The Sea and Englishness in the Middle Ages
Maritime Narratives, Identity and Culture
Published on 20. October 2011
Book
Hardback
274 pages
978-1-84384-276-7 (ISBN)
Description
Essays examining the way in which the sea has shaped medieval and later ideas of what it is to be English.
Local and imperial, insular and expansive, both English yet British: geographically and culturally, the sea continues to shape changing models of Englishness. This volume traces the many literary origins of insular identity from local communities to the entire archipelago, laying open the continuities and disruptions in the sea's relationship with English identity in a British context. Ranging from the beginnings of insular literature to Victorian medievalisms, the subjects treated include King Arthur's struggle with muddy banks, the afterlife of Edgar's forged charters, Old English homilies and narratives of migration, Welsh and English ideas about Chester, Anglo-Norman views of the sea in the Vie de St Edmund and Waldef, post-Conquest cartography, The Book of Margery Kempe, the works of the Irish Stopford Brooke, and the making of an Anglo-British identity in Victorian Britain.
SEBASTIAN SOBECKI is Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
Contributors: Sebastian Sobecki, Winfried Rudolf, Fabienne Michelet, Catherine A.M. Clarke, Judith Weiss, Kathy Lavezzo, Alfred Hiatt, Jonathan Hsy, Chris Jones, Joanne Parker, David Wallace
Local and imperial, insular and expansive, both English yet British: geographically and culturally, the sea continues to shape changing models of Englishness. This volume traces the many literary origins of insular identity from local communities to the entire archipelago, laying open the continuities and disruptions in the sea's relationship with English identity in a British context. Ranging from the beginnings of insular literature to Victorian medievalisms, the subjects treated include King Arthur's struggle with muddy banks, the afterlife of Edgar's forged charters, Old English homilies and narratives of migration, Welsh and English ideas about Chester, Anglo-Norman views of the sea in the Vie de St Edmund and Waldef, post-Conquest cartography, The Book of Margery Kempe, the works of the Irish Stopford Brooke, and the making of an Anglo-British identity in Victorian Britain.
SEBASTIAN SOBECKI is Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
Contributors: Sebastian Sobecki, Winfried Rudolf, Fabienne Michelet, Catherine A.M. Clarke, Judith Weiss, Kathy Lavezzo, Alfred Hiatt, Jonathan Hsy, Chris Jones, Joanne Parker, David Wallace
Reviews / Votes
A welcome addition to the growing list of titles re-examining the vitally important conceptual links between literature and the sea. * INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MARITIME HISTORY * [A] valuable addition to our understanding of medieval notions of Englishness and of England [...] demonstrates that English identity is and was a constant struggle against the pull of land and ocean alike, a hybrid existence at the edge of earth and water. * LIMINA * A well-produced, well-written and well-conceived volumes. [...] Medievalists of all disciplines will find something of interest here. * THE RICARDIAN *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
8 s/w Abbildungen
8 b/w illus.
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
584 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84384-276-7 (9781843842767)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
SEBASTIAN SOBECKI is Professor of Later Medieval English Literature at the University of Toronto.
His research extends to a wide area of late medieval literary culture, especially law, travel, politics, authorship, manuscripts, and palaeography. JUDITH WEISS is a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, UK. SEBASTIAN SOBECKI is Professor of Later Medieval English Literature at the University of Toronto.
His research extends to a wide area of late medieval literary culture, especially law, travel, politics, authorship, manuscripts, and palaeography.
His research extends to a wide area of late medieval literary culture, especially law, travel, politics, authorship, manuscripts, and palaeography. JUDITH WEISS is a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, UK. SEBASTIAN SOBECKI is Professor of Later Medieval English Literature at the University of Toronto.
His research extends to a wide area of late medieval literary culture, especially law, travel, politics, authorship, manuscripts, and palaeography.
Content
Introduction: Edgar's Archipelago - Sebastian Sobecki
The Spiritual Islescape of the Anglo-Saxons - Winfried Rudolf
Lost at Sea: Nautical Travels in the Old English Exodus, the Old English Andreas, and Accounts of the adventus Saxonum - Fabienne Michelet
Edges and Otherworlds: Imagining Tidal Spaces in Early Medieval Britain - Catherine A M Clarke
East Anglia and the Sea in the Narratives of the Vie de St Edmund and Waldef - Judith Weiss
The Sea and Border Crossings in the Alliterative Morte Arthure - Kathy Lavezzo
'From Hulle to Cartage': Maps, England, and the Sea - Alfred Hiatt
Lingua Franca: Overseas Travel and Language Contact in The Book of Margery Kempe - Jonathan Hsy
'Birthplace for the poetry of the sea-ruling nation': Stopford Brooke and Old English - Chris Jones
Ruling the Waves: Saxons, Vikings, and the Sea in the Formation of an Anglo-British Identity in the Nineteenth Century - Joanne Parker
Afterword: Sea, Island, Mud - David Wallace
Bibliography
The Spiritual Islescape of the Anglo-Saxons - Winfried Rudolf
Lost at Sea: Nautical Travels in the Old English Exodus, the Old English Andreas, and Accounts of the adventus Saxonum - Fabienne Michelet
Edges and Otherworlds: Imagining Tidal Spaces in Early Medieval Britain - Catherine A M Clarke
East Anglia and the Sea in the Narratives of the Vie de St Edmund and Waldef - Judith Weiss
The Sea and Border Crossings in the Alliterative Morte Arthure - Kathy Lavezzo
'From Hulle to Cartage': Maps, England, and the Sea - Alfred Hiatt
Lingua Franca: Overseas Travel and Language Contact in The Book of Margery Kempe - Jonathan Hsy
'Birthplace for the poetry of the sea-ruling nation': Stopford Brooke and Old English - Chris Jones
Ruling the Waves: Saxons, Vikings, and the Sea in the Formation of an Anglo-British Identity in the Nineteenth Century - Joanne Parker
Afterword: Sea, Island, Mud - David Wallace
Bibliography