Book contents
- Medieval Historical Writing
- Medieval Historical Writing
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
- General Introduction
- Part I Time
- Chapter 1 Gildas
- Chapter 2 Monastic History and Memory
- Chapter 3 Apocalypse and/as History
- Chapter 4 The Brut: Legendary British History
- Chapter 5 Genealogies
- Chapter 6 Anglo-Saxon Futures: Writing England’s Ethical Past, Before and After 1066
- Chapter 7 Pagan Histories/Pagan Fictions
- Part II Place
- Part III Practice
- Part IV Genre
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 2 - Monastic History and Memory
from Part I - Time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2019
- Medieval Historical Writing
- Medieval Historical Writing
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
- General Introduction
- Part I Time
- Chapter 1 Gildas
- Chapter 2 Monastic History and Memory
- Chapter 3 Apocalypse and/as History
- Chapter 4 The Brut: Legendary British History
- Chapter 5 Genealogies
- Chapter 6 Anglo-Saxon Futures: Writing England’s Ethical Past, Before and After 1066
- Chapter 7 Pagan Histories/Pagan Fictions
- Part II Place
- Part III Practice
- Part IV Genre
- Bibliography
- Index
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.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Medieval Historical WritingBritain and Ireland, 500–1500, pp. 35 - 50Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019