Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- General Introduction: What's in a Name: the ‘French’ of ‘England’
- Section I Language and Socio-Linguistics
- Section II Crossing the Conquest: New Linguistic and Literary Histories
- Introduction
- 11 ‘Stuffed Latin’: Vernacular Evidence in Latin Documents
- 12 From Old English to Old French
- 13 Translating the ‘English’ Past: Cultural Identity in the Estoire des Engleis
- 14 The Languages of England: Multilingualism in the Work of Wace
- 15 An Illustrious Vernacular: The Psalter en romanz in Twelfth-Century England
- 16 Serpent's Head/Jew's Hand: Le Jeu d'Adam and Christian–Jewish Debate in Norman England
- 17 Salerno on the Thames: The Genesis of Anglo-Norman Medical Literature
- Section III After Lateran IV: Francophone Devotions and Histories
- Section IV England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
- Bibliography
- Index of Primary Texts and Manuscripts
- Index of Primary Authors
- General Index: Persons and Places, Subjects
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
13 - Translating the ‘English’ Past: Cultural Identity in the Estoire des Engleis
from Section II - Crossing the Conquest: New Linguistic and Literary Histories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- General Introduction: What's in a Name: the ‘French’ of ‘England’
- Section I Language and Socio-Linguistics
- Section II Crossing the Conquest: New Linguistic and Literary Histories
- Introduction
- 11 ‘Stuffed Latin’: Vernacular Evidence in Latin Documents
- 12 From Old English to Old French
- 13 Translating the ‘English’ Past: Cultural Identity in the Estoire des Engleis
- 14 The Languages of England: Multilingualism in the Work of Wace
- 15 An Illustrious Vernacular: The Psalter en romanz in Twelfth-Century England
- 16 Serpent's Head/Jew's Hand: Le Jeu d'Adam and Christian–Jewish Debate in Norman England
- 17 Salerno on the Thames: The Genesis of Anglo-Norman Medical Literature
- Section III After Lateran IV: Francophone Devotions and Histories
- Section IV England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
- Bibliography
- Index of Primary Texts and Manuscripts
- Index of Primary Authors
- General Index: Persons and Places, Subjects
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
Summary
The title of the only identifiable work by Geffrei Gaimar, L'Estoire des Engleis, has long and unfairly coloured its reception, and has cast dark shadows over the nuances of its contents. The Estoire is frequently perceived as an unproblematically national history, a product of a time when the homogenous ‘Normans’ and the monolithic ‘English’ vied for control over the territory of an unproblematic England and its singular, English, past. It is seen above all as a straightforward means by which the Normans who commissioned it could attach themselves to, and root themselves in, England and its past and so ‘become’ ‘English’.
And perhaps such perceptions are not surprising. Firstly, the Estoire is the earliest known historiographical work in Anglo-Norman, which leads to the impression that it is evidence of the Anglo-Norman language – and those who used it – asserting themselves by claiming the right to write history. Secondly, the Estoire is heavily reliant on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and is often considered to be a mere verse translation of it. So in turn it is hard not to see it as a Norman claim to the right of writing the history of England in particular. And thirdly it was produced in the second quarter of the twelfth century, precisely when historians consider the distinctions between Englishness and Norman-ness to have been breaking down. It was a time when, in R. H. C. Davis's formulation, ‘the Normans belonged to England as much as England belonged to them’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language and Culture in Medieval BritainThe French of England, c.1100–c.1500, pp. 179 - 187Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009