

It is in this moment of extreme financial deprivation and social exclusion, the pathos of which is further intensified by his fall into a fen while riding to the forest, that Launfal encounters what turns out to be the unsought answer to his social and pecuniary predicament. Having stopped to rest and to contemplate his woes under a tree in a forest clearing, he is visited by two beautifully arrayed maidens, who greet him nobly before leading him to the pavilion of their mistress, Dame Triamoure. Once there, Launfal comes across a most magnificent scene of exotic opulence...'
"

'The fifteenth-century Maude Roll is one of two medieval manuscripts held by the University of Ca... more 'The fifteenth-century Maude Roll is one of two medieval manuscripts held by the University of Canterbury Library in Christchurch, New Zealand. A richly illuminated medieval genealogical roll, it delineates the lineage of the English monarchy from their legendary forebear Noah down to King Edward IV, including their Biblical, Trojan, British, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Welsh, and English royal forebears. The roll is 18 feet long by 13½ inches wide, consisting of six pieces of parchment—each three feet long—joined together and rolled round a wooden cylinder. The first sixteen feet contain the genealogy of the English royal line, while the final two feet of the roll are blank. The genealogy is supplemented throughout by Latin historical commentary upon the important episodes in the legendary history of Britain. Despite its inherent interest to scholars—of manuscript art, medieval history, and literature alike—the manuscript has attracted minimal critical attention since it was first edited and published in 1919.

What little attention that has been paid to the Maude Roll has been due to its pronounced political character. The manuscript is one example of a proliferation of both English and Latin genealogical rolls that were produced during the fifteenth century as part of the ongoing contestation of the English crown that was to erupt in the Wars of the Roses. Such texts were produced in large numbers by both Lancastrian and Yorkist kings and supporters, pointing towards the increasing value of literary propaganda during this period. The fullest examination of this literary phenomenon is found in Alison Allen’s 1979 article, in which the Maude Roll features merely as a footnote. Within this context, the Maude Roll is far from unique: however, despite its representative nature, the manuscript remains a fascinating one, offering profound and varied insights into the processes of the manipulation of history and legend in the late medieval period. For the purposes of this chapter I wish to examine the function of the Maude Roll as a historical artefact, and the significances that have been placed upon it by different generations of readers. Emphasising the Maude Roll’s textual and physical articulation of historical and cultural continuity, this chapter examines the cultural work performed by the manuscript within two discrete temporal moments: first, the roll’s origin, either through original production or scribal emendation, as political propaganda during the reign of Edward IV in the third quarter of the fifteenth century; and second, the process through which the roll came into the possession of the University of Canterbury Library....'

'The Middle English Guy of Warwick narrates a vita that is, even by the often outrageous standard... more 'The Middle English Guy of Warwick narrates a vita that is, even by the often outrageous standards of medieval romance, extraordinary. Guy’s life leads him from somewhat humble beginnings as the son of a provincial steward – the very margins of chivalric society – to his predestined place as chivalric, Christian, and most importantly, English culture-hero. Along the way he obtains chivalric glory, courtly paramour and associated noble title (Earl of Warwick), vanquishes Saracen threats both defensively (at the walls of Constantinople) and offensively (whilst on a one-man Crusade in the Middle East) – thus taking on the mantle of defender of European Christianity – before returning home to become England’s saviour from invasion and to finally die, as the circle of his life completes, back in Warwickshire as a devout hermit. As an example of popular romance entertainment, Guy of Warwick has few peers either in terms of popularity or its impact on wider English culture. However, the romance’s importance is not limited to its function as popular entertainment. Much recent scholarship has established the important role of medieval romance in the articulation of national and group identity, figuring romance as a genre that is of great interest to the literary scholar and cultural historian alike. In addition to the importance of Guy of Warwick in the discourse of identity politics, the figure of Guy also enjoys a powerful influence outside the romance, as he is appropriated for the promotion of family, civic, and national pride more widely within English culture. The narrative development of Guy as a medieval culture-hero – a figure that embodies a number of different identity groups – is the subject of this chapter.

Thorlac Turville-Petre has described Guy as ‘the model of the knight of England.’ Implicit within this designation is an understanding of this romance as exemplary narrative: a vita that in some fashion was intended to be imitated by its audience...'

'‘The law occupies a crucial role in the mythology and ideology of a people.’ During the great ... more '‘The law occupies a crucial role in the mythology and ideology of a people.’

During the great rebellion of 1381 the tenants of St. Alban’s abbey, led by one Walter Grindcobbe, petitioned the Abbot to deliver to them charters held by the abbey that related the liberties of the vill. The Abbot produced these charters, but as Stephen Justice has suggested, they seem to have lacked the confirmation of the freedoms that the rebels desired. These deficient charters were then burned, and the rebels demanded that the Abbot produce one particular ‘ancient charter … with capital letters, one of gold and one of azure.’ This charter, Walsingham tells us, was believed to confirm a series of liberties and privileges that had been granted to the townsfolk in the time of King Offa for their services in building the monastery. These privileges, they claimed, had once been enjoyed by the town, but had been slowly eroded over time by the Abbot and the monks. The Abbot, faced with pressure to produce the rumoured Anglo-Saxon charter, repeatedly denied its existence. Despite these denials the rebels would not accept that the charter did not exist, and eventually the Abbot was forced to write out a new charter confirming King Offa’s privileges.

The actions of the rebels in the St. Alban’s case highlight an intriguing aspect of English law in the fourteenth century: the rebels’ claim to legal privilege is based upon a charter that was believed to have originated in the distant Anglo-Saxon past...'

postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 2016

Forthcoming in _Parergon_ (September 2015)

in Sexual Culture in the Literature of Medieval Britain, Eds. Amanda Hopkins, Robert Allen Rouse, and Cory James Rushton (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, forthcoming 2014). pp. 1-12.

in Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative, Ed. Robert T. Tally Jr. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

Citation:

Bevis is, as Turville-Petre has argued, a text that is deeply concerned with the construction of Englishness...'

It was a king bi are-dawes
That in his time were gode lawes...

'‘The law occupies a crucial role in the mythology and ideology of a people.’ During the great ... more '‘The law occupies a crucial role in the mythology and ideology of a people.’

Arthuriana 23.2 (2013): 76-77.

possibilities offered by a combination of sound traditional scholarship and technological innovat... more possibilities offered by a combination of sound traditional scholarship and technological innovation. We can only hope that a fully searchable electronic index of Middle English prose, based on the vast quantities of information now made available through the Handlists, is not too far away. University of Kent SARAH JAMES Lisa Lampert-Weissig, Medieval Literature and Postcolonial Studies, Postcolonial Literary Studies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010). xli + 188 pp. ISBN 978-0-7486-3718-8. £19.99. In this extremely useful book, Lisa Lampert-Weissig provides a comprehensive overview of and advocation for the 'postcolonial turn' in Medieval Studies. In tune with recent important studies, the 'central premise of this book [is] that the ideological groundwork for colonialism was being laid well before 1492' (p. 2). In a comprehensive overview of the state of the (sub)fi eld ('The future of the past', pp. 1-30), Lampert-Weissig identifi es what she views as fi ve of the most important outcomes for medievalists thinking postcolonially: challenging periodization; rethinking borders and boundaries; borderlands; global vision; and decentring Christianity/rethinking race (pp. 4-11). The introductory chapter then goes on to raise briefl y the implications of the temporal collocation of the historical development of the study of medieval literature and of colonialism itself (pp. 20-30).