Writing Regional Identities in Medieval England

Emily Dolmans

ISBN 10: 1843845687 / ISBN 13: 9781843845683

Published by Boydell and Brewer Ltd, GB, 2020

About this Item

An examination of how regional identities are reflected in texts from medieval England.The period after the Norman Conquest saw a dramatic reassessment of what it meant to be English, owing to both the advent of Anglo-Norman rule and increased interaction with other cultures through trade, travel, migration, and war. While cultural contact is often thought to consolidate national identity, this book proposes that these encounters prompted the formation of intercultural regional identities. Because of these different cultural influences, the meaning of English identity varied from region to region, and became rooted in the land, its history, and its stories. Using romances and histories from England's multilingual literary milieu, including the Gesta Herewardi, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, and Richard Coer de Lyon, this study examines some of England's contact zones and how they influence understandings of English identities during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Moving from local identity in Ely, to the transcultural regions of Lincolnshire and the Welsh Marches, and finally investigating England as a border region from a global perspective, this book examines the diversity of Englishness, the effects of cultural contact on identity, and how English writers imagined their place in the world.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781843845683

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Writing Regional Identities in Medieval England
• Publisher: Boydell and Brewer Ltd, GB
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1843845687
• ISBN 13: 9781843845683
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 1 gram

About this title

Synopsis

The period after the Norman Conquest saw a dramatic reassessment of what it meant to be English, owing to both the advent of Anglo-Norman rule and increased interaction with other cultures through trade, travel, migration, and war. While cultural contact is often thought to consolidate national identity, this book proposes that these encounters prompted the formation of intercultural regional identities. Because of these different cultural influences, the meaning of English identity varied from region to region, and became rooted in the land, its history, and its stories.
Using romances and histories from England's multilingual literary milieu, including the Gesta Herewardi, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, and Richard Coer de Lyon, this study examines some of England's contact zones and how they influence understandings of English identities during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Moving from local identity in Ely, to the transcultural regions of Lincolnshire and the Welsh Marches, and finally investigating England as a border region from a global perspective, this book examines the diversity of Englishness, the effects of cultural contact on identity, and how English writers imagined their place in the world.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Coping with Conquest: Local Identity and the Gesta Herwardi
The View from Lincolnshire: Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis as Regional Identity
Locating a Border: Fouke le Fitz Waryn and the March of Wales
Englishness Outside England: Embracing Alterity in Medieval Romance
England at the Edge of the World
Envoi
Bibliography

About the Author

EMILY DOLMANS is a Lecturer in Medieval Literature at the University of East Anglia.