Once Called Albion

243 Pages·2012·5.62 MB·English

Once Called Albion:
The Composition and Transmission of History Writing in England, 1280-1350
Matthew Fisher
Lady Margaret Hall
Oxford University
Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Trinity Term, 2004
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ABSTRACT
Once Called Albion:
The Composition and Transmission of History Writing in England, 1280-1350
Matthew Fisher
Lady Margaret Hall
Oxford University
Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Trinity Term, 2004 ' ' .
This thesis considers late thirteenth and early fourteenth century insular history
writing in the vernaculars in its multilingual, codicological, and historical contexts. It seeks
to explicate the changes in insular historiography after the conquest of Wales and amidst the
ongoing Scottish wars. The dominant mode of history writing during this period shifted: the
texts examined in the thesis are 'derivative texts', complex assemblages of translations from
numerous source texts, compiled and combined into unique, original works. Revising current
notions of scribal competency, and arguing for a wider consideration of scribal authorship are
fundamental aims of the thesis. By demonstrating the diverse and sophisticated textual
lexicons of the authors of derivative texts, the thesis exposes vernacular historiographies as
learned productions, written for learned audiences, engaged in intertextual dialogue with
more 'authoritative' Latin historiography. Medieval translation is explored throughout, in an
attempt to broaden an understanding of the term to include textual and ideological
transposition, and overwrite 'compilation' as an acceptable description of these sophisticated
and politically engaged texts.
Chapter 1 examines the Anonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle as a derivative
text, situating the work in its historical context of Edward I's appeals to historiography on the
Scottish question at the end of the thirteenth century. Chapter 2 is a detailed study of the
chronicles of Robert Mannyng and Pierre Langtoft, arguing for the sophistication of the texts,
and complexifying previously monolithic ideas of ethnicity and 'Englishness' in the
chronicles. Chapter 3 focuses on the Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, providing a
comprehensive introduction to the text, and offering readings of the ideological agenda of its
derivative methodology. Chapter 4 investigates London, College of Arms, MS Arundel 58, a
mid-fifteenth century manuscript of Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle with unique and
substantive prose interpolations, considering the physical processes by which derivative texts
were written.
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1 Revising Albion 10
Narrative History 25
Scribal Reading 37
Interdict 48
2 Translating History 56
Deriving Mannyng 57
'Les trofles ' and fles verites': Langtoft 's Songs 89
Scribal Judgments 102
3 Derivations on a Theme 110
Textual Identity 111
Theory and Praxis 130
Recensions 134
fBot hit be por$ gyle': Racial Politics and the Barons' War 145
4 Prosaic History 158
Prose and Verse 163
'More pleine of the same mater' 179
Strategies of Intervention and Composition 188
Original Interpolations: Scota and Scone 190
Translated Interpolations: Arthur's Deaths 191
Translated Interpolations: The Merlin of the Prophecies 198
Translated Interpolations: Epilogue(s) 206
Translated Interpolations: Glastonbury/Foundations 209
Conclusion 217
Bibliography 221

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, for their unflagging support, in all ways, I must thank my extended family, without
whom my years at Oxford would never have been possible. To my mother, father, and sister:
for your love, loyalty, and patience, I am forever grateful.
The debts I have incurred to my supervisor, Professor Anne Hudson, cannot be adequately
expressed. Her unswerving faith in my project and in my ability to bring it to completion, her
encouragement, and the sheer generosity with which she shared her time stand as a model to
which I shall forever aspire. The intellectual and academic rigour she exemplifies, and which
she has inculcated in me over the years, are priceless. I must also thank the fellows and staff
of Lady Margaret Hall, in particular Helen LeMare, Helen Post, Barry Mawby, and the late
Alan Tilley, for their encouragement, companionship, and assistance over the many obstacles
I've encountered on the way.
From my teachers at both the University of California, Berkeley, and at Oxford University, I
have learned the precious lessons of humility in the face of knowledge, and the power of
ignorance in a field that predates us, at institutions that will outlast us. Amongst the many
scholars who have generously shared with me their knowledge and expertise, I would
particularly like to thank Helen Barr, Helen Cooper, Ralph Hanna, Tony Hunt, Erik Kooper,
Anne Middleton, and Eric Stanley.
For their love, thought, time, support, friendship, encouragement, conversation,
companionship, music, and silence, I thank Antonio Fortin, Peta Gordon, Scan Walsh, and
Doug Wright. My life is incomparably richer for having you in it.
To Jennifer Miller, John Lynch, and Aaron and Maura Lynch-Miller, my gratitude for all that
you have taught me.
For the many along the way who have been unafraid to make me think, and make me pause,
my thanks to Justin Amery, Fabio Battistella, Ben Bridle, Paddy Bullard, Rachel Callaghan,
Alan Connor, George Edmondson, Dyane Epstein, Sharon Goetz, Joanne Gordon, Dan
Grausam, Nicole Green, Jemma Griffiths, Leif Hanitsch, Scott Kleinman, Nick Lambert,
Meg Lamont, Helen LeMare, Abbie Leeson, Sjoerd Levelt, Marisa Libbon, Alex
McGuinness, Mike Nein, Eboo Patel, Isaac Russell, Selby Schwartz, Philip Schwyzer,
Gustavo Secchi, Blythe Wilkinson, Adrienne Williams, Andrea Williams, Ling Ling Yi, and
Carole Zabbal.
For their exceptional generosity in assisting me with the final stages of bringing the thesis to
completion, and their remarkable editorial talents, thanks to Sara Chapin and Marisa Libbon.
Any errors are, of course, entirely my own.
Finally, I would like to thank the librarians, curators, archivists, and the staff of the following
institutions for their generosity in permitting me to consult the manuscripts in their
collections, and for their patience with my often frantic requests: Bodleian Library, Oxford;
Balliol College, Oxford; All Souls College, Oxford; The British Library; Cambridge
University Library; Magdalene College, Cambridge; Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge;
Trinity College, Cambridge; The Huntington Library; National Library of Wales; Public
Record Office; The College of Arms; Inner Temple Library; and Lambeth Palace Library.

INTRODUCTION
History writing in England is not the most obvious genre in which to seek insights
into fundamental questions of medieval authorship, scribal competence, translation, and
textual originality. Yet the major works of historiography written in Middle English and
Anglo-Norman between 1280 and 1350 provide, because of their nature, evidence that
contributes to the revision of current perceptions of how medieval texts were composed, and
how and by whom they were read. Moreover, the historical circumstances of the period
changed what was at stake in the writing of history. The Edwardian conquest of Wales and
the beginnings of the ongoing conflict with Scotland brought historiography into the sphere
of legal, documentary contests at the same time that the narratives of ethnically specific
sovereignty over the island were appropriated by the authoring of an English political agenda.
The internal political divisions of the island - the legacy of Magna Carta, the Barons' War,
the Baronial crises of 1297-98, and the ongoing power struggles in Edward II's reign - are
the primary backdrop for the historiography of the period, moving beyond the racial politics
so central to twelfth century history writing. Yet despite the historical subject matter, and the
participation in the shaping of the history of Britain, vernacular historiography remains an
emphatically literary corpus of writings, very much written to be read by diverse audiences.
The idea of a 'derivative text' - a text indebted, whether through compilation,
adaptation, or translation, to any number of source texts, yet distinct, original, and valuable in
and of itself, and in its manipulation of its sources - is at once straightforward, and elusive.
Texts such as the Anonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle, the Anglo-Norman Brut, and
the chronicles of Robert of Gloucester, Robert Mannyng, and Pierre Langtoft, all survive in
multiple textual versions in multiple manuscripts. These derivative texts all translate
portions, sometimes extensive, of each other, as well as of other source texts in Middle
Introduction - 2
English, Latin, and Anglo-Norman. Moreover, they combine in themselves translations and
redactions of the two competing, and previously irreconcilable, traditions of history writing
of the twelfth century: the Galfridian (British) and the Bedan (English); the difficulties in
assimilating these two strands of history, and thereby negotiating and reconciling their
opposing ideological projects, contribute to the complexity of derivative histories of the
period.
The manuscripts preserving these texts contain sometimes wildly differing versions of
the 'original' text they supposedly represent in some stage of its codicological transmission.
Yet in reducing the status of these texts to 'versions' of an hypothetical original - an
inevitable byproduct of stemmatic editing - the original, and significantly original,
contributions of large numbers of scribes to the writing of history have been lost. The
paucity of our knowledge of the actual methods and processes of medieval composition
reflects, I believe, the reductive perception of these texts as 'variants' or 'corruptions' rather
than original, though derivative compositions. By situating derivative texts fully in their
unique historical and codicological contexts, and by studying them as individually valuable
contributions to the tradition of history writing (itself inherently derivative: writing history is
a process both historical and historicised, indebted to and constitutive of the past it creates),
this thesis attempts to recover more accurately the complexities of medieval composition and
circulation.
Derivative texts, because of their unique and varied nature, resist traditional source
and analogue study. This thesis does, certainly, engage in 'traditional' source study
inasmuch as it seeks to identify, where possible, the specific and local textual indebtedness of
one text to another. Yet the resulting textual lexicon thereby constructed is not defined, as
has historically been the case, as solely the province of the author. Scribal authorship has
largely been overlooked as a fruitful category in which to comprehend the historiographical
Introduction - 3
texts of the period - or of any period. Demonstrating individual scribes' access to a body of
work is only significant inasmuch as it enables a reassessment of the idea of authorship,
unencumbered by the insidious influence of modern, print-culture notions of originality and
copyright. Additionally, a modified perception of the expanded horizons of textual
knowledge and awareness of individual scribes/authors necessitates a fundamental revision of
expectations for the audiences of derivative texts: the scribes who copied and wrote
derivative texts are, ultimately, amongst the few demonstrable medieval readers of their
source texts.
Derivative texts are perhaps best perceived as translations, rather than as
compilations. Although compilation is certainly a part of the process of assembling and
creating a derivative text - identifying and isolating materials in a number of source texts and
bringing them together into a whole - the overtones of the term are such that any overarching
sense of purposeful unity and structural coherence is lost.1 The idea of translation considered
closely, and indeed, its very etymology, suggest the breadth of meaning the term can bear.
Beyond the most reductive sense of linguistic transformation, the idea of translation carries
with it acts of textual transposition and relocation, an accompanying change in context, and
thus ultimately, a change in meaning. Without entering into the questions of classical
rhetoric and 'word for word' or 'sense for sense' translation, consider, for a moment, the
praxis of translation as seen in the historiographical texts of the period, discussed in broad,
heuristic terms.2 Lagamon's Brut is widely acknowledged to be a translation of Wace's
1 Moreover, the technical and more rigorously defined 'compilatio' is closely associated with the use of the term
'compilation' and, I believe, heavily inflects its meaning. For compilatio see M. B. Parkes, 'The Influence of
the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book', in eds. J.J.G. Alexander and M.T.
Gibson, Medieval learning and Literature (Oxford, 1976), 115-141. See also B. Guen£e, 'L'historien et la
compilation au xiie siecle', Journal des Savants (Jan.-Sept., 1985), 119-35, Topposition fondamentale entre
1'auteur et la compilateur' (125). Guenee does eventually offer, for the later thirteenth century, a more
sophisticated idea of compilers and compilations, 'L'compilateur n'a pas simplement la lourde responsabilit6 de
choisir ses extraits. II a celle de les ordonner et de faire ve"ritablement, par la, oeuvre nouvelle' (128).
2 For rhetoric and discussions of translation, see, amongst many works on the topics, R. Copeland, Rhetoric,
Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge,
1991); J. Beer, ed., Translation Theory and Practice in the Middle Ages (Kalamazoo, 1997), and Translators