Prof. Raluca Radulescu (Professor of Medieval Literature and Co-Director of the Institute for Medieval & Early Modern Studies, Bangor University)
Date : 4th October 2016
Time : 6pm
Location : Parkinson Building: Room 1.08.
The historical and cultural context in which vernacular chronicles were written at the end of the Middle Ages in England and the Continent was complex. Among the numerous types of extant chronicles, the Middle English Brut chronicle tradition, with more than 180 extant manuscripts, predominantly from the fifteenth century, stands out as a ‘best seller’. The Brut chronicle inherits the narrative of Britain’s origins from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, and establishes, through its continuations up to fifteenth century, a seemingly uninterrupted line of succession for the kings of England from the foundation of the ‘nation’ by Brut, the great-grandson of Eneas. Versions of the Brut chronicle are found in abridged format, be they in Latin, French or English, in other types of chronicle, such as the genealogies. Through their diagrammatic design the genealogical chronicles provided their first audiences with powerful reminders of a particular interpretation of history, especially during the Wars of the Roses, when this type of chronicle was used, it is now believed, for political propaganda purposes.
However, the use of fifteenth-century genealogical chronicles, surviving in large numbers and in both roll and codex format, extended beyond immediate political aims. The genealogical chronicles, I argue, contributed to the creation of gentry, noble and royal family history, and shaped the imaginary of the ‘English nation’. Image-making and identity-making are thus crucial to our understanding of the cultural framework in which historical writing was produced in fifteenth-century England. My talk will address, among other, the following questions: How was the land perceived and presented in the late medieval English vernacular chronicles, particularly in the Brut and genealogies? How did the audiences of these chronicles interact with the codices and/or rolls containing these historical narratives – if at all? What gaps are there in our understanding of the function of these chronicles, and what work is still needed to fill them?
Raluca Radulescu is Professor of Medieval literature and co-director of the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Bangor University, Wales. She is also general editor of the Journal of the International Arthurian Society and President of the British Branch of the same society. She has published widely on Arthurian and non-Arthurian romance, gentry culture, fifteenth-century political culture, Brut and genealogical chronicles, and the medieval miscellany. Her most recent books are Romance and Its Contexts in Fifteenth-Century England: Politics, Piety and Penitence (Cambridge: D.S.Brewer, 2013) and, co-edited with Margaret Connolly, Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain, British Academy vol. 201 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2015).
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 