William of Malmesbury is one of the most important English historians of the twelfth century -- not only a critical period in English history, but also one that has been recognised as significant in terms of the writing of history and the construction of a national past. This innovative study provides a gendered reading of Malmesbury's works with special reference to the themes of conquest and nation. It considers Malmesbury's presentation of men and women (both lay and religious) through categories based on attributes, such as sexual behaviour and violence, rather than the more familiar `professional' or familial roles, such as warrior and wife. It is also concerned with language and how the topics of conquest and nation are discussed in gendered terms. Importantly, attention is paid to Malmesbury's own position as a post-conquest chronicler, writing at a time of church reform, and to the impact the changes had upon the construction of the stories he narrates. KIRSTEN A. FENTON holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh.

"William of Malmesbury, arguably the greatest English historian of the twelfth century, repeatedly emphasises that the primary purpose of all literary and intellectual activities is to provide moral instruction for the reader, the most famous of his statements to this effect being found in his monumental work Gesta Regum Anglorum, where he categorises history as a sub-discipline of ethics. However, modern studies have chosen to focus on other aspects of William's oeuvre and tended to dismiss such claims as perfunctory nods to a pious commonplace. This book differs from recent orthodoxy by being based on the proposition that medieval professions of the moral aims of historiography are in fact genuine. It seeks to read William's celebrated historical works in the light of his devotional and didactic texts, and in the context of the religious, intellectual and literary traditions to which he expressed his allegiance. He also demonstrates how William's conception of ethics forms a constitutive element of his historical output. The resulting image of William shows a committed monk and man of his time, placing his extraordinary learning at the service of his culture, his society and his faith."--Publisher's website.

It has long been established that the crisis of 1066 generated a florescence of historical writing in the first half of the twelfth century. Emily A. Winkler presents a new perspective on previously unqueried matters, investigating how historians' individual motivations and assumptions produced changes in the kind of history written across the Conquest. She argues that responses to the Danish Conquest of 1016 and the Norman Conquest of 1066 changed dramatically within two generations of the latter conquest. Repeated conquest could signal repeated failures and sin across the orders of society, yet early twelfth-century historians in England not only extract English kings and people from a history of failure, but also establish English kingship as a worthy office on a European scale. Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing illuminates the consistent historical agendas of four historians: William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, John of Worcester, and Geffrei Gaimar. In their narratives of England's eleventh-century history, these twelfth-century historians expanded their approach to historical explanation to include individual responsibility and accountability within a framework of providential history. In this regard, they made substantial departures from their sources. These historians share a view of royal responsibility independent both of their sources (primarily the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) and of any political agenda that placed English and Norman allegiances in opposition. Although the accounts diverge widely in the interpretation of character, all four are concerned more with the effectiveness of England's kings than with the legitimacy of their origins. Their new, shared view of royal responsibility represents a distinct phenomenon in England's twelfth-century historiography.

This book contributes to the flourishing interest in memory and the crusades. It offers a nuanced understanding of how medieval authors presented the crusades. It opens up new avenues for research into medieval texts and songs about the crusading movement.

Writing the North of England in the Middle Ages offers a literary history of the North-South divide, examining the complexities of the relationship – imaginative, material, and political – between North and South in a wide range of texts. Through sustained analysis of the North-South divide as it emerges in the literature of medieval England, this study illustrates the convoluted dynamic of desire and derision of the North by the rest of country. Joseph Taylor dissects England's problematic sense of nationhood as one which must be negotiated and renegotiated from within, rather than beyond, national borders. Providing fresh readings of texts such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the fifteenth-century Robin Hood ballads and the Towneley plays, this book argues for the North's vital contribution to processes of imagining nation in the Middle Ages and shows that that regionalism is both contained within and constitutive of its apparent opposite, nationalism.

The belief in the reality of demons and the restless dead formed a central facet of the medieval worldview. Whether a pestilent-spreading corpse mobilised by the devil, a purgatorial spirit returning to earth to ask for suffrage, or a shape-shifting demon intent on crushing its victims as they slept, encounters with supernatural entities were often met with consternation and fear. Chroniclers, hagiographers, sermon writers, satirists, poets, and even medical practitioners utilised the cultural ‘text’ of the supernatural encounter in many different ways, showcasing the multiplicity of contemporary attitudes to death, disease, and the afterlife. In this volume, Stephen Gordon explores the ways in which conflicting ideas about the intention and agency of supernatural entities were understood and articulated in different social and literary contexts. Focusing primarily on material from medieval England, c.1050–1450, Gordon discusses how writers such as William of Malmesbury, William of Newburgh, Walter Map, John Mirk, and Geoffrey Chaucer utilised the belief in demons, nightmares, and walking corpses for pointed critical effect. Ultimately, this monograph provides new insights into the ways in which the broad ontological category of the ‘revenant’ was conceptualised in the medieval world.

The union of Normandy and England in 1066 recast the political map of western Europe and marked the beginning of a new era in the region's international history. This book is a groundbreaking investigation of the relations and exchanges between the county of Flanders and the Anglo-Norman realm. Among other important themes, it examines Anglo-Flemish diplomatic treaties and fiefs, international aristocratic culture, the growth of overseas commerce, immigration into England and the construction of new social and national identities. The century and a half between the conquest of England by the duke of Normandy and the conquest of Normandy by the king of France witnessed major revolutions in European society, politics and culture. This study explores the history of England, northern France and southern Low Countries in relation to each other during this period, giving fresh perspectives to the historical development of north-western Europe in the Central Middle Ages.

New insights into interpretive problems in the history of England and Europe between the eighth and thirteenth centuries.

Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 3 (CMR3) is the third part of a general history of relations between the faiths. Covering the period from 1050 to 1200, it comprises a series of introductory essays, together with the main body of more than one hundred detailed entries on all the works by Christians and Muslims about and against one another that are known from this period. These entries provide biographical details of the authors where known, descriptions and assessments of the works themselves, and complete accounts of manuscripts, editions, translations and studies. The result of collaboration between leading scholars in the field, CMR3 is an indispensable basis for research in all elements of the history of Christian-Muslim relations.

Essays offering new approaches to the changing forms of medieval religious masculinity.