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Chapter 2 - Monastic History and Memory

from Part I - Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2019

Jennifer Jahner
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
Emily Steiner
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Elizabeth M. Tyler
Affiliation:
University of York
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Summary

Monastic writers have long been considered the prototypical writers of history in the Middle Ages. This essay asks just how writing about the past related to the monastic life, in the myriad ways that nuns and monks practiced it in Ireland and Britain in the Middle Ages, and how history-writing was part of a broad array of memorial practices over the whole period. The concept of memory offers a practical context for considering the full range of historical production in monastic archives: romances, lais, sagas, and letters alongside chronicles, saints’ lives and cartularies. Since memory was also a major means of interaction between monastics and seculars, memory also clarifies the fluid boundaries between so-called monastic and secular forms of history.

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Chapter
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Medieval Historical Writing
Britain and Ireland, 500–1500
, pp. 35 - 50
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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