A survey of the different literary forms adopted by history writers after the Conquest, exploring why and for what effects they were used.

Contemporary descriptions of objects no longer extant are examined here to reconstruct these lost treasures.

An investigation into the hugely significant works produced by the Worcester foundation at a period of turmoil and change.

An examination of the extraordinary texts produced by the community of St Cuthbert, showing how they were used to construct and define an identity.

History was a subject popular with authors and readers in the Anglo-Norman world. The volume and richness of historical writing in the lands controlled by the kings of England, particularly from the twelfth century, has long attracted the attention of historians and literary scholars, whilst editions of works by such writers as Orderic Vitalis, John of Worcester, Symeon of Durham, William of Malmesbury, Gerald of Wales, Roger of Howden, and Matthew Paris has made them well known. Yet the easy availability of modern editions obscures both the creation and circulation of histories in the Middle Ages.This collection of essays returns to the processes involved in writing history, and in particular to the medieval manuscript sources in which the works of such historians survive. It explores the motivations of those writing about the past in the Middle Ages, and the evidence provided by manuscripts for the circumstances in which copies were made. It also addresses the selection of material for copying, combinations of text and imagery, and the demand for copies of particular works, shedding new light on how and why history was being read, reproduced, discussed, adapted, and written.Laura Cleaver is the Ussher Lecturer in Medieval Art, Trinity College Dublin; Andrea Worm is an Assistant Professor at the Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Karl-Franzens-Universität, Graz. Contributors: Stephen Church, Kathryn Gerry, Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Laura Pani, Charles C. Rozier, Gleb Schmidt, Laura Slater, Michael Staunton, Caoimhe Whelan

Found in pre-modern cultures of every era and across the world, from the ancient Near East to medieval Latin Christendom, the universal chronicle is simultaneously one of the most ubiquitous pre-modern cultural forms and one of the most overlooked. Universal chronicles narrate the history of the whole world from the time of its creation up to the then present day, treating the world's affairs as though they were part of a single organic reality, and uniting various strands of history into a unifed, coherent story. They reveal a great deal about how the societies that produced them understood their world and how historical narrative itself can work to produce that understanding. The essays here offer new perspectives on the genre, from a number of different disciplines, demonstrating their vitality, flexibility and cultural importance, They reveal them to be deeply political texts, which allowed history-writers and their audiences to locate themselves in space, time and in the created universe. Several chapters address the manuscript context, looking at the innovative techniques of compilation, structure and layout that placed them at the cutting edge of medieval book technology. Others analyse the background of universal chronicles, and identify their circulation amongst different social groups; there are also investigations into their literary discourse, patronage, authorship and diffusion. Michele Campopiano is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Latin Literature at the University of York; Henry Bainton is Lecturer in High Medieval Literature at the University of York. Contributors:Tobias Andersson, Michele Campopiano, Cornelia Dreer, Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas, Elena Koroleva, Keith Lilley, Andrew Marsham, Rosa M. Rodriguez Porto, Christophe Thierry, Elizabeth M. Tyler, Steven Vanderputten, Bjorn Weiler, Claudia Wittig.

The prose Brut chronicle was the most popular vernacular work of the late Middle Ages in England, setting a standard for vernacular historical writing well into the age of print, but until recently it has attracted little scholarly attention. This book combines a study of the chronicle's sources, content, and methods of composition, with its manuscript contexts. Using the Anglo-Norman Oldest Version as a touchstone, it investigates the chronicle's social ideals, its representation of women, and its distinctive versions of such elements of British history as the Trojan foundation myth, the ruin of the Britons, the Norman Conquest, and Arthur and Merlin, arguing that its humane, populist vision demands reassessment of medieval popular understandings of British history, and of the presumed dominance of imperialism, next-worldly piety, misogyny, and a taste for violence in late-medieval culture. The book also analyses evidence for the production of the Anglo-Norman Brut, and examines the ways in which its makers and users reconstructed British history through manuscript context, ordinatio and apparatus, annotation and illustration.Julia Marvin is a Fellow of the Medieval Institute and Associate Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Cantors made unparalleled contributions to the way time was understood and history was remembered in the medieval Latin West. The men and women who held this office in cathedrals and monasteries wereresponsible for calculating the date of Easter and the feasts dependent on it, for formulating liturgical celebrations season by season, managing the library and preparing manuscripts and other sources necessary to sustain the liturgical framework of time, and promoting the cults of saints. Crucially, their duties also often included committing the past to writing, from simple annals and chronicles to more fulsome histories, necrologies, and cartularies, thereby ensuring that towns, churches, families, and individuals could be commemorated for generations to come.
The contributions hereseek to address the fundamental question of how the range of cantors' activities can help us to understand the many different ways in which the past was written and, in the liturgy, celebrated acrossthe middle ages. Cantors, as this volume makes clear, shaped the communal experience of the past in the Middle Ages; the essays are studies of constructions, both of the building blocks of time and ofthe people who made and performed them, in acts of ritual remembrance and in written records.

Contributors: Cara Aspesi, Alison I. Beach, Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Margot E. Fassler, David Ganz, James Grier, Paul Antony Hayward, A.B. Kraebel, Lori Kruckenberg, Rosamond McKitterick, Henry Parkes, Susan Rankin, C.C. Rozier, Sigbjoryn Olsen Sonnesyn, Teresa Webber, Lauren Whitnah,

The literary career of Thomas Walsingham, a significant figure in late fourteenth-century classicist letters in England and an overlooked contemporary of Chaucer, has been neglected - which this bookremedies. Following the texts, rather than individuals or institutions, it demonstrates both authors' participation in a previously unrecognized discursive field that spans Latinate clerical prose and secular vernacular poetry, opening for reexamination the "idea" of public literature in the late Middle Ages and recalibrating the terms of the conversation about the advent of humanistic textual practice in England. Providing a connected and comparative reading of Walsingham's works, alongside those of Chaucer, and taking both historical and literary approaches, the book extends our understanding of Chaucer through the exploration of his relationship to the clerical constituencies of London, Oxford, and monasteries in the South-East, and inserts Walsingham into the modern study of the reception of the Latin classics among the vernacular authors of his period.

Sylvia Federico is Professor of English and member of the Classical and Medieval Studies Program at Bates College.