'Romancing the Past: Reimagining Brunanburh in the Fourteenth Century.' (original) (raw)

Abstract

'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...'

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