International Medievalisms: From Nationalism to Activism 9781843846062, 9781800109087, 9781800109094

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I - INTERNATIONALLY NATIONALIST
1. Making up the Middle Ages: Roman Scotland and Medievalism in the Eighteenth Century
2. Emma Letherbrow’s Gudrun: Kudrun for ‘Modern’ Victorians
3. Nationalism and Colonialism: The Early German Reception of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign
4. Inhabiting an Unpredictable Past: The Paradoxes of Russian Cultural Historicism
II - SOMEONE ELSE’S PAST?
5. The Medievalism of Gregor Jordan’s Ned Kelly
6. ‘The Northland of Old’: The Use and ‘Misuse’ of (Medieval) Iceland
7. ‘Out of My Country and Myself I Go’: A Discourse of the Troubadour in British and Irish Literature
8. The Influence of Wales and Medieval Welsh Literature in John Cowper Powys’s Maiden Castle
III - ACTIVIST MEDIEVALISM
9. ‘Green Growing Pains’: The ‘Green Children of Woolpit’ and Child Refugees
10. Medievalisms of Welcome: Medieval Englishness and the Nation’s Migrant Other in Refugee Tales
11. Using Left-Wing Post-Rock to Deepen Our Understandings of White Supremacist Interpretations of Vikings
12. ‘The Great Original Suffragist’: Joan of Arc as a Symbol in the US Women’s Suffrage Movement
Index
Medievalism

Citation preview

M

edievalism – the reception of the Middle Ages – often invokes a set of tropes generally considered ‘medieval’, rather than consciously engaging with medieval cultures and societies. International medievalism offers an additional interpretative layer by juxtaposing two or more national cultures, at least one of which is medieval. ‘National’ can be aspirational: it might refer to the area within agreed borders, or to the people who live there, but it might also describe the people who understand, or imagine, themselves to constitute a nation. And once ‘medieval’ becomes simply a collection of ideas, it can be re-formed as desired, cast as more geographically than historically specific, or function as a gateway to an even more nebulous past.

This collection identifies and investigates international medievalism through three distinct strands, ‘Internationally Nationalist’, ‘Someone Else’s Past?’, and ‘Activist Medievalism’, exploring medievalist media from the textual to the architectural. Subjects range from The Green Children of Woolpit to Refugee Tales, and from Viking metal to Joan of Arc. As the contributors to each section make clear, for centuries the medieval has provided material for countless competing causes and cannot be contained within historical, political, or national borders. The essays show how the medieval is repeatedly co-opted and recreated, formed as much as formative: inviting us to ask why, and in service of what. MARY BOYLE is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Oxford’s Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, and a Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford. Cover Image: “King Hetel’s Daughter” (Emma Letherbrow, King Hetel’s Daughter, or the Fair Gudrun. A Tale of the North Sea (London, 1877), frontispiece. The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford, 256 f.276). | Design: Toni Michelle



Volume XXII

International Medievalisms

ISSN 2043-8230 Series Editors Karl Fugelso Chris Jones Medievalism aims to provide a forum for monographs and collections devoted to the burgeoning and highly dynamic multi-disciplinary field of medievalism studies: that is, work investigating the influence and appearance of `the medieval’ in the society and culture of later ages. Titles within the series investigate the post-medieval construction and manifestations of the Middle Ages – attitudes towards, and uses and meanings of, ‘the medieval’ – in all fields of culture, from politics and international relations, literature, history, architecture, and ceremonial ritual to film and the visual arts. It welcomes a wide range of topics, from historiographical subjects to revivalism, with the emphasis always firmly on what the idea of ‘the medieval’ has variously meant and continues to mean; it is founded on the belief that scholars interested in the Middle Ages can and should communicate their research both beyond and within the academic community of medievalists, and on the continuing relevance and presence of ‘the medieval’ in the contemporary world. New proposals are welcomed. They may be sent directly to the editors or the publishers at the addresses given below. Professor Karl Fugelso Art Department Towson University 3103 Center for the Arts 8000 York Road Towson, MD 21252-0001 USA [email protected]

Professor Chris Jones Department of English University of Utah Languages and Communication Building 255 S Central Campus Drive, Rm 3500 Salt Lake City Utah [email protected]

Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9 Woodbridge Suffolk IP12 3DF UK

Previous volumes in this series are printed at the back of this book

International Medievalisms From Nationalism to Activism Edited by Mary Boyle

D. S. BREWER

© Contributors 2023 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2023 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 978 1 84384 606 2 hardback ISBN 978 1 80010 908 7 ePDF D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate Cover Image: “King Hetel’s Daughter” (Emma Letherbrow, King Hetel’s Daughter, or the Fair Gudrun. A Tale of the North Sea (London, 1877), frontispiece. The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford, 256 f.276) Design: Toni Michelle

To Michael, Doran, and Angela, who have been listening to me receiving the Middle Ages for years.

Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction Mary Boyle

1 I. Internationally Nationalist

1

Making up the Middle Ages: Roman Scotland and Medievalism in the Eighteenth Century Kristina Hildebrand

2

Emma Letherbrow’s Gudrun: Kudrun for ‘Modern’ Victorians Mary Boyle

3

Nationalism and Colonialism: The Early German Reception of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign 47 Florian Gassner

4

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Inhabiting an Unpredictable Past: The Paradoxes of Russian Cultural Historicism 59 Michael Makin II. Someone Else’s Past?

5

The Medievalism of Gregor Jordan’s Ned Kelly Sabina Rahman

79

6

‘The Northland of Old’: The Use and ‘Misuse’ of (Medieval) Iceland Hannah Armstrong

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7

‘Out of My Country and Myself I Go’: A Discourse of the Troubadour in British and Irish Literature Kayleigh Ferguson



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‘The old magic of the mind’: The Influence of Wales and Medieval Welsh Literature in John Cowper Powys’s Maiden Castle Felix Taylor

127

III. Activist Medievalism 9

‘Green Growing Pains’: The ‘Green Children of Woolpit’ and Child Refugees Carolyne Larrington

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10 Medievalisms of Welcome: Medieval Englishness and the Nation’s Migrant Other in Refugee Tales Matthias D. Berger

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11 Nordic Giants: Using Left-Wing Post-Rock to Deepen Our Understandings of White Supremacist Interpretations of Vikings Eirnin Jefford Franks

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12 ‘The Great Original Suffragist’: Joan of Arc as a Symbol in the US Women’s Suffrage Movement Suzanne LaVere

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Index

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Illustrations Making up the Middle Ages: Roman Scotland and Medievalism in the Eighteenth Century, Kristina Hildebrand Figure 1.1. Charles Bertram’s map of Britain and Ireland 20 Inhabiting an Unpredictable Past: The Paradoxes of Russian Cultural Historicism, Michael Makin Figure 4.1: Church of St Nicholas, Izmailovo Kremlin 63 Figure 4.2: Church of St Basil, Kyivan Rus Park 64 Figure 4.3: St Theodore Cathedral, Tsarskoe Selo 68 Figure 4.4: Church of St Sergii of Radonezh, Kulikovo Field 74 The Medievalism of Gregor Jordan’s Ned Kelly, Sabina Rahman Figure 5.1: Suit of armour made by Kelly Gang Table 5.1: Most extensive and deadliest Australian bushfires

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Full credit details are provided in the captions to the images in the text. The editor, contributors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and persons for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

Acknowledgements Thanks must go first and foremost to the contributors to this volume, who have written and revised their chapters under the exceptionally difficult circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, and who have been gracious enough to trust me with their work. These papers, in their original forms, were presented at a conference of the same name, held at Maynooth University in 2019, and funded by the Irish Research Council (IRC). Thanks are due to both of these institutions. Additional conference funding was provided by Maynooth’s Arts and Humanities Institute and School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures and by Medium Ævum (the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature). The contributions to this volume were informed by several days of collegial and stimulating discussion, and I must express my gratitude to all participants, speakers, and chairs, especially to the two plenary speakers, Andrew B.R. Elliott and Nadia Altschul, as well as to Kerry Phelan, without whom the conference quite simply would not have been possible. The IRC also funded the fellowship from which the conference arose, as well as the production costs associated with the inclusion of images in this book. I must thank Florian Krobb and Cordula Boecking for their support, helpful comments, and feedback throughout my IRC fellowship, in developing the conference, and on my chapter on Kudrun. Editing work has been completed during a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Oxford, and I am grateful to Annette Volfing, Henrike Lähnemann, Almut Suerbaum, and other members of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages for their support during this period. Additional thanks are due to Dr Elliott for his generosity in reading and commenting on drafts of the Introduction, and to all associated with Boydell & Brewer, especially Caroline Palmer and Elizabeth McDonald. I also thank their external reader and Cheryl Hunston, who prepared the index. I am grateful to the Bodleian Library for their permission to reproduce two images, and to the Medievalism editors, Chris Jones and Karl Fugelso, for including this volume in the series. Finally, I must thank those people whose support made it possible to continue work on this volume throughout the pandemic, but especially in its early stages: Rosemary and Nicholas Boyle, and Antony Harlow. Mary Boyle Linacre College Oxford May 2022

Introduction1 Mary Boyle

I

nternational medievalism, at its most basic level, is the juxtaposition of two or more national cultures, at least one of which is medieval. Such a juxtaposition might be by translation, adaptation, or invocation. The term was proposed in 2014 by Louise D’Arcens and Andrew Lynch, and this collection builds on their identification of international medievalism as ‘a domain of cultural practice in which geographical, cultural, and temporal demarcations are brought into question … in which epochs are co-present and national cultures are problematised, sometimes even as they are invoked’.2 Certainly, internationalism is in one sense inherent to medievalism: later political boundaries do not restrict access to the medieval past, though they may inform the nature of engagement with it. But what, in that case, do we mean by terms like national or medieval? Given that the one is frequently employed as part of a strategy to define the other, these central concepts must not be classified too strictly. Medieval should be understood here as nothing more than a broad reference to motifs associated with the cultures and societies of the time period between roughly 410 and 1550, though these dates are themselves subject to debate. While it can include, for example, the adaptation of works produced in this era, medievalism often does not involve a conscious engagement with this timeframe, but with a set of tropes commonly recognized as medieval. So-called historical accuracy is not the point. Medieval is therefore much closer to an idea, or a collection of ideas, than anything more historically specific, and indeed the medieval can often act as a gateway to the invocation of other, even more nebulous, past times. It does, however, frequently carry geographical implications. The receiving cultures discussed within this volume anchor medieval in spatial terms, specifically European, both Western and Eastern. There are, therefore, colonial, political, and cultural implications for the invocation of the medieval when constructed as European in spaces beyond Europe – albeit that ‘Europe’ itself means different things to different people. I must thank the contributors to this volume, whose abstracts were of great assistance when I came to introducing and outlining their chapters. 2 ‘Introduction’, in International Medievalism and Popular Culture, ed. Louise D’Arcens and Andrew Lynch (Amherst, 2014), xi. 1

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Similarly, the term national is not limited to the formal nation state, not least because this construct is a modern invention. Benedict Anderson’s classic description of the nation as ‘an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign’ is therefore a helpful outline for how national should be understood in this collection.3 It does not have to refer to the area within agreed geographical borders, or to the people who live there, though it may, but it can instead describe the people who understand, or imagine, themselves to be the members of a nation. Sovereignty can therefore be an aspirational state, with medievalism employed as a tool towards obtaining it. An understanding of the nation as ‘inherently limited’ is helpful when conceptualizing international medievalism, since it allows it to be defined as the process whereby members of one imagined community reach into the past of another imagined community, beyond the limits of their own, whether those limits are understood in spatial, ethnic, linguistic, or other terms. There are any number of reasons behind such an activity. It may be a deliberate strategy to appropriate the medieval past of another imagined community as one’s own cultural heritage. This might be in order to validate an ongoing kinship, to demonstrate the legitimacy of subsuming that other imagined community into a broader modern nation state, or anything in between. In such circumstances, the post-medieval agent may not identify what they are doing as crossing the limits of their own imagined community. Equally, the supposed distinctiveness of the other imagined community may be the reason for its appeal, and this distinctiveness can itself serve political, creative, or other purposes. Whether or not the process is explicitly identified by its practitioners as an engagement with the past of another nation has no bearing on its being recognized by scholars as an example of international medievalism. As a field of enquiry, therefore, international medievalism demands the invocation of more than one national culture, while simultaneously drawing attention to the instability of such classification. Both concepts, medieval and national, are therefore employed and conceptualized flexibly by authors and subjects in this volume. Understood in these terms, this is international medievalism in its broadest sense. This broad sense, though, can only take us so far. As Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul caution, medievalism is not monolithic but must be ‘considered in the plural’.4 The international then finds its way into what is really a range of medievalisms in various ways. The time has come to refine our understanding of how the still relatively new concept of international medievalism functions, by distinguishing and classifying some of its common manifestations. Just as there are different kinds of medievalisms, so there are different kinds of international medievalisms, though all belong under the umbrella outlined above. This collection identifies three relevant iterations of international medievalism and divides the book into parts along these lines: ‘Internationally Nationalist’, ‘Someone Else’s Past?’, and ‘Activist Medievalism’. 3 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd edn (London and New York, 2006), 6. Anderson is careful to stress that ‘imagined’ should not be equated with ‘falsity’. 4 ‘The Idea of “the Middle Ages” Outside Europe’, in Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World, ed. Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul (Baltimore, 2009), 7.

Introduction

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This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor would it be reasonable to attempt to compile one – indeed, further research in the field of international medievalisms will hopefully reveal or focus on many further iterations. Furthermore, like literary genres, these iterations do not denote inherently delimited categories: there are blurred boundaries, and, just as it would be possible to organize these chapters according to entirely different labels, so there are certain overlaps between the three parts of the book, and a part may have some relevance to chapters beyond it. Each iteration either fills a gap in previous research or builds on and clarifies existing research directions. Part I: Internationally Nationalist The first part, anchored largely in pre-twentieth-century invocation of the Middle Ages, explores the counterintuitively international contexts in which traditionally nationalist medievalism was often carried out, since ‘even nineteenth-century medievalisms reached beyond the national towards more culturally complex categories’.5 The same, though, is true in reverse: the impulse beyond the national could itself be nationalistic. While the nationalist function of medievalism is well established, analysis of its specifically international dimension sheds a new light on what might otherwise be perceived to be an old topic. What all four of the chapters in this first part have in common is the use of the past – real or otherwise – associated with one imagined community for the purposes of the nationalist construction of another. The chapters are organized geographically, beginning with an attempt to define what it means to be British – as opposed to English or Scottish – as expressed from Denmark. This chapter, by Kristina Hildebrand, focuses on an Englishman resident in Copenhagen, considering both his attempted elimination of the English–Scottish border and his status as international exile, resident in neither of the (formerly) separate nations in whose past(s) he aims to intervene. This also serves as a reminder that today’s formal political boundaries continue to conceal distinct identities, and that intra-British medievalisms on the island of Great Britain should often appropriately be considered international, an observation that also has relevance to other chapters in this volume. Internationally nationalist medievalism frequently attempts to appropriate another imagined community via a supposedly shared past. This first chapter offers one of three such case studies in the opening part. Hildebrand introduces a supposedly medieval map purporting to depict Roman Britain. This map was, in fact, an eighteenth-century forgery, an audacious bid to legitimize the Union of England and Scotland by blurring the long-established national border between the two. In depicting the Union as having a history stretching back to the much-admired period of Roman rule, a history that was apparently remembered and documented in the Middle Ages, the map and its accompanying text portray the Union of 1707 as unavoidable, almost pre-ordained, and as essentially natural. Territorial boundaries are thus re-affirmed through supposed history, with an authority that is hard to question, an idea that will be echoed by Michael Makin in Chapter 4. In the case 5

D’Arcens and Lynch, ‘Introduction’, xv.

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outlined by Hildebrand, a long pedigree is created artificially, but such acquisitive uses of the medieval past can also mature over long periods. Where this use or construction of the medieval past differs from those we will see in almost every other chapter of this collection, with the exception of Felix Taylor’s Chapter 8, is that the medieval period is not, itself, idealized or invested with any particular authority; quite the opposite. This forgery and its reception facilitate a repeated rewriting of history, a blurring of temporal boundaries, and ultimately an eliding of the Middle Ages: authority is transmitted from the ancient to the modern by counterfeiting the medieval material past, suggesting that the medieval world has nothing to offer the history of ideas beyond its status as a conduit, a status that, while important enough, does not actually have to be genuine. A falsified, or quasi-falsified, Middle Ages will be revisited repeatedly across this collection. There are other reasons for, and strategies behind, recreating the Middle Ages in a more convenient or politically useful mould. At its most straightforward, internationally nationalist medievalism receives and uses a text or other work from a different nation for the purposes of the receiving nation, and the next two chapters offer illustrations of this type of medievalism. Attempts to define national identity within this island have not decreased with the passage of time, and in Chapter 2, Mary Boyle focuses on a single example, examining another medievalist strategy employed in an attempt to define what it meant to be English – a question that will revisited in Matthias Berger’s Chapter 10. It was common, particularly in the nineteenth century, for such strategies to draw on an imagined so-called Germanic past, and this is here illustrated through the prism of Emma Letherbrow’s 1863 Gudrun: A Story of the North Sea. Gudrun is a loose prose adaptation of Kudrun, a thirteenth-century German epic set in and around Denmark, and often understood as a response to the Nibelungenlied. In this case, although the medieval work is valorized as the representative of an idealized medieval past, it is also interpreted as having been obscured by later intellectual and moral deficiency via monastic intervention in the text. Through extensive paratext and a series of deliberately modernizing revisions, Letherbrow purports to offer a more authentic version of the medieval narrative and encourages her English readers to see themselves reflected in a German–Danish heroic past, claiming Kudrun as their own cultural inheritance. As we saw in Hildebrand’s contribution, here too an exemplary past is constructed for nationalist purposes when the documented evidence is not up to the task. Internationally nationalist medievalism does not have to be directed towards that other community’s incorporation or subjugation into an empire or modern political structure such as the nation state. Chapter 2 offers us one example of the many nineteenth-century anglophone writers who attempted to identify some of the most famous works of medieval German literature as their own cultural inheritance on the basis of a supposedly shared Teutonic heritage, but they did so in service of defining what it meant to be English, rather than in order to make a territorial claim – though as an example of nineteenth-century English nationalist medievalism, it cannot be divorced from an expansionist discourse. Expansionist discourse is, however, unequivocally at the heart of Florian Gassner’s Chapter 3, which demonstrates that late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German artistic engagement with the medieval past served the

Introduction

5

purpose of determining one’s own place in world history as well as giving shape to the European Other. In this case, that Other is defined according to the Slavic literary past. Gassner sets out the path whereby the pejorative nineteenth-century German reception of an Old Slavonic epic ultimately laid the groundwork for a push for German territorial expansion in Eastern Europe in the twentieth century. He thus offers the first overt engagement in the volume with right-wing extremist use of the Middle Ages, some of the other incarnations of which will be explored in later contributions, particularly in Chapters 6 and 11, by Hannah Armstrong and Eirnin Jefford Franks respectively. In contrast to the second chapter’s deliberately narrow focus, Gassner provides a broad overview of the nineteenth-century German reception of a text whose supposed inadequacy was the crucial point for its interpreters. Where Letherbrow sought to laud her modern compatriots on the basis of the accomplishments of their supposed ancestors, here we see the denigration of an entire population on that basis. The work in question, the Tale of Igor’s Campaign, was rediscovered in 1795. In the first instance, its German translations and adaptations were part of a pseudo-scientific quest to reveal a supposedly defective national spirit in the constituent parts of Eastern Europe; ultimately, they also anticipated the emergence of the myth of the Kulturbringer, the German purveyor of culture to underdeveloped nations. Gassner charts the germination of these ideas, as the new German discipline of national philology buttressed claims to cultural and, by extension, political hegemony over Eastern Europe. Eventually, they brought into being a ‘push for the east’ (Drang nach Osten), based on a sense of entitlement to ‘living space’ in that region (Lebensraum im Osten). By following the long-term reception of a single text, Gassner illustrates how intercultural comparison can ultimately be a tool to incorporate the initially denigrated Other. In other words, he reveals the potential long-term consequences of nationalist international medievalism, which, in this case, became a seeding ground for the ideology of the Third Reich. In the fourth chapter, Michael Makin sets out a wholly different set of invocations of the Slavic medieval past, exploring the different nationalizing responses of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and its successor states. These shifting national and political boundaries offer a rare opportunity to witness competing claims to the (inter)national medieval past. He charts the embrace, rejection, and re-embrace of Russian nationalist international medievalism in the pre- and post-Soviet eras as far as the late 2010s, across shifting national boundaries.6 Like Hildebrand, he explores medievalisms that are no less international for being employed within the bounds of what has, at times, been a single modern nation state. The reiterated patterns of Russian medievalism, in Makin’s telling, reveal the fault lines of cultural, national, and geopolitical history across the parts of Eurasia characterized by Russian hegemony, as he unlocks the relationship of modern East Slavic culture(s) to the pre-modern past, and the uses of that past in the construction of East Slavic identities and nationhoods over the past 150 years. It can be fairly straightforward to detect nationalist shades of international medievalism in the direct reception of texts, but the appropriation of more nebulous The contributions to this volume were completed before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 6

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concepts or ideas provides, if anything, more fertile ground, given that these can be employed more flexibly. The implications of this generalized medievalism are comprehensively demonstrated by Makin’s account of how the abundant use by Russian architects, artists, and writers of themes, forms, and structures drawn from the pre-modern past of the East Slavs has created Russia’s ‘unpredictable past’. The newly prominent social classes’ initial, enthusiastic employment of medievalism to articulate the rise of Russian capitalism and industry at the end of the nineteenth century was interrupted by the arrival of Soviet power, which perceived public medievalism as nationalist and retrograde. The post-Soviet period has seen a revival of revivalism, and the pre-modern past has been abundantly appropriated in culture – high and popular – and politics to provide a new account of the historical narrative of the Soviet Union’s Slavic successor states. We return here to the outright forgery of a medieval past, though in the medievalist theme parks of the former Soviet bloc it is constructed differently from the counterfeit map detailed by Hildebrand. Here the contested medieval past, reconstructed though it is, is not elided but is invested with immense significance for the nation. This first part, therefore, covers nationalist international medievalism directed specifically at nation- or empire-building, as well as nationalist international medievalism directed more towards the development of a shared ethnonationalist culture across national boundaries, and the necessary overlap of these approaches. Part II: Someone Else’s Past? While internationally nationalist medievalism, broadly speaking, attempts to construct and shore up national identity by incorporating the international medieval past, in many cases, as Davis and Altschul observe, a focus on ‘the function of the Middle Ages in defining a national “we” … leaves unexplained … the reasons why non-national subjects would approach “someone else’s” medieval past’.7 This part borrows its name from their enquiry, adopting a question mark to signify the inherent instability of claims to ownership of the past, and its chapters explore some of the complex reasons behind this phenomenon. Rather than being organized by dates, locations, or texts, these chapters, therefore, move from the reception and re-creation of figures with some form of medieval origin to more nebulous concepts of medievalized space, time, place, people, and landscape. Certainly, the idea of the medieval explored in this part is even less fixed than in Part I, both in terms of time and place. A historical disconnect is clearly applicable even to medievalisms that depend on figures and texts whose origins do lie in the Middle Ages, though elements of such an approach are also in evidence in Part I. In Chapter 5, Sabina Rahman outlines the process of association between Ned Kelly and Robin Hood, revealing that the success of Kelly’s romanticization lies in his implicit association with the medieval, and his depiction as an Australian Robin Hood, with mateship standing in for chivalry, and the Kelly Gang for the Merry Men. This depiction, though, is not anchored in any historical specificity. As Tison Pugh and Angela Weisl observe, Robin Hood is one of those medieval heroes who, 7

Davis and Altschul, ‘The Idea of “the Middle Ages” Outside Europe’, 21.

Introduction

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‘through a continual process of accretion and renewal, frequently mirror the exemplary values of the periods of their rewriting more than of their original creation’.8 But it was not only Robin Hood who was removed from his traditional setting; the historical Ned, too, was side-lined for the charming battler Ned, a symbol of Australian spirit. Symbols are most effective when not confined to a particular context. Such historical non-specificity often incorporates a nebulousness of place. The ultimate geographical anchor of the medieval in this part, even when a particular place is namechecked, is not here. This is not to say that the namechecked place is irrelevant, rather that its identity as somewhere else is even more important. That invocation of somewhere else does not, counterintuitively, make the subject difficult to relocate in a new home: for example, Robin Hood’s English past is no impediment when passing the mantle to the all-Australian Ned Kelly. The new pasts created by relocation can be appropriated as one’s own, even while continuing to recognize one or other fundamental ingredient as ‘someone else’s’. While Andrew B.R. Elliott notes a ‘crucial separation between the kinds of ideological neomedievalism … discussed in [his] book and other, more benign, instances of expropriation such as Renaissance fairs, mystery plays or replicas of Excalibur or the Holy Grail on sale through eBay’,9 even the ostensibly ‘more benign’ medievalisms, under which heading some of the medievalisms discussed in this part might come, may be used or re-used with a political agenda. In this vein, Rahman’s chapter bridges the gap from the first part, demonstrating that an engagement with what is recognizably ‘“someone else’s” medieval past’ is not necessarily itself without national(ist) significance. The simple invocation of the idea of the medieval can be as powerful a tool in constructing a national mythology as the adaptation of any so-called genuinely medieval text, building, or image, particularly in a colonial context. By focusing on the role of Australian cinema in the mythologizing of what had become a ‘quintessentially Australian story’,10 Rahman exposes the purpose behind the medievalizing of Ned Kelly – and its success. The legendary English Robin Hood does not himself become Australian; instead, Ned Kelly’s supposed embodiment of Australian ideals is used to create a hero narrative that is a reconstitution of the codes of chivalry to create a new quasi-medieval hero as an emblem for the country. It is this conscious reinvention of someone else’s past to create something new that stands in contrast to the kinds of nationalist approaches seen in the first part. In a related vein, the coding of Iceland as inherently medieval explored in Chapter 6, whereby a contemporary geographical place becomes inextricably connected with a set of (often ahistorical) medievalist tropes, was originally a British innovation, but one that has subsequently been embraced more widely. Hannah Armstrong explores the process of decoupling the medieval from historical specificity through this prism. This casting of a modern nation as somehow fundamentally medieval has different implications within Iceland, where a nostalgic sense of connection to Tison Pugh and Angela Jane Weisl, Medievalisms: Making the Past in the Present (London and New York, 2012), 64. 9 Andrew B.R. Elliott, Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, 2017), 6. 10 Peter Fitzsimons, Ned Kelly: The Story of Australia’s Most Notorious Legend (Sydney, 2013), xii. 8

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the medieval past is intrinsic to the nation’s own contemporary sense of identity, and outside the country: the British literary interests that initially drove the association in the eighteenth century have been supplanted by broader economic, often pop-cultural, considerations. An understanding of Iceland as both somewhere else and somewhen else is therefore integral to what is a fundamentally international medievalism. Today, there are myriad ways in which contemporary Iceland continues to be inscribed as medieval and the land and its people are mythologized. Commercialism is a crucial part of the picture. Armstrong explains that a tremendous cultural cachet remains attached to signifiers of medieval Iceland at home and abroad, and these are mobilized to endorse an almost unlimited range of political and commercial causes. She highlights the use of Icelandic landscapes in television programmes and films employing (neo)medievalisms, from Game of Thrones to Star Wars. The merchandise from such productions is then marketed alongside products with actual historical referents, obscuring the boundary between that which is engaged with an evidenced historical past and items that fall within Elliott’s concept of ‘banal medievalism’ – the use of ‘the Middle Ages … without reference to the Middle Ages’.11 Both, in the end, prove fertile ground for nationalist extremism, within Iceland and beyond its shores, and remind us that medievalism has never been politically neutral, particularly because the context for any given medievalism is usually far more important than the historical context in which its referents may have arisen. This concept will also be central to the third part. A detachment from medieval historical specificity is thus central to this part: that aforementioned sense of somewhen else, especially when invoked in conjunction with a sense of somewhere else, allows the receiver to move seamlessly from an invocation of the medieval past to a more general bygone age. This process is at its clearest in the next chapter, by Kayleigh Ferguson. Indeed, Chapter 7 encapsulates the second part’s trajectory from specific to generalized medievalism, charting as it does the shift from the editing and publication of troubadour melodies to the more inventive approach triggered by a realization that a lack of surviving written material left a gap to be filled by the imagination. Creative adaptation flourished in the place of verifiable history. Such medievalism, like that of Chapter 6, veers into Elliott’s banal medievalism. Rarely entirely apolitical, the impulse to draw on ‘someone else’s medieval past’ often goes hand in hand with a desire to romanticize that past, frequently detaching it from the historical and geographical record far more openly than those nationalist medievalisms explored previously, where at least the pretence of a historical anchor is crucial for the purposes of narrative building. Ferguson demonstrates that, when the French troubadours, with their relatively brief historical existence and scant documentation, met the Romanticism of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, precise time and location soon disappeared, but a strong and enduring, if non-specific, sense of place and non-now time was newly created. She tracks the process whereby troubadours were recognized as ancient and timeless, as simultaneously rare and exotic, and yet also familiar and relatable, and a new, idealized, and safely wild landscape was created in which they could exist as domestic minstrels. 11

Elliott, Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media, 12. Author’s italics.

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This, Ferguson notes, is a process that takes place in Britain and, to a lesser extent, in Ireland, but not in France, the troubadours’ ultimate place of origin. Instead, French troubadours become minstrels wandering an idealized (Eng)land, and yet no less ‘native’ in their new environment for their backstory. Both this romanticized Otherness and the gaps in the historical record are key to the creation of the troubadour-minstrels of nineteenth-century fiction. Finally, in Chapter 8, we are reminded that international medievalism is possible within a single modern political unit. Felix Taylor illustrates how the English-born John Cooper Powys reaches for a Welsh precedent in order to create his own mystical world view (though he had, in any case, moved to the United States), and Maiden Castle in Dorset becomes a conduit for the Welsh past in the novel that shares its name. Like Ferguson’s creative adapters, Powys begins with the Middle Ages but moves beyond them, and, again like those creative adaptors, he sees a fictionalized past as a refuge from modernity. Unlike them, however, and echoing the forged map in Chapter 1, the medieval is for Powys ultimately a gateway to an ancient and nebulous past of his own creation. Decoupling medieval Welsh literature from the historical context that produced it is a necessary step in the process of the development of his personal mythology. This proposed a ‘magical view of life’, the desire to return psychologically to a remote, pre-historic past ‘whose magical secrets have been almost lost amid the vulgarities of civilization’.12 Elements from medieval Welsh mythology are crucial tools for Powys to explore this personal mythology further, and Taylor traces his unfolding engagement with the Four Branches of the Middle Welsh Mabinogi – the collection of tales in which Powys believed the essence of the primitive Welsh mind is instilled – but, in a step far beyond what we see in Chapter 7, or even in Chapter 1, the medieval itself is ultimately overwritten on the path away from civilization. Given Powys’s romanticized world view and use of medieval Welsh mythology, it is appropriate that this chapter reminds us that Romanticism and nationalism often go hand in hand. Such an association is first highlighted in Chapter 3, where Gassner notes the identification by Romantic nationalist antiquarians of a supposedly pure and uncorrupted ‘Elemental’, founded on the imagined early medieval past of the ‘Teutons, Anglo-Saxons, or Celts’.13 Taylor points not just to Powys’s related search for the ‘primitive’, but also to the way in which he echoes earlier Celtic theorists’ ethnic romanticizing of the Welsh language, which was subsequently used to infer racial characteristics. Such traditionalist medievalisms are the frequent targets of the kinds of medievalisms we will encounter in the third part. Part III: Activist Medievalism Though none of the medievalisms considered in the second part can be considered apolitical, they rarely foreground politics. This is not the case here. Activist medievalisms tend to position themselves in open and politicized opposition to previous uses of the Middle Ages. For this reason, internationalism is frequently consciously 12 13

Powys, Autobiography, 626; Powys, In Defence of Sensuality, 10. See Chapter 3, 52.

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invoked as a contrast to traditionally nationalist material, whether by reading medieval texts through an internationalist lens or by inviting the contribution of non-nationals, though also by a similar kind of overt engagement with ‘someone else’s past’ to that explored in Part II. The four chapters that make up this part demonstrate this often counterintuitive and deliberately international handling of the medieval past. All, in their own way, engage with and cross international borders. The phrase ‘activist medievalism’ seems to have been coined by Sheila Delaney in 2002, retrospectively describing the path of her career as both ‘committed to medieval studies and to social change’.14 Delaney was writing autobiographically, and the term has not yet been broadly adopted, but its use in this collection is in the spirit of Delaney’s, particularly given the international contours of her own academic and campaigning life. Both activism and medievalism were essential to Delaney’s approach to her career. Similarly, the activism explored in this part is rarely simply added on to reception of the Middle Ages but is an inherent part of the activities described. Indeed, even more than in other cases, the medieval is often secondary, employed as a tool in the activist cause. In Chapter 9, it is the themes, rather than the date, of the text in question that mean that it chimes with the refugee and migrant experience, while Chapter 10 shows that, as the project it examines has aged, its medievalist foundation has become ever less significant. In Chapter 11, Nordic and Viking mythology in popular music is a useful tool for activism not primarily because the mythology is itself medieval, though the conceptualization of the Middle Ages as pre-industrial and community-focused is significant, but because it is used in ways that contrast with its exploitation by the extreme right. Even Chapter 12, which highlights a particular medieval figure, centres her status as a tool in the women’s suffrage movement, rather than the historical details of her existence. The cause, rather than the instrument, is what is essential. As this all implies, and not least because this part takes its name from Delaney, activist medievalism, as it is discussed here, is not a politically neutral descriptor, applied equally across the political spectrum, but a progressive endeavour – understood broadly and not restricted to the present – that attempts to subvert traditional post-medieval uses of the Middle Ages. Chief among these uses is nationalist medievalism. Carolyne Larrington opens Part III by engaging with the ‘Green Children of Woolpit’, a tale of two mysterious, green-skinned children discovered near Woolpit in Suffolk and recorded by two independent chroniclers in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. She explores how the framework of international medievalism can inform interpretation of a narrative that, from its medieval iterations onwards, deals with interactions between imagined communities within a larger political entity under (re)construction. Ultimately, she reads it against Dina Nayeri’s discussion of migration and the reformulation of identity in The Ungrateful Refugee: ‘As refugees, we owed them our previous identity. We had to lay it at their door like an offering, and

14

206.

Sheila Delaney, ‘Marxist Medievalists: A Tradition’, Science & Society, 68/2 (2004), 215,

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gleefully deny it to earn our place in this new country.’ Larrington also reveals that new mediations of the Green Children story foreground contemporary international themes of deracination, child refugee immigration, and the making of identity. These remediations are by writers from other parts of the English-speaking world with a range of different and international inflections, and some are rather more openly political than others. Larrington discusses Australian author Randolph Stow’s The Girl Green as Elderflower, in which the story remains strongly rooted in its place of origin yet engages with the protagonist’s own trauma – and where the green land also figures significantly as Antipodean16 – and also Sylvia Townsend Warner’s treatment of the green fairy in her 1974 story ‘Elphenor and Weasel’.17 The essay also considers contemporary mediations of the legend in three brandnew versions: the American poet Jane Yolen’s ‘Green Children’, adapted as a song by Marry Waterson, and Waterson’s own original song: ‘Green Are My Growing Pains’, composed for the AHRC project ‘Modern Fairies and Loathly Ladies’. Daisy Johnson’s story ‘A Retelling’, written for Audible Books’ Hag podcast, also responds to the Green Children story, though she discounts migration themes in her retelling, bringing forward instead motifs of identity and mental disturbance. There is, by contrast, no possibility of discounting migration themes in Matthias Berger’s Chapter 10. This clearest of confrontations to nationalist values comes in the form of Refugee Tales (2015–), a protest movement encompassing both a written element and a series of protest walks. Refugee Tales invokes a series of medievalist signifiers of England and Englishness, most prominently Geoffrey Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales, to protest against an inhumane immigration policy that criminalizes refugees, and to imagine a more inclusive community in Britain. Berger outlines how the project aims to confront medievalism’s ongoing function as a receptacle, both for statements of national identity, and for the processes of exclusion by which such identity is upheld: nationalism is notoriously suspicious of the international migrant. This is not a wholesale uprooting, however. Telling international stories of forcible displacement and precarious arrival, Refugee Tales’ invocation of Chaucer’s pilgrimage reimagines, but does not eliminate, the national framework. Given the acts of protest inherent to activism, the deliberate employment of movement in some of the examples discussed in this part, particularly Chapters 10 and 12, should come as no surprise, and the theme of movement – of crossing boundaries – is inherent in the name Refugee Tales. The project, a series of protest walks in solidarity with refugees and detainees, attempts to reclaim physically memory sites of the nation such as Runnymede, of Magna Carta fame, and the ‘ancient pathways’ trodden by Chaucer’s fictional pilgrims in favour of a positive reinterpretation – and decriminalization – of ‘the pleasure and necessity of 15

15 Dina Nayeri, ‘The Ungrateful Refugee: “We Have No Debt to Repay”’, The Guardian, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/dina-nayeri-ungrateful-refugee [accessed 22 December 2021]. 16 Andrew Lynch, ‘“I Have so Many Truths to Tell”: Randolph Stow’s “Visitants” and “The Girl Green as Elderflower”’, Australian Literary Studies, 26/1 (2011), 20. 17 Sylvia Townsend Warner, ‘Elphenor and Weasel’ in Kingdoms of Elfin (London, 1977; repr. London, 2018). First published in The New Yorker, 16 December 1974.

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movement’. Paradoxically, then, in its combination of words and movement, of activism and medievalism, Refugee Tales harnesses meanings of long national continuity and rootedness to make its case for an accommodation of migrants’ experiences of discontinuity and deracination. The written part of the project consists mainly of three collections of collaborative short stories by refugees and established writers. Here the variety of voices serves a different purpose from that in the previous chapter. While Chaucer’s poetry informs several tales, the more significant medievalism for the project is the one that surrounds the tales. Chaucer primarily furnishes an enabling discourse, in which he is both the transhistorical facilitator of an inclusive and diverse discursive community and, in Dryden’s phrase, the ‘Father of English Poetry’.19 Although Refugee Tales searches for a new language that is welcoming beyond the confines of nationhood, it looks for inspiration to an author who has been canonized as articulating a benevolent vernacular Englishness. Notably, although the project initially looked to national medieval tradition while inverting the stereotypical exclusionary dynamic, later activities have dropped much of this framing. Both Larrington and Berger therefore explore the possibilities of telling and retelling, increasingly untethered from any strictly medieval source, albeit not to the extent of Powys in Chapter 8. Both, though, begin with the reimagining by international writers of works coded as culturally English, in a rebuke to widespread ethnonationalist medievalism. Activist medievalism is not limited to a contrast with nationalist medievalism. It is not, for example, uncommon to witness a resistance to conservative interpretations of gender norms, as we see in the final two chapters of the collection. In Chapter 11, Eirnin Jefford Franks draws a contrast between the ungendered lens through which Nordic Giants interpret Nordic mythology, and Extreme Metal bands, who draw on Viking imagery in an aggressively gendered way. Where Chapter 6, in the second part, concludes with a discussion of the commonplace utilization of Scandinavian medievalist tropes by the far right, Jefford Franks offers an alternative by focusing on the English post-rock band Nordic Giants, whose invocation of Norse mythology promotes kindness and environmentalism. Nordic Giants use those elements of Norse mythology that focus on ideas of spirituality and naturalness, ultimately creating a non-exclusionary sense of Otherness. Arguably, this verges on the kind of banal medievalism we saw in the second part, and certainly this sense of Otherness goes hand in hand with the feeling of somewhen else that was so important there. Such a tactic is in direct opposition to the more frequent use of this material by musicians from the far right, who invoke Otherness quite differently. Jefford Franks demonstrates that the combination of these two perspectives creates the stark difference in the genres’ uses of the same body of material – a distinction, perhaps, between looking forward and looking back. An analysis of these competing readings of the medieval past, they show, can deepen our understanding of the ways in which this material has been abused by right-wing groups operating across and within national boundaries. 18

David Herd and Anna Pincus, eds, Refugee Tales (Manchester, 2016), 138, 139. John Dryden, Fables Ancient and Modern; Translated into Verse, from Homer, Ovid, Boccace, and Chaucer: With Original Poems (London, 1700), Preface (unpaginated). 18

19

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This part also showcases the variety of forms taken by activist medievalism, often with an emphasis on creative expression, which, as we have seen, can move far from any product of the Middle Ages, or from the historical period identified as ‘medieval’. The stage artistry highlighted by Jefford Franks is not unrelated to the spectacle sought by the suffrage activists who are the subjects of the final chapter. Here, Suzanne LaVere uses newspaper accounts and other contemporary resources to explore Joan of Arc as a figurehead for the American women’s suffrage movement. Women who fought for the vote used her image extensively, particularly in parades featuring women in armour dressed as Joan. This was a direct challenge to the nineteenth-century tendency to anchor traditional gender roles in the medieval past, especially as Joan’s bravery, piety, and defiance made her a malleable symbol that was used to express religious, political, and social values across a wide spectrum. As we saw in Chapters 10 and 11, the same medieval or medieval-adjacent source material can produce entirely oppositional activisms. While there were many far more traditionalist readings of Joan,20 American women’s suffrage advocates used her as a symbol of justice and female power, especially in the period between 1900 and 1920. Yet even such counter-cultural activism could still lean into contemporary gender norms: suffrage advocates themselves, as well as those observing their attempts to rally the public and elected officials to their cause, paid particular attention to the appearance of the women portraying Joan. Thus, both spectacle and an emphasis on physical beauty played an important role in increasing the movement’s support. An exploration of activist medievalism, therefore, highlights the use, by opposing political factions, of the same medieval subjects, and such medievalisms tend consciously to position themselves in opposition to more established uses of the medieval past. These established tropes, though, can be reasserted in turn. LaVere addresses the media coverage of resistance to Joan as a suffrage symbol, especially relating to figures in the Catholic hierarchy. Suffragists’ activist medievalism may have been responding to the long tradition of Joan’s instrumentalization for political purposes, but it was not the end of the story and was met with its own backlash among those who were not supporters of women’s suffrage. Into the present day, conservative or right-wing medievalisms – not necessarily the same thing – have been, and necessarily continue to be, discussed and studied in detail, but they are not our focus in this part and are only covered insofar as these examples of activist medievalism respond to them or, as in the case of the suffragists’ use of Joan of Arc, it responds to them. (International) Medievalism in 2022 Although the contributions to this volume are not arranged in strict chronological order, they appear broadly to trace a path from exclusionary to inclusive expressions of international medievalism. Nonetheless, given that – as many chapters emphasize – attempts to use the Middle Ages in service of progressive, or even supposedly neutral, ends exist alongside ongoing traditionalist, extremist, or regressive See Elliott, Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media, 1–4, for example, where the author notes the contradictory uses of Joan of Arc in and beyond France. 20

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medievalisms, we should not imagine an overarching move from exclusionary to inclusive, or nationalist to activist; the volume’s subtitle should not be understood to be making a simplistic statement about chronology or progress. Instead, it is perhaps more appropriate to think in terms of an increasing plurality of international medievalisms over time. Even this conclusion is not without caveats: our closing chapter looks back over a century to examine the use of the same medieval figure in service of opposite political goals. Across the three parts of the book, despite each focusing on a different aspect of international medievalism, we see shared tendencies. Again and again, we return to the idea of the medieval as lacking in specificity; looking at it through an international lens allows us to see clearly that that lack of specificity is as much geographical as it is historical. The geographical force of the medieval is far more closely associated with the perceived needs of the receiving culture than with the realities of the originating culture, even when a particular work or person is invoked. And similarly, the precise historical anchor that might be offered by such a text or figure turns out to be easily loosened. While this may become clearer in Parts II and III, the nationalist international medievalism of Part I is far from immune to the non-specificity of the medieval: the time and place of Kudrun’s written record is portrayed as having no greater claim to the text than nineteenth-century England, while modern facsimiles of medieval monuments can be placed in post-Soviet theme parks. This is the same non-specificity that permits Robin Hood to exist far from Richard the Lionheart’s England in the opening chapter of Part II and is related to that which finds echoes of the plight of lost twelfth-century children in the twenty-first-century refugee experience in the opening chapter of Part III. And yet, for all its non-specificity, the medieval retains a power considered to be worth harnessing; indeed that is often no small part of what grants it its power. On that note, as each part makes clear in its own way, but particularly given the nature of the closing section, it would be remiss not to close by drawing attention to the call implicit in many of these chapters, and explicit in several, particularly those authored by Armstrong and Jefford Franks, that scholars of the Middle Ages bear a responsibility to draw attention to, to challenge, and not to perpetuate, harmful past and present uses of the medieval and the power structures these enable. These calls are in accord with statements like those published by Medievalists of Color, who draw our attention to the fact that ‘[b]y virtue of its subject matter as constructed over its history, medieval studies has a legacy of fortifying structural racism and other engines to silence the marginalized’.21 Jefford Franks calls on scholars to participate in activist medievalism themselves ‘to disrupt this narrative within their work, not only for the sake of historical accuracy, but to limit the damage these interpretations can play in the modern world’.22 And as Armstrong observes, ‘We cannot call it a “misuse” when such deployments Medievalists of Color, ‘The Youngest of Old Fields’, Medievalists of Color, n.d., https:// medievalistsofcolor.com/statements/the-youngest-of-old-fields [accessed 14 January 2022]. See also Medievalists of Color, ‘On Race and Medieval Studies’, Medievalists of Color, 2017, https://medievalistsofcolor.com/statements/on-race-and-medieval-studies [accessed 14 January 2022]. 22 Chapter 13, 188. 21

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work exactly as they were intended.’ For centuries, the medieval has provided material for any number of competing causes, and as the contributions to each section make clear, the medieval cannot be contained within historical, political, or national borders. But they also reveal that, again and again, the medieval is co-opted and recreated, formed at least as much as formative. This collection invites us to ask why, and in service of what. 23

23

Chapter 6, 109.

I

Internationally Nationalist

1 Making up the Middle Ages: Roman Scotland and Medievalism in the Eighteenth Century Kristina Hildebrand

I

n 1757, the Englishman Charles Bertram, living in Copenhagen, published a book with the slightly unwieldy title Britannicarum Gentium Historiæ Antiquæ Scriptores tres: Ricardus Corinensis, Gildas Badonicus, Nennius Banchorensis. It comprised three histories of Britain: Gildas’s De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae from the sixth century; Nennius’s Historia Brittonum from the ninth; and Richard of Cirencester’s De Situ Britanniae, presumed to be from the fourteenth century. The book also included a copy of a map supposedly found with Richard of Cirencester’s text. This text, and particularly the map, showed a previously unknown Roman province, Vespasiana, that covered large parts of Scotland, as well as roads and stations extending into this area. In this image, Roman Britain extended as far as Inverness and Fort William, far north of the Antonine wall. Both text and map were, of course, forgeries. It is doubtful that this text would have had as much impact on historiography had it not been sponsored by Dr William Stukeley, who introduced the text at the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1757, the year he published his own commentary on it as well. Due to Stukeley’s patronage, the text was widely read by antiquarians and historians. The rest, as they say, is pseudo-history. In this essay, I will focus on the two transnational aspects of this forgery of a medieval manuscript. First, the text relates the position of the writer in exile, forging a past for a nation in which he no longer dwells. As a member of a diaspora, Bertram appears to find that ‘the nation fills the void left in the uprooting of communities and kin’, and this likely determines his interest in British history.1 Secondly, the text misuses a ‘medieval’ text in order to promote a political agenda concerning national borders. It treats the Middle Ages as a repository for information on such borders, including the pre-medieval history of eighteenth-century nations. As we shall see, 1

Homi K. Bhahba, Nation and Narration (New York, 1990), 291.

Figure 1.1: Charles Bertram’s map of Britain and Ireland (The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford, MS Gough Maps British Isles 13, CC-BY-NC 4.0).

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the forgery allows for a number of attractive rewritings of history, including the eliding of the Middle Ages themselves. The forged text is first mentioned in a letter from Bertram to Stukeley, written in the second half of 1747. It was eventually sent to Stukeley as a small sample copy of the handwriting, and a transcription of the manuscript, to which Bertram claims to have limited access. The text is divided into two books subdivided into chapters. Book I, Chapters I to VI, contains a description of Britain and its inhabitants, mostly drawn from the writers of antiquity. Chapter VII, however, breaks this pattern by consisting only of ‘Richard’s’ apologia for writing about history, and an itinerary. This is followed by Chapter VIII, containing a description of Ireland and of various islands around Britain, and by Book II, comprising a chronology of the world, focusing on Roman activity in Britain, and a list of the Roman governors of Britain. The text ends in the middle of a sentence, imitating a genuine manuscript recovered only partially. Bertram’s text is not particularly ground-breaking until it gets to Vespasiana. It first states – with his medieval monk as mouthpiece – that the original text was some fragments ‘à Duce quodam Romano consignatis’ [recorded by a certain Roman general].2 This in and of itself would have excited antiquaries: a copy of a text written by a Roman general would appeal strongly to them. Bertram then casually introduces Vespasiana as ‘Supra dictæ Brittaniæ partes erant Brittania Prima, Secunda, Flavia, Maxima, Valentia & Vespasiana. quarum ultima non diu stetit in manibus Romanorum’ [the above-mentioned parts of Britain are Britannia Prima, Seconda, Flavia, Maxima, Valentia and Vespasiana, the last of which did not long remain in Roman hands].3 The description of Vespasiana’s borders is unclear, but the map shows the northern border running from Inverness to Fort William. Its position is emphasized in the phrase ‘extra mura sita provinica Vespasiana’ [beyond the wall lay the province Vespasiana].4 To make sure the province is defined clearly, the text refers to its comprising the River Tay and the Grampian mountains, as well as the site for Agricola’s battle against Galgacus (sic).5 Vespasiana is also part of the northernmost area of Scotland, which is described as ‘Extra murum sita provincia Vespasiana. hæc est illa Caledonia regio, à Romanis nimiùm quantum & desiderata militibus, & incolis valde defensa’ [outside the wall lay the province Vespasiana. This is the Caledonian region ardently desired by the Roman armies, and well defended by the inhabitants].6 It is made clear that Vespasiana is part of Caledonia, and vigorously defended, yet for a while was also part of the Roman empire. The text was enthusiastically received by most readers; because it is a forgery, the text is able to convey exactly what the antiquaries and historians of the time wished to believe, in a way that no actual medieval text could. Suddenly, half the Scottish Highlands have a past as a Roman province, and all because of a twenty-four-yearold English teacher in Copenhagen. Charles Bertram, Britannicarum Gentium Historiæ Antiquæ Scriptores tres: Ricardus Corinensis, Gildas Badonicus, Nennius Banchorensi (Copenhagen, 1757), 35. 3 Ibid., 15. 4 Ibid., 29. 5 Ibid., 30. 6 Ibid., 29. 2

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The forgery gave Bertram minor fame: as it was not uncovered during his lifetime, he could bask in the glory of having discovered a significant manuscript. It seems not to have made him much money, and in Britain most of the glory of the new ‘discovery’ went to Stukeley, but it does seem to have satisfied a need in Bertram. Possibly he saw it as providing proof for what should surely have been. The forgery itself does not need much explanation: if eager for fame, it is, of course, easier to forge the discovery you want rather than make a genuine one. It is not really possible to ascertain why Bertram chose to make his career specifically through expanding the Roman Empire further into Scotland. However, some educated guesses can surely be made. Wales had been under English control since the thirteenth century, despite the occasional rebellion, and no argument for its subordination to Westminster needed to be made. The contested lands under English control were Ireland and Scotland, and extending the Roman Empire into Ireland would have been too daring a step. Bertram has no other texts indicating his interest in Scotland, but his unpublished text on King Canute, who did, of course, control parts of Scotland, also indicates a focus on the North Sea and surrounding areas. Perhaps he simply followed the trends of the day and focused on Scotland because there was widespread interest in its history and in a concept of the greater nation of the United Kingdom. Linda Colley has depicted the rise in nationalism and patriotic fervour during the mid-eighteenth century,7 a fervour that Bertram shared, or saw fit to pretend to share, as we can see from his many patriotic statements in his letters to Dr Stukeley. While Bertram acquired a certain fame first as antiquarian and then, posthumously, as forger, very little is known of his life. We have his letters, but with a few exceptions the letters from Stukeley to Bertram have been lost, so the conversation must be reconstructed from one side only. What is clear is that he was an Englishman in exile, identifying, as we shall see, as British despite spending most of his life in Denmark. Bertram was indeed British by birth, being born in Westminster on 22 July 1723, and seems to have spent his childhood in England. During most of the time covered in his correspondence with Stukeley, his only family seems to be his mother: he never mentions his father and early in his correspondence refers to his brother being lost in a shipwreck.8 It is unknown at what age he emigrated to Denmark: his Danish is fluent in the prefaces of his grammar books, but in his letters, especially those written under the influence of emotion, it appears not to be entirely idiomatic. Furthermore, when translating rules for the striking of sails when passing Elsinore – admittedly requiring very specialized knowledge – he consults a native speaker of Danish.9 He is nevertheless talented at languages, writing fluently in German and Latin. It is unlikely that an absolute fluency in Danish was necessary: at this time, Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837, 2nd edn (New Haven, 2014), 86. Bertram to Stukeley 30 June 1751 and 13 June 1752: Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS Eng letters b. 2. All references to Bertram’s letters refer to this manuscript unless otherwise stated. 9 Bertram to Walter Titley, British envoy to Denmark. The letter is undated but probably refers to an incident taking place in 1754, described in a letter from Nicholas Fenwick to Walter Titley: London, British Library, MS Egerton 2694, 1747–1764. 7

8

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Denmark was a large, multinational state, encompassing Denmark, Norway, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Schleswig, and sometimes Holstein, plus colonies overseas. In many of these areas, Danish was not the primary language, and, in fact, in the late eighteenth century a third of the population of Copenhagen were German-speaking.10 This diverse, conglomerate state likely helped shape Bertram’s understanding of his own nationality. When writing his first letter to Stukeley, Bertram is teaching English at the Copenhagen Sea Cadet Academy, but he soon climbs socially, becoming a tutor to the oldest of the princes of Hesse-Kassel, who are living at the Danish court with their mother. In his letters, he describes interacting with dignitaries such as Prime Minister Bernstorff, Ambassador von Rantzau, and the royal family. While not himself of high birth, Bertram seems to have been successfully integrated into the upper classes and was eventually able to buy himself a house in central Copenhagen. He died in 1765, with the forgery undetected. We should note that this text, offering a narrative of a Roman Britain incorporating much of Scotland, originated outside of Britain. It was written by a man in exile, resident in Denmark but presenting himself, in his correspondence with Stukeley, as an Englishman.11 Bertram must have been aware of contemporary ideas and discourses in Britain, yet removed from them due to his residence abroad. For example, he was able to get books from Britain, including Stukeley’s Itinerarium Curiosum,12 but unable to attend meetings and participate in the discussions in organizations such as the Society of Antiquaries, of which he would eventually become a member. He mentions this himself in an early letter, saying ‘O that I like you, had an Opportunity of frequenting learned and polite Assemblies! but I have no such Hopes.’13 He appears not to have visited Britain during the time covered by the letters, from 1746 to 1763, and his understanding of the country comes from Stukeley’s letter, contact with other British people living in Denmark, published texts, and memories of his childhood. Bertram rarely refers to contemporary British news in his letters to Stukeley, the exception being when the Seven Years War breaks out in 1756. He clearly gets some of his information on this subject from Stukeley. In a letter of 30 July 1756, he discusses Admiral Byng’s decisions at the battle of Minorca, which took place on 20 May that year, and William Blakeney’s holding of Fort St Philip.14 He also mentions concerns in 1762, when Denmark came close to war after the accession of Peter III of Russia.15 Yet it is impossible that he was unaware of the end of the Jacobite rebellions: it is more likely that his discussions with Stukeley simply centred on their 10 Juliane Engelhardt, ‘Patriotism, Nationalism and Modernity: The Patriotic Societies in the Danish Conglomerate State, 1769–1814’, Nations and Nationalism, 13/2 (2007), 213. 11 His recognition as British by others was far more enthusiastic before he was discovered to be a forger. 12 Bertram to Stukeley 23 August 1746. 13 Bertram to Stukeley 25 February 1749. 14 The letter of 28 July 1756 references a discussion of war but too vaguely to know what was discussed. Bertram to Stukeley 30 July 1756 does not clarify if he is continuing the discussion of news he got from Stukeley or has just heard further information about the battle of Minorca. 15 Bertram to Stukeley 12 August 1762.

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common interest in antiquarianism. There are only two surviving letters from Bertram to British people other than Stukeley, one to Emanuel Mendes da Costa and one to Walter Titley,16 and the only such correspondence mentioned in the letters to Stukeley is with a William Pendlebury, Rector of Burythorp, and John Warburton, Somerset Herald of Arms in Ordinary.17 There were, however, several people around him with British contacts: the royal court was partly British, as Frederick V of Denmark had married Louise of Great Britain, daughter of George II, and her sister, Mary, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel, was living at court with her sons. Bertram mentions some British friends who at least visit Copenhagen: a Mr Price of Hereford, who travels from Denmark to Britain, and John and William Brown (it is unclear if they are related). These are most likely merchants, as they often convey letters and books between Bertram and Stukeley. In addition, there were diplomatic staff such as Nicholas Fenwick, who represented Britain at Elsinore, and Titley, British envoy to Denmark – although his contact with them seems to have been limited. He was in closer contact, judging by his letters, with Cai von Rantzau and Hans Caspar von Bothmer, Danish envoys to the British court. There were also Danish subjects who became foreign members of the Royal Society, such as Frederik Ludvig Norden, Peter Ascanius, and Joannes Adolphus Jacobaeus. Norden, whose books Bertram sent Stukeley, had died in 1742, but Bertram knew Ascanius and Jacobaeus.18 Thus, he had good access, if possibly a little delayed, to current debates and issues in Britain. To Bertram, for all his eventual success with Copenhagen’s elite, his identity as British or English was obviously very important – and, as we shall see, he does not differentiate between the two. In this, he is a fairly typical example of a person in exile, the member of a not inconsiderable group of expatriate Britons in Denmark. Despite this, he rarely mentions any other friends from Britain and, apart from the royal family, has few contacts among the expatriate community. The connection with his country of origin manifests through letters and books, not direct contact. Bertram’s exile is likely to have made his relationship with Britain less ambiguous, as there was no need for him to navigate the everyday affairs of the country: in his eyes, Britain could remain the perfect country of his childhood. Homi K. Bhabha points out that to the diaspora, ‘the nation fills the void left in the uprooting of communities and kin’;19 for Bertram, that seems indeed to have been the case. His embrace of Britain as his native country is explicit and constant. Here, Bertram diverges from the eighteenth-century Danish understanding of patriotism. Enlightenment patriotism is not synonymous with the nationalism of the 16 Bertram to Walter Titley, unknown date; Bertram to Emanuel Mendes da Costa 12 August 1762, London, British Library, Add MS 28534: 1737–1787. 17 Pendlebury is mentioned in Bertram to Stukeley 30 June 1751; 16 October 1753; 19 June 1758. Warburton is mentioned in Bertram to Stukeley 28 July 1756; 1 July 1757; 14 June 1758; 15 June 1758; 19 June 1758; 10 September 1760. The collection of Bertram’s letters (Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS Eng letters b. 2) lists ‘One Original Letter from Bertram to Div. (afterwards Bishop) Warburton’ but that is not extant: it is thus impossible to say if this letter was indeed to William Warburton (1698–1779), or to John Warburton (1682–1759), whom he mentions in his letters to Stukeley. The latter seems more likely. 18 Ascanius and Jacobaeus are both mentioned in the letter of 9 July 1759. 19 Bhabha, Nation and Narration, 291.

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nineteenth century. Instead, it declared that a citizen became a patriot through ‘civic virtue, and deeds for the fatherland. The citizen should have the proper disposition and also be minded to use his or her abilities for the state.’21 This love of one’s country was ‘not thought to be an innate feeling but rather an attitude one could learn through enlightenment and education, regardless of origin or native tongue’.22 Nationality, at this point, was not yet generally seen as an inborn and inalienable part of anyone’s identity, which would affect the citizen’s very nature and personal traits.23 Bertram, however, does not express his patriotic duty to Denmark, but instead to Britain. He refers to ‘our Mother Isle of Britaine’, and to ‘our native Country’, states that he ‘had no other Profit in View than the serving my Native Country of Britain by my Publication of the Scriptores’, and finishes a discussion of contemporary British politics by stating that ‘my love to my Native Country makes me wish it well’.24 He even rather pathetically informs Stukeley that ‘I … should be glad to end my days in my native Country.’25 The repeated choice of words such as ‘mother country’ and ‘native’, which connote birth and blood kin rather than deliberate connection, emphasizes the extent to which ‘the nation fills the void left in the uprooting of communities and kin’: Bertram relates to Britain as though it were his community and kin, to which he has an organic, unbreakable tie of shared blood. To Bertram, the Enlightenment ideal of exercising one’s patriotic duty where one lives is not as significant as his innate feeling of being born and partially bred an Englishman. Some of this is presumably born of a desire to express his connection with Stukeley as sharing a nationality, but the choice of words tells us how he views the type of connection and patriotism he embraces. Bertram’s identification as British seems more than just a means of ingratiating himself. His work is focused on Britain, involving Denmark only in connection with King Canute. His social ambition, while certainly present in his life in Denmark, is expressed as a desire to become a member of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society. Like many men of his time, he lives a cosmopolitan life, speaking several languages fluently and moving in the culturally diverse circles that were a natural part of multinational Denmark, yet his identification as British always takes precedence over his position as a citizen of Denmark. Coming from blood and birth, his connection to Britain cannot be superseded. Bertram’s view of his home country is a vision of all he has not achieved in his new country, and a symbol of family, connections, and safety, all of which he feels he lacks in Denmark. Bertram’s forgery is – whether he intended it as such or not – a profoundly political text. It portrays a large area in Scotland as part of Roman Britain, even if only for a short time. It is difficult to think it mere chance that the forgery was first introduced in a letter written in 1747, two years after Culloden. Bertram must, considering his interest in news from Britain, have been aware of this battle and 20

20 21 22 23 24 25

Engelhardt, ‘Patriotism, Nationalism, and Modernity’, 205. Ibid., 213. Ibid., 214–15. Ibid., 215. Bertram to Stukeley 23 August 1746; 22 May 1761; 5 March 1759; 30 July 1756. Bertram to Stukeley 5 December 1762.

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its aftermath. The invention of Vespasiana should be seen in connection with the struggle to integrate Scotland in a British nation. Forging a text to achieve political goals is hardly a new idea; this has probably been done throughout the history of writing.26 The forging of this particular text is inextricably linked to the Union of Scotland and England and the Jacobite rebellions, yet its goals are not as straightforward as proving, for example, that a particular piece of land had been owned by a specific person since time immemorial. England, of course, had no need of a forgery showing that, under Roman rule, part of Scotland had been united with what would become England, to defend the Union: it had both been fought for, and won, by a combination of de jure bello and personal union, and had been accepted by many people, with anything from equanimity to enthusiasm.27 Nevertheless, the depiction of a Roman Scotland was attractive, both because of the validation it gave the Union, and because it offered the opportunity to gloss over the medieval history of the two nations. The level of acquiescence with the Union after the end of the Jacobite rebellions is a contested matter. The inhabitants of Great Britain were heterogeneous as far as language, history, and culture were concerned. Colley argues that ‘[t]hey defined themselves as Protestants struggling for survival against the world’s foremost Catholic power. They defined themselves against the French as they imagined them to be, superstitious, militarist, decadent and unfree’,28 but this statement is not uncontroversial. Colin Kidd contends that, rather than seeing Protestantism as a unifying factor in the new union, ‘British integration succeeded in spite of a dissident Presbyterian critique of the Union of 1707 as well as a tradition of very qualified allegiance to the Hanoverian monarchy.’29 This religious and cultural diversity means that Britain was not, despite the Union, really a homogeneous country. Kidd points out that Hanoverian Britain was a multicultural society, with various subcultures that, in some cases, were thoroughly estranged from the state’s institutions.30 To further confuse the situation, there were internal differences between Highlanders and Lowlanders, where both groups recognized the closer ties – not least linguistically – between the Lowland Scots and the English. Highlanders used ‘sassenach’ to refer indiscriminately to the English and the English-speaking Lowland Scots. The Lowland Scots, in their turn, considered Highlanders as a different, and generally inferior people: ‘[V]iolent, treacherous, poverty-stricken and backward.’31 It was not only traditional Jacobites in search of an independent Scotland who opposed the Revolution settlement, the Union, and the Hanoverian regime, but also Whig Presbyterians, High Church Tories, and the 26 See, for example, the discussion of Mark Antony’s will as a potential forgery in Frank A. Sirianni, ‘Was Antony’s Will Partially Forged?’, L’Antiquité Classique, 53 (1984), 236–41. Roman law forbade, in 80 BC, the falsification of documents related to the transfer of inherited lands, which indicates that this happened with some frequency. K.M. Koppenhaver, Forensic Document Examination: Principles and Practice (Totowa, 2007), 47. 27 Colley, Britons, 85. 28 Ibid., 6. 29 Colin Kidd, ‘Conditional Britons: The Scots Covenanting Tradition and the Eighteenth-Century British State’, English Historical Review, 117/474 (2002), 1153. 30 Ibid., 1147. 31 Colley, Britons, 15.

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remaining supporters of British republicanism. While the various Covenanting groups were anti-Jacobite, they were also deeply hostile to the Union, an attitude that persisted throughout the eighteenth century.33 Opposition to the Union came in more flavours than one. Nevertheless, there was also a view of the Union as natural and unavoidable. In contrast to France and other continental powers, the borders of the island of Great Britain did not fluctuate.34 The realities of physical geography meant that ‘British boundaries after 1707 seemed settled once and for all, marked out by the sea, clear, incontrovertible, apparently pre-ordained.’35 This nautical boundary relegated everything outside to foreign land, even when colonized by Britain, and encouraged seeing its borders as God-given. The Union is obliquely referenced in Bertram’s letters. He uses both ‘England/ English’ and ‘Britain/British’ in his letters, without any clear distinction between the terms. He does not, however, use the term ‘Briton’ except when referring to Celtic inhabitants of pre-Norman Britain. This is not unusual for the period, as the terms ‘English’ and ‘England’ were gradually being replaced by ‘British’ and ‘Great Britain’ during the 1750s.36 Bertram’s usage thus also indicates his contact with contemporary British culture. His forgery, turning part of Scotland into a Roman province, sits neatly in the middle of these competing understandings of Scotland, England, and their histories. The attraction that this forgery held for contemporary Englishmen – and Scotsmen – was more subtle. At this incipient stage of its empire-building, England was inclined to base its ambitions on the Roman Empire – except, of course, that England was redefined as Rome, in contrast to its historical position as an outlying colony. The Roman Empire was, to an eighteenth-century Englishman of means and education, not mere history but a moral guide. Such a person would embrace the ideal of the Roman state – not its individuals but ‘the validity of the classical ideal of libertas [and] … the social virtue obligatory in citizenship or civitas’.37 After 1688, English – and eventually Scottish – aristocracy and gentry were focused on retaining the power they had gained at the expense of the Crown and harboured ‘a deep sense of affinity with this [republican] Rome and its oligarchic, not its popular, traditions’.38 This attitude persisted in tandem with other forms of discourse throughout the eighteenth century. Given this sense of affinity for the Roman republic, the aristocracy and gentry were essential to the pursuit of antiquarianism, both as practitioners and patrons. Members of the various societies of antiquaries largely came from the gentry and the professional classes: clergy, lawyers, heralds, and physicians.39 Even when the 32

Kidd, ‘Conditional Britons’, 1147. Ibid., 1149–61. 34 Colley, Britons, 17. 35 Ibid., 18. 36 Ibid., 13. 37 Philip Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1997), 2. 38 Ibid., 1, 13. 39 Rosemary Sweet, Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Hambledon and London, 2004), 44–49. 32 33

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nobility did not actively participate in the work, antiquarians relied on their support, often through county histories that were deeply concerned with genealogy and the history of inherited property. Antiquarianism was considered a gentleman’s pursuit, relying as it did on a gentleman’s education – including a solid grounding in classical authors. Unavoidably, Roman Britain became a subject of interest. In the eighteenth century, investigation of Roman Britain was already well underway; Camden’s Britannica had first been published in 1586, with continuous updates as Camden’s research progressed. In Bertram’s day, it was an authoritative text with which few cared to argue. In addition, Burton’s comments on the Antonine Itinerary from 1658 further encouraged the study of Roman remains in Britain. Here, too, the approach was not homogeneous: the Romans were held in high esteem as bringers of wisdom, discipline, and liberal arts to the ancient Britons.40 Despite this, there was a division between those who considered the Roman invasion as an unmitigated benefit to Britain, and those who held that the loss of independence and freedom was to be regretted. This produced an ‘ambivalence between admiration for the conquering Romans, and patriotic pride in the barbarian Britons who resisted conquest’.41 This perceived connection to the Roman Empire was sometimes presented as a direct descent of Britain from Rome. Camden argues that the British are descended from Troy, not through the Celtic tribes ‘who claim kindred with the Trojan upon fabulous grounds’ but from the Roman citizens who settled in Britain under imperial rule.42 This imagined descent, which blissfully ignores the various intervening post-Roman invasions, understands Britain as a direct heir of Rome, both genetically and culturally.43 As we have seen, geography favoured the idea of Britain’s borders as pre-ordained, and now, so could history. Bertram’s contemporaries wasted no time in using the history of Roman Britain to validate the new Union: ‘Under the Act of Union in 1707 … the ancient Roman province of Britannia became a territorial reality once more.’44 Rosemary Sweet argues further that ‘the British had achieved peacefully what the Romans during an occupation of over four hundred years had failed to achieve by arms: the integration of the whole of Scotland with a greater British state’.45 However, forty years after the Act of Union, the integration had not turned out to be so peaceful after all. A map and itinerary proving that most of Scotland had been part of Roman Britain was thus an exceptionally welcome tool to support the claims of a long-lasting union and reject the idea of an independent Scotland. Bertram probably neither knew nor cared about Scottish views of the Union: his audience was entirely based in England, and particularly in London. Nevertheless, his forgery had an impact also on Scottish historiographers and antiquaries. Scottish writers are notably ambivalent about the idea of a Roman Scotland. George Ibid., 155. Ibid., 120. 42 65 William Camden, Camden’s Britannia, trans. Edmund Gibson, lxxxvii. Quoted in Ayres, Classical Culture, 86. Later editions will claim that the Britons are Saxons, from Germany (like the Hannovers). 43 Ayres, Classical Culture, 86. 44 Sweet, Antiquaries, 160. 45 Ibid., 161. 40 41

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Chalmers, in his Caledonia: Or an Account, Historical and Topographic, of North Britain – which relies on the forgery to place Glasgow in Vespasiana – both celebrates the resistance of the Scottish tribes and the culture and civilization of the Romans.46 The very name of his text indicates an understanding of Scotland being a region of a larger British whole. Caledonia is a synonym for ‘North Britain’. Some Scotsmen were also attracted to the idea of Vespasiana, seeing it as placing their country in a recognizable tradition of civilization.47 The introduction of most of Scotland as part of a Roman Britain was thus welcome to many, lending a historicity, almost an inevitability, to the Union of 1707. The persistent attraction of this idea of a large Roman province in Scotland can be seen in the fact that, even after the mid-nineteenth-century discovery that Bertram’s text was a forgery, many scholars could not quite bring themselves to disregard it. As late as in 1876, William F. Skene complains that much of the knowledge of Roman Scotland has been warped by a reliance on ‘Richard of Cirencester’, and that this has not been ended by the recognition that it was not genuine: even writers like C.H. Pearson, who has shown the text to be a forgery, rely on it as a unique source for his historical maps.48 Thomas Wright, in his 1875 history, identifies Burghead as a Roman settlement named Ptoroton, wistfully identifying his source as ‘the very doubtful treatise attributed to Richard of Cirencester, which, however, may possibly in this case offer us correct information’.49 Similarly, Urquhart Atwell Forbes, after some prevarication about the text’s authenticity, states that ‘as it is the only guide of the kind available for Roman roads in Scotland, it cannot be disregarded in tracing their course’.50 Even with the forgery exposed, the idea of a Roman Scotland was far too attractive to relinquish. Bertram, writing in exile, participates in the creation of a national narrative for Britain, of which the restoration of a highly advanced and civilized Britannica Romana is an essential aspect. His other Roman projects, such as the proposed restoration of an alleged Roman system of canals, never met with quite the same enthusiasm as his Roman Scotland. He never published on the matter, and his dropping it from his correspondence with Dr Stukeley indicates that Stukeley was not overly enthusiastic. Possibly the failure to arouse interest in a canal system was due to Bertram’s limited contact with the cultural elite in Britain – inevitably, he 46 George Chalmers, Caledonia: Or an Account, Historical and Topographic, of North Britain from the Most Ancient to the Present Times (London, 1824), III, 608. 47 For example, John Pinkerton claims Vespasiana has many Roman towns in his An Enquiry into the History of Scotland (London, 1789), I, 215; George Chalmers asserts that the Romans had several posts there in Caledonia, 167; indeed, this persists into modern times, considering that in 2015, John Nicolson, MP for East Dunbartonshire, stated in Parliament that ‘some claim the Romans called Dunbartonshire the province of Vespasiana’: ‘Skills and Growth, Part of Opposition Day – [2nd Allotted Day] – in the House of Commons at 1:25 pm on 17th June 2015’, TheyWorkForYou, 2015, https://www.theyworkforyou.com/ debates/?id=2015-06-17b.335.0 [accessed 7 December 2021]. 48 William F. Skene, Celtic Scotland: A History of Ancient Alban, I (Edinburgh, 1876), 22, n. 12. 49 Thomas Wright, The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon: A History of the Early Inhabitants of Britain, Down to the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity (London, 1852), 359. 50 Urquhart Atwell Forbes, Our Roman Highways (London, 1904), 195–96.

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would not have been fully attuned to their interests.51 In connecting himself with the antiquaries of Britain, through Stukeley, Bertram is on surer, if less monetarily rewarding, ground, and he was thus able to keep up with the antiquarian interests most prominent in his home country. Bertram evidently longed for the community he imagined existing in England. Riad M. Nasser argues that national narratives exist to help elite groups ‘“know” themselves as imagined community … [and thus] construct their identity by exclusion and Othering[,] and by imaging [sic] the historical, cultural and territorial boundaries of the nation’.52 Bertram certainly uses and adds to the established national narrative for this purpose. His text was a key part of contemporary efforts to imagine territorial and cultural boundaries that facilitated the inclusion and exclusion of certain groups, and to elide a past time period that did not accord with the contemporary elite’s perception of civilization. The effect, though Bertram cannot be given the sole credit, was to present a unified (allegedly) historical entity that reflected contemporary geopolitical concerns. Bertram’s forgery was supposedly copied down in the Middle Ages. Despite this, Bertram shows a very limited interest in the Middle Ages as a period, seeing it primarily as a repository of earlier knowledge.53 The text is presented, not as itself medieval, but as a faithful copy of the itinerary of a nameless Roman general. Where Bertram chose to use known or still extant sources, he describes them as copied by Richard of Cirencester: To me Richard appears a diligent Copier of the Ancients, even to their very Faults, and either the Criticks must be so blinded with a Desire of Carping, that they can’t see our Monasteries had libraries of Books, whereof many were Classick Authors, now no where to be found, or else that the Monks never read them; both alike unreasonable.54

Bertram respects the Middle Ages as a time that held key texts, since lost, and thus allowed medieval scholars access to knowledge that was in his time no longer available. His attitude towards medieval writers is ambiguous, containing both respect for early writers like Nennius, and contempt for medieval editors corrupting

When it comes to canals, he was, in fact, at the cutting edge. He first suggested them in a letter of 1758; in 1759, the Duke of Bridgewater received Royal Assent to build a canal near Manchester. This, the first canal in Britain since the Romans, was finished in 1776, by which time Bertram was long dead. Perhaps if Bertram had written to the Duke of Bridgewater, he might have acquired a patron of more influence and means than Stukeley – although it is doubtful how interested the Duke would have been in reviving a Roman canal system. 52 Riad M. Nasser, Palestinian Identity in Jordan and Israel: The Necessary Other in the Making of a Nation, Middle East Studies: History, Politics, and Law (New York and London, 2005), 41. 53 However, there are exceptions: he does work on Nennius and on a book on King Canute. See Chapter 8 for further discussion of the Middle Ages as a repository of more ancient knowledge. 54 Letter to Stukeley 11 December 1756. 51

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the texts. Nevertheless, his respect for Nennius indicates that his understanding of medieval Britain as a place containing lost knowledge about history is more than an argument used to promote the genuineness of his forged text. Bertram stresses the Roman origins of the text repeatedly: ‘It is very likely our Richard made use of many old Roman Accounts from MSS. now lost, but it is hard to know who they were writ by, he taking that Honor to himself.’56 He also suggests possible sources: 55

Pray, what think you of our Richard’s Chorography being the Tractum Britanniae pro captu virium explanavi of Ammianus Marcellinus? Several expressions seem to favour such an Opinion; and if not, by his Dux Romanus, out of whose Fragments he sais [sic] he has composed the Itinerary, he don’t [sic] mean Antoninus, that Author’s Description he not understood?57

He is particularly keen that the map be seen as an original, not even as an object copied by a medieval monk: ‘I equally agree with you in esteeming the Map as great a Curiosity as the Book, and I have composed a Discourse to prove our Richard was not the Author thereof, but joined it to his Work.’58 The map he can claim as a Roman original, but claiming the whole book as such would have demanded a much more intricate forgery of the handwriting sample, and would probably have aroused a great deal more interest in obtaining the original than he could have fended off. The text had to be presented as having been copied in the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages and the writers of that time thus become important only as far as they convey correct copies of the Roman era. Unlike those contemporaries who favoured a Gothic revival, or whose interest was in a supposedly uncorrupted and essentially Protestant pre-Norman church, Bertram was content to take the Middle Ages out of history entirely. This elision also has the advantage of removing a long period of Scottish independence and wars in which England was not always victorious. The text and image represent a Roman Scotland contained within a greater Roman Britain and provide a narrative connecting the nascent United Kingdom to a time depicted as the embodiment of unparalleled civilization and culture. Using this version of Roman Britain as a basis, the new nation can transition directly to equivalent imperial glory, glossing over the Middle Ages and rejecting any connection with them – while simultaneously instrumentalizing that period as a tool in its own elision. Creating a Britain that is the direct heir of Rome permits the cultural elite to downplay a history of invasion and membership of a Roman Catholic Church. Instead, a united Britain rises from the ashes of the Roman Empire. Yet this elision is ultimately impossible: without the Middle Ages as a repository of knowledge – even with the map being presented as a possible Roman original – His preface to Britannicarum Gentium Historiæ Antiquæ Scriptores tres expresses this at some length. His complaint about a later editor forging parts of Nennius is, in that context, frankly hilarious. The idea of medieval writers as corrupters is also explored in Chapter 2. 56 Letter to Stukeley 31 October 1754. 57 Letter to Stukeley 16 October 1753. Underlining in the original. 58 Letter to Stukeley 23 April 1753. Underlining in the original. 55

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there is no way to achieve the step back to Roman Britain. The Middle Ages, even if reduced largely to a time of monks copying, more or less correctly, ancient documents, remains an essential connection with this idealized history. The Roman past cannot be accessed directly but only through the medieval past; there is no eliding the Middle Ages while retaining Rome. The importance of retaining Rome is its function as an argument for the state of the British nation in Bertram’s present. In presenting the Union as having existed during the much-admired period of Roman rule, Bertram’s text portrays the Union of 1707 as unavoidable, pre-ordained, and natural. The territorial boundaries are re-affirmed through history, and with an authority that is hard to question. In addition, those boundaries allow the exclusion and Othering of any group not recognizable as British in a narrow sense. The text can be read in two, not necessarily exclusive, ways. The Highlands, with their determined support for the Jacobite cause, have been left literally outside the borders of the civilized world, yet now they are invited to re-imagine themselves as part of Roman Britain. Great Britain can, and should, be a united whole, as it almost was under Roman rule – and this new Britain ought to include the northernmost Scots, whom even Rome failed to subdue. The antiquarian in exile, writing the history of a nation to which he will never return, provides it with a new narrative that will allow the readers to imagine themselves part of a community. This forgery, anchored in, and drawing its legitimacy from, a period it seeks to elide, allows its audience to avert their gaze from the complex intervening history of invasion, exclusion, inclusion, and dissent in a country whose borders have never been as straightforward as its resident elite has tried to make it.

2 Emma Letherbrow’s Gudrun: Kudrun for ‘Modern’ Victorians Mary Boyle

T

hirty-four years after the Nibelungenlied was first introduced to anglophone audiences by Henry Weber, and seventeen years after Thomas Carlyle’s influential essay-cum-summary-cum-review, an anonymous writer outlined a narrative that, ‘[n]ext to the Nibelungen … occupies the highest place in the German epic’.1 With these words, in 1848, Kudrun was presented to the British public. The alignment with the year of revolutions is probably coincidental and, in any case, more important context is provided by the summary’s appearance during ‘the conclusive phase of cultural medievalism’, the ‘long decade’ from 1839 to 1851, a pivotal period for medievalism in Britain, France, and Germany,2 and a time when anglophone writers began to look to medieval German for inspiration. From this point on, Kudrun makes not infrequent appearances in summary form in anglophone overviews of medieval literature, but, unlike the Nibelungenlied, it is rarely given top billing, let alone a book to itself. It would be another fifteen years before a fairly full version of the narrative appeared in English: a free prose adaptation from the pen of a Manchester-based writer named Emma Letherbrow.3 In her Gudrun: A ‘Art. VI – “Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der deutschen National-Literatur, von Dr A.F.C. Vilmar, Director des kurfürstlichen Gymnasimus [sic] zu Marburg. Zweite mit Anmerkungen und rinem [sic] Register Vermehte [sic] Auflage” (Lectures on the History of German National Literature, by Dr A.F.C. Vilmar, Director of the Electoral Gymnasium at Marburg. Second Edition, Enlarged, with Notes and Index)’, in British Quarterly Review (London, 1848), viii, 140. 2 David Matthews, Medievalism: A Critical History (Cambridge, 2015), x. 3 Emma Letherbrow, Gudrun: A Story of the North Sea (Edinburgh, 1863). All quotations from Letherbrow refer to this edition, hereafter simply Gudrun. Little information is available about Letherbrow, but she was a member, alongside her husband, of the Letherbrow Club, ‘a private literary and artistic society’: Albert Nicholson and Suzanne Fagence Cooper, ‘Hull, William’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, https://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac. 1

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Story of the North Sea, Letherbrow lays claim to deep cultural and ethnic connections between Kudrun’s characters and her nineteenth-century audience, as well as asserting layers of interference with the text between its composition and its recording in manuscript form. In order to transmit and popularize her Romantic nationalist reading of Kudrun, she argues that aspects of the work are strikingly ‘modern’ (Gudrun, xxxvii–xxxviii, lxv).4 Beyond these arguments, she intervenes in the narrative, presenting her version as cutting through these layers of later inference that hinder the text’s appeal to contemporary audiences. Through these interventions, both textual and paratextual, Letherbrow aims to present Kudrun in a form that will be familiar and appealing to her nineteenth-century audience. In other words, she aims to ‘modern’-ize Kudrun in order to prove that it is both ancient and already ‘modern’, and that her ‘modern’ audience has an intrinsic and primal connection with the heroic past represented within it. Although generally accepted to be the work of the early thirteenth century, Kudrun survives only in an early sixteenth-century manuscript.5 The narrative is usually divided into three sections, the first two of which deal with Kudrun’s ancestry: first the youth of her grandfather, Hagen, the king of Ireland (âventiure I–IV), and secondly the wooing of Hagen’s daughter, Hilde, by Hetel, who is king of the lands by the North Sea (âventiure V–VIII). This involves the abduction of the willing Hilde; Hagen’s pursuit of his daughter; the bloody battle at Waleis; and the marriage of Hetel and Hilde, with Hagen’s blessing. This second section has cognates in other literary traditions, including the Norse legend of Hjaðningavíg, the proto-Yiddish Dukus Horant, an appearance in the Gesta Danorum, and a reference in the Old English Deor. The rest of the poem (âventiure IX–XXXII) concerns Kudrun herself: the suits for her hand from the Moorish king Siegfried, the Norman prince Hartmut, and the king of Sealand, Herwig; her engagement to Herwig and abduction by Hartmut; Hetel and Herwig’s pursuit and the battle on the Wulpensand at which Hetel is killed by Hartmut’s father, Ludwig; Kudrun’s long captivity and mistreatment by Hartmut’s mother, Gerlint; her rescue; and finally, her securing the peace by arranging marriages for Siegfried, Hartmut, and her own brother, Ortwin.

uk:2102/10.1093/ref:odnb/14110 [accessed 1 February 2022]. Nineteenth-century adaptations of Kudrun usually refer to the eponymous protagonist, and thus the text itself, as ‘Gudrun’. Recent scholarship uses the spelling ‘Kudrun’, more closely reflecting the form in the manuscript (Chautrun). This article uses the ‘Kudrun’ spelling except in quotations from editions that use the spelling ‘Gudrun’. In 1889, a translation of Kudrun was finally published in English by Mary Pickering Nichols: Gudrun: A Medieval Epic (Boston and New York, 1889). 4 Where it appears in quotation marks, the word ‘modern’ refers specifically to the audience for which Letherbrow is writing, reflecting her use of the word. Where it does not, it should be read simply as a period classification. 5 Handschriftencensus, ‘Kudrun’, Handschriftencensus, 2022, http://www. handschriftencensus.de/werke/756 [accessed 3 February 2022]; Christine Glaßner and Teresa Reinhild Küppers, ‘Handschriftenbeschreibung 3766’, Handschriftencensus, 2022, https://handschriftencensus.de/3766 [accessed 1 February 2022]; Karl Stackmann and Karl Bartsch, eds, Kudrun, Altdeutsche Textbibliothek, 115 (Tübingen, 2000), ix–xi. Quotations from Kudrun refer to this edition.

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The later reception of Kudrun is a story of the nineteenth century in both the German- and English-speaking worlds. Friedrich von der Hagen, who was enormously influential in his own time, produced the first modern edition of the medieval German text in 1820.6 He was followed by various German scholars and writers who published their own editions, adaptations, and translations over the course of the century. Most significant for Letherbrow was Martin Anton Niendorf ’s verse adaptation (1855), although she also makes reference to the translations by San-Marte (a pseudonym for Albert Schulz) (1839) and Karl Simrock (1843), and the much-abridged adaptations by Karl Müllenhoff (1845) and Georg Gervinus (1836).7 Gervinus published an anonymous translation of an extract, with extensive paratext, while Müllenhoff followed Karl Lachmann’s scissor-happy Liedertheorie approach, famously applied to the Nibelungenlied, among other works, and discarded most of the text as inauthentic.8 By the time Letherbrow picked up her pen, therefore, a creative approach to Kudrun was well established, and ‘precedent was found [for her methodology], in some degree, among the Germans themselves’ (Gudrun, vii). She claims to offer ‘a free prose version which, while it remained faithful to the spirit of the poem, might suit the taste of modern readers’ (Gudrun, vii). Like Müllenhoff, who overtly alludes to the purported existence of (inauthentic) later meddling by naming his translation Kudrun: Die echten Theile des Gedichts [Kudrun: the authentic parts of the poem],9 Letherbrow aims to circumvent those who have intervened between the poem’s original composition and her ‘modern readers’: The Gudrunlied, unlike the Norse and Highland tales, which have preserved in the mouths of the peasantry their simple garb of a thousand years past, and are therefore in their literalness of high value as aids to history, has reached us through the distorting medium of half-taught scribes and monkish chroniclers. Incongruities and useless repetitions mar its beauties; the trail of priestcraft is visible in its pages; and it is plain that gaps in the original manuscript have been filled up with inferior matter. These and other considerations determined the writer in favour of a free prose version. (Gudrun, vii–viii)

6 Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen and Johann Gustav Büsching, eds, ‘Gudrun’, in Deutsche Gedichte des Mittelalters (Berlin, G. Reimer), ii. A page reference cannot be provided, since pagination starts again at 1 with each section. 7 Martin Anton Niendorf, Das Gudrun-Lied (Berlin, 1855); San-Marte (A. Schulz), Gudrun: Nordseesage (Berlin, Posen, and Bromberg, 1839); Karl Simrock, Das Heldenbuch: Gudrun (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1843); Karl Müllenhoff, ed., Kudrun: Die echten Theile des Gedichtes (Kiel, 1845); Georg Gervinus, Gudrun: Ein episches Gedicht (Leipzig, 1836). 8 Liedertheorie contends that epics are formed from a collection of originally independent, shorter, orally transmitted lays or songs. Lachmann aimed to identify the supposed original songs within texts like the Nibelungenlied, regarding these as the truly authentic parts of the text. He developed the theory in his Über die ursprüngliche Gestalt des Gedichts von der Nibelungen Noth (Berlin, 1816). 9 All translations are my own.

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The implication is both that, in its supposed original form, Kudrun would have appealed to ‘modern’ readers more than in the form that has survived, and that a free prose version somehow ‘embodies the substance of the Gudrunlied’ (Gudrun, v) in a way that a more literal translation would not, by removing what Letherbrow has identified as later ‘inferior matter’. Two key terms here are ‘monkish’ and, in particular, ‘priestcraft’, a rather nebulous but unequivocally negative term, which indicated a self-serving power exercised over the laity by means, for example, of obfuscation or fabrication.10 In the preceding centuries, ‘priestcraft’ had been viewed as ‘particularly disfiguring Catholicism’, although it was understood to be a danger to all churches.11 Catholicism itself had been viewed since the reign of Elizabeth I as ‘intrinsically un-British’.12 After the Reformation, a narrative developed that the country had been Christianized, not from Rome by Augustine of Canterbury, but much earlier, by Joseph of Arimathea. The main implication of this is essentially that, ‘if the Church of England did not originate from a papal mission, then whatever Augustine introduced corrupted the native tradition’s purity’.13 Priests’ power was thus not just nefarious, but also a threat to Englishness, and so priests were objects of much greater fear and distrust than ordinary Catholics.14 We can therefore understand that, by invoking ‘priestcraft’, Letherbrow is asserting a deliberate attempt to pervert and Romanize what she views as the original narrative of Kudrun, taking it away from the roots it shares with the members of her audience. Through her revision, it will shake off this foreign imposition, just as they, or their ancestors, have. This identification of supposed later ‘priestcraft’ exercised over the text allows Letherbrow to pick and choose which religious elements she maintains. Kudrun, she writes, ‘depicts the Danes just at the epoch when their native virtues had become strengthened and ennobled by the influences of the Christian faith’ (Gudrun, xlvii). She therefore excises or downplays elements that might seem alien to her nineteenth-century audience – prayer for the dead after the battle on the Wulpensand, for example – as the fanciful insertions of ‘monkish chroniclers’ and practitioners of ‘priestcraft’,15 in order to illustrate her view that ‘in the Gudrunlied the doctrines Jonathan I. Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670–1752 (Oxford, 2006), 94. 11 Ibid. This understanding existed into the twentieth century: Hugh Cecil, ‘Priestcraft or Rectorcraft?’, Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, 90/2356 (1900), 784. ‘Priestcraft’ was viewed as a continuation within the Catholic Church of heathen practices: J.A.I. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and Its Enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge, 1992), 138. Its suffix also suggested an association with witchcraft. 12 Bethany Tanis, ‘Diverging Paths: Fin-de-Siècle Britishness and the Oxford Movement’, Anglican and Episcopal History, 77/3 (2008), 289. 13 Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, ‘Counter-Medievalism: Or, Protestants Rewrite the Middle Ages’, in Beyond Arthurian Romances: The Reach of Victorian Medievalism, ed. Lorretta M. Holloway and Jennifer A. Palmgren (New York and Basingstoke, 2005), 150. 14 Even when priests were not presented as succeeding in their quest for power, they were still depicted in strongly negative terms: Charles Kingsley, ‘Why Should We Fear the Romish Priests?’, Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, 37 (1848), 467–74. 15 Letherbrow writes that they ‘drank love and remembrance over the graves’ where Kudrun gives: ‘si hêten niht der wîle – daz gesínde nie gelac –, / wie si ze gotes hulden die von Hegelingen / von ir grôzen schulden und von ir missetat möhten bringen. / Lesen unde 10

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of the Christian faith have become living truths’ (Gudrun, xlvi). Her occasional references to clergy are adjectivally clarified: we read twice of ‘the good priests’ (Gudrun, 87, 140).16 This acts as a reassurance to readers that, even where the Christianity of the text does not entirely overlap with ‘our advanced forms of Christian faith’, as Letherbrow describes nineteenth-century religion (Gudrun, xlv), it is yet more distinct from the practices of the ‘monkish chroniclers’. By associating Christianity and the ‘native virtues’ of the Danes, religion is enforced as an ethnic category shared by Letherbrow’s readers and protagonists, both of whom have now been freed from (non-native) ‘priestcraft’. Religion thus serves an overarching ethnonationalist agenda, and its depiction in the text and paratext contributes to the overall goal of restoring Kudrun to its affinity with her ‘modern’ readers: It is written for those general readers who will take delight in the portraitures of the heroic men and women of the sturdy, steadfast, old Danish stock, to which the English people owes some of the noblest and most abiding elements of its greatness. (Gudrun, ix)

Letherbrow invokes the Danes as direct ancestors of the English, and the source of their best characteristics on several occasions.17 This kind of overtly ethnonationalist anglophone approach to medieval German literature is not unique to Kudrun. It is also routinely seen in reception of the Nibelungenlied, a text closely connected with Kudrun, both in its modern and its pre-modern context. It is entirely predictable that the first English mention of Kudrun contextualized the work with reference to the Nibelungenlied, and that Letherbrow does likewise (Gudrun, v). Where Kudrun is discussed, mention of the Nibelungenlied often follows – or precedes. There is good reason for this: its form (similar metre, at times identical), values, characters’ names, apparent date of being set down in writing, and subject matter (a loyal and wronged female protagonist who seeks peace, as opposed to revenge) indicate that, in the form in which it has survived to the modern day, Kudrun can be understood as a reaction to the Nibelungenlied. In addition, in its only surviving manuscript, Kudrun appears immediately after the Nibelungenlied and its more widely transmitted response text, the Nibelungenklage.18 Von der Hagen opens his introduction singen man hôrte sô vil dâ, / daz man bî sturmtôten nindert anderswâ / gote sô schône diente in deheinem lande. / sît lie man bî den veigen vil der phaffen ûf dem sande’ (Kudrun, stanzas 914–15). [They did not rest; they did not repose, in order to bring the Hegelings to God’s grace after their great guilt and misdeeds. One heard so much reading and singing that God was not better worshipped anywhere else than over those dead in battle. Later many priests were left with the dead on the sand.] 16 In the first instance, there is no reference to priests at this point in Kudrun (stanza 843). In the second, a reference to the richly outfitted monastery on the Wulpensand (stanza 1121) becomes a description of the readings and prayers of the ‘good priests’ of the ‘chapel’ in that location. 17 By contrast, her only comment on the popular Victorian topic of a so-called AngloSaxon past is fairly dismissive: ‘Possibly the Danes had become mixed with the native tribes [between the Elbe and the Ems], just as in our own country they became blended with the Saxons after their conversion to Christianity’: Gudrun, lix. Letherbrow’s focus is distinctly northern. 18 Glaßner and Reinhild Küppers, ‘Handschriftenbeschreibung 3766’.

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to Kudrun by describing it as ‘die wunderbare Nebensonne der Nibelungen’ [the wonderful parhelion of the Nibelungen],19 and this description was picked up and echoed by the other German writers and scholars who edited, translated, or adapted Kudrun during the nineteenth century. Letherbrow herself refers to von der Hagen when she explains at the beginning of her preface that Kudrun, ‘in the opinion of the best critics ranks second only to the Nibelungenlied’ (Gudrun, v). Associating Kudrun so immediately with the Nibelungenlied and contextualizing it specifically with reference to that text without an explanation of their actual metrical and thematic relationship is essentially a shorthand linking Kudrun with the contemporary associations of the Nibelungenlied, which were so commonplace that they did not need to be stated. The Nibelungenlied was understood in the anglophone world to be the German national epic,20 and, throughout the nineteenth century, the authors of English versions of the text argued along Carlyle’s lines that, ‘if the primæval rudiments of it have the antiquity assigned them, it belongs specially to us English Teutones as well as to the German’.21 The Romantic nationalism at the heart of Letherbrow’s endeavour is not just evident in her title, Gudrun: A Tale of the North Sea, which geographically anchors the work in a location literally linking her (Yorkshire) readers and her protagonists, but also in her extensive introduction, which, while it purports to explain ‘the origin of the Gudrunlied’ (Gudrun, ix), is in fact largely ‘the oft-told tale of the migrations and irruptions of the northern races’ (Gudrun, xiii). When she comes to discuss the poem itself, she once again draws a connection between its characters and her own audience: ‘It is curious to recognise among these heroes of a thousand years agone features of character which still prevail among that portion of the British population which is of Norse extraction’ (Gudrun, liv). Her chief example here is ‘one which a popular proverb associates with the highest attribute of human nature’: cleanliness. Letherbrow lists several references to washing and bathing in Kudrun and then asks, ‘Is it a great stretch of fancy to believe that the intense love of cleanliness which marks the people of the Netherlands and those of Yorkshire is a feature of character inherited from their Danish forefathers?’ She then suggests that further proof of this lineage is found in personality traits shared by characters in Kudrun and in the writing of Currer Bell/Charlotte Brontë (‘the same mixture of deep feeling and shrewdness, rough speech and strong affection, generosity and thrift’) (Letherbrow,

von der Hagen and Büsching, ‘Gudrun’, ii, vii. See comments, for example, such as ‘Learned professors lecture on the Nibelungen, in public schools, with a praiseworthy view to initiate the German youth in love of their fatherland; from many zealous and no wise ignorant critics we hear talk of a “great Northern Epos,” of a “German Iliad”’ (Thomas Carlyle, ‘Das Nibelungen Lied, übersetzt von Karl Simrock (The “Nibelungen Lied”, translated by Karl Simrock.) 2 Vols. 12mo. Berlin. 1827.’, Westminster Review, 15/29 (1831), 2–3); or ‘Germany’s national epic poem of the days of chivalry, the Nibelungen Lay’ (Auber Forestier, Echoes from Mist-Land; or, The Nibelungen Lay, 2nd edn (Chicago, 1889), v). 21 Carlyle, ‘Nibelungen Lied’, 4. See also, for example, Forestier, here claiming to echo William Morris: ‘[T]he Teutonic forefathers, the Teutonic myths and sagas, are ours also – by right of our Anglo-Saxon descent’ (Echoes from Mistland, xiv). 19

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Gudrun, liv–lv). Needless to say, Letherbrow never identifies unflattering parallels between her audience and the characters of Kudrun. Her intention is not simply to draw connections between her ‘modern’ readers and the mythical past, but in so doing to reflect past glories on to those ‘modern’ readers who are addressed as the natural successors to this exemplary culture. These paratextual strategies would be of little use if they did not find support within Letherbrow’s text, since she has claimed to be transmitting something that is ‘faithful to the spirit of the poem’ (Gudrun, vii). Her adaptation of Kudrun must itself have resonance for her ‘modern’ readers: she cannot simply rely on telling them in the introduction that it is an important and relevant piece of literature. She thus intervenes in the construction of the text, in order to increase its contemporary appeal. While the medieval Kudrun opens with the assertion ‘Ditze buoch ist von Kudrun’ [this book is about Kudrun], the eponymous protagonist does not actually feature again for some time. Her first appearance is not until stanza 575, when we learn of her birth. Instead, we hear, in chronological order, of her ancestry, from her great-great grandfather, Ger, through his son, Sigeband, and then in detail about the two generations that immediately precede her (Hagen and Hetel). Letherbrow, by contrast, opens with Kudrun’s birth. The accounts of Hagen’s youth and Hetel’s wooing of Hilde are presented in flashback, as sung by the minstrel Horant, while Hetel, Herwig, and their followers are laying siege to Siegfried and his men (Gudrun, 32). This was not Letherbrow’s innovation: she is following the example of Anton Niendorf, who inserts a Horant-narrated flashback at the same point in the narrative, though he only takes proceedings back as far as the history of Hetel and Hilde.23 Replicating this rearrangement, however, was a conscious decision on Letherbrow’s part. She had evidently consulted many different versions of Kudrun and conscientiously lists a range of German editions, of which only Niendorf rearranges the text. She even directs her readers to Simrock’s translation, rather than Niendorf ’s: ‘The reader who wishes to exercise his own judgement cannot do better’ (Gudrun, xxxviii). Yet she also deliberately obscures the fact of the rearrangement, both in her own work and in Niendorf ’s, simply describing his adaptation as ‘a spirited ballad version … [of which] the writer has availed herself in several passages’ (Gudrun, vii). By failing to mention this substantial change, Letherbrow passes off as an original feature something that is in fact more typical of nineteenth-century novels: much of Emily Brontë’s – the sister of ‘Currer Bell’, to whom Letherbrow refers – Wuthering Heights (1847), for example, is narrated in flashback by Mrs Dean. In her invocation of this genre’s form, Letherbrow was successful enough that one of her reviewers commented that ‘the story cannot fail to be popular, even with those who merely read it as a novel’.24 There is a further, possibly more significant, reason behind her inclusion and expansion of Niendorf ’s innovation. As Jane Dewhurst points out, the ‘valorisation of medieval song as natural, unmediated expressivity, which effortlessly 22

Her grounds for linking Yorkshire and the Netherlands are not clarified but are presumably based on the fact that Frisians and Danes are the chief protagonists of Kudrun, with whom she wishes to identify the people of Yorkshire. 23 Niendorf, Das Gudrun-Lied, 23–30. Müllenhoff does not rearrange the text, but he omits the section on Hagen, beginning with Hetel and Hilde. 24 ‘Gudrun: A Scandinavian Story’, The Reader, 20, 16 May 1863, 478. 22

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traverses historical distance … formed an important part of the canonical repertoire of Romantic poetry’.25 This in itself might explain Niendorf ’s revisions and Letherbrow’s elaborations, but, as Dewhurst goes on to explain, nineteenth-century German antiquarians hypothesized that the figure of the bard belonged as much to the ‘Germanic’ past as to the Gaelic past.26 In the light of Letherbrow’s insistence on the authenticity of orally transmitted Highland Tales,27 as well as her use of the term ‘ballad’ to describe Niendorf ’s adaptation, her inclusion and expansion of Horant’s musical recounting of Kudrun’s family history can be understood as a bardic performance. As Katie Trumpener explains, ‘according to their [Irish and Scottish antiquarians’] theories, bardic performance binds the nation together across time and across social divides; it reanimates a national landscape made desolate first by conquest and then by modernization’.28 Whereas, in Trumpener’s context, the desolation is the result of English colonization, in Letherbrow’s adaptation, it is her English audience who need to reach out across the intervening desolation to their ancestral literary past. The conception of Horant as bard corresponds to the nineteenth-century view that the Norman Conquest had corrupted the Germanic inheritance of the English by overlaying it with foreign traditions. It is not unusual for nineteenth-century historical writing, for example, to take an approach that ‘envisions the Anglo-Saxon past as a romantic narrative that anticipates an English future’.29 This is in line with Letherbrow’s approach: the pre-modern, post-Conquest history of England is irrelevant to her mission to assert a direct ancestral relationship between her readers and the pre-Conquest Danes in England.30 The appropriation of the figure of the bard is, then, a romantic appeal to oral tradition superseding both conquest and the layers of later interference she claims to identify in the poem – even though, as she is well aware, Horant’s role as narrator is itself a modern innovation. In addition to presenting her ‘modern’ readers with a familiar fictional form, Letherbrow also argues for the characterization of the figures in Kudrun as indicative of its ‘modern’-like literary quality. Most of the characters, she argues, ‘yield 25 Jane Dewhurst, ‘Volker the “Spilman”: The “Nibelungenlied”’s Minstrel in Nineteenthand Twentieth-Century Poetic Adaptations’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 40/1 (2004), 27. 26 Ibid., 28. 27 Letherbrow describes Horand as a ‘minstrel’ rather than a ‘bard’ (for example, Gudrun, lv), a term often used in much the same context as ‘bard’ in the nineteenth century: Karen E. McAulay, ‘Minstrels of the Celtic Nations: Metaphors in Early Nineteenth-Century Celtic Song Collections’, Fontes Artis Musicae – Journal of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres, 59/1 (2012), 25–38. For more on the nineteenth-century romanticization of poet-musicians, see Kayleigh Ferguson’s Chapter 7 in this volume. 28 Katie Trumpener, Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire (Princeton, 1997), xii. 29 Donna Beth Ellard, ‘Ella’s Bloody Eagle: Sharon Turner’s “History of the AngloSaxons” and Anglo-Saxon History’, postmedieval, 5/2 (2014), 216. Ellard refers specifically here to Sharon Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons (1799–1805). 30 Although Letherbrow acknowledges that Gerlint, ‘the thrifty Norman queen … is of the same stock as her as the bitter foes, the Danes’, she does not engage with the implications of this for post-Conquest England (Gudrun, liv).

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as truthful a portraiture as the most highly-finished works of our own times’, but the highest praise is reserved for the depiction of one figure in particular. Letherbrow writes: ‘Nor must we forget Hartmut, with whom the chronicler divides our sympathy for King Herwig of Zealand, in a way which we should consider in a modern writer as a proof of consummate art’ (Gudrun, xxxvii–xxxviii). The presentation of Hartmut, Kudrun’s abductor, in the medieval text is certainly more ambivalent than might be expected of a man who kidnaps a woman engaged to someone else and then proceeds to imprison her for over a decade,31 but Letherbrow goes beyond the medieval text’s restrained characterization. Her audience are left unaware that her substantial revisions, as well as moving some distance from the manuscript version of Kudrun, have increased the narrative’s moral complexity in order to heighten its supposed ‘modern’ appeal – indeed, her praise for the poet’s treatment of Hartmut deliberately gives the opposite impression. The rearrangement of the text serves a further purpose here, for it allows the battle at Waleis (in which Hagen pursues and attacks Hetel, whom he views as having abducted his daughter) to be juxtaposed with the battle on the Wulpensand (in which Hetel pursues and fights the army of Hartmut, who has abducted his daughter). The analogy – quite plain, even without elaboration – is not left unspoken: Hartmut’s father, Ludwig, asks, ‘Tell me, Hetel, who stole away Hilda from her father’s house? Dost thou think men have forgotten the story of Wild Hagen’s daughter?’ (Gudrun, 103).32 In addition to echoing a contemporary literary form, then, the rearrangement also supports Letherbrow’s identification of complex characterization in the text. The complication of Hartmut’s character, though, is by no means restricted to this rearrangement of the narrative. Letherbrow treats him far more positively than either the medieval text or her modern German sources. The revision becomes particularly apparent when he is introduced. In Kudrun, we read: ein künic der hiez Hartmuot; nâch ir [Kudrun] wante er sîne minne sêre. Daz riet im sîn muoter, diu hiez Gêrlint. dô vólgete ir lêre der junge voget sint.

(Kudrun, stanzas 587–88)

[A king called Hartmut greatly inclined his love towards Kudrun. His mother, who was called Gerlint, advised this. The young prince later followed her advice.]

When Kudrun eventually meets Hartmut, ‘Si sach in also schœnen, daz irz ir herze riet’ (Kudrun, stanza 626) [she found him so attractive that her heart inclined towards him]. Certainly, Hartmut is not introduced in unflattering terms. Indeed, at this point, he is introduced as we might expect an ultimately successful Friedrich Michael Dimpel examines the implications of Hartmut’s characterization in the medieval text in detail: ‘Hartmut – Liebling des Dichters? Sympathiesteuerung in der “Kudrun”’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 141/3 (2012), 335–53. 32 This may recall Ludwig asking his wife and son ‘ist iu daz erkant, / wie ir muoter Hilde kœme ûz Irlant’ (Kudrun, 593) [do you know how her mother Hilde came from Ireland?], but the parallel is far clearer here, and presented directly to Hetel. 31

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male suitor to be introduced, and he thus receives a kind of ‘protagonist bonus’ of positive inclination from the audience.33 Letherbrow’s Hartmut, however, even goes beyond this: Hartmut was as brave a youth as ever sailed the north seas; of comely presence likewise, and a kingly bearing. His body was tall, and straight as a Norway pine; his red-gold hair hung in thick curls upon his shoulders; he was gentle of speech, ardent of temper, strong in love, in hate, and constancy. From boyhood he had loved to seek danger upon the sea or in the chase, and he cared naught for women, esteeming love only a pastime for the weak. Nevertheless, when his mother told him that it was meet he should choose a wife for the people’s sake, he hearkened to her. (Gudrun, 8–9)

Letherbrow’s additions are not just extensive; they also situate Hartmut as one of the northern heroes with whom her audience is invited to identify: his bravery is located in the ‘north seas’; he is compared with a Norway pine, in keeping with Letherbrow’s preoccupation with Scandinavia (‘that branch of the Teutons settled in Scandinavia grew to be a mighty people’ (Gudrun, xiii)); his characteristics (other than his gentle speech) recall those Letherbrow identifies as being shared between the characters of Kudrun and the Yorkshire dwellers of ‘Currer Bell’, particularly ‘deep feeling’ and ‘strong affection’. This is an example of Letherbrow intervening in the text both to ‘modern’-ize it and to make it correspond to the Romantic nationalism of her paratext. Later she ensures that, wherever possible, Hartmut is absolved of blame for the abduction of Kudrun. For much of the early part of the adaptation, he is a relatively reluctant participant, and his father Ludwig and mother Gerlint are cast as the chief instigators. Hartmut, for example, is represented as being against his father’s plan to steal away with Kudrun in the night after the battle on the Wulpensand (Gudrun, 107) – a discomfort simply not present in Kudrun.34 This removes some of the complexity in the sixteenth-century text, which is also represented in the nineteenth-century editions of Kudrun to which Letherbrow had access: Ludwig and Gerlint urge the raid in which Kudrun is abducted, and Gerlint is certainly depicted as the author of much of Kudrun’s suffering, but Hartmut is neither fully absolved, nor really condemned, which leaves the audience with a more complex question about sympathy.35 Letherbrow’s revision of Hartmut is thrown into sharper relief by her introduction of Herwig, the ultimately successful suitor. In the (allegedly) medieval text, we read: von einem künige jungen: Herwîc was er genennet. den sach man ofte in prîse; dâ von man noch den recken wol erkennet.

(Kudrun, stanza 617)

Dimpel, ‘Sympathiesteuerung in der “Kudrun”’, 344, 337 [‘Protagonistenbonus’]. Compare Kudrun, stanzas 892ff. 35 For example, ‘vater unde muoter, rihten sich began / ze starkem urliuge … daz riet im ze allen zîten Gêrlínt diu alte vâlentinne’ (Kudrun, stanza 629) [Father and mother began to urge him to war … the old devil Gerlint constantly advised him to do this]. 33

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[of a young king named Herwig. He was often seen acquiring glory, and so the knight was easily recognized.]

Letherbrow introduces him as: a fresh wooer, King Herwig of Zealand, a brave sword, comely withal, and of ancient race. Men said that his land was barren, and his people poor, and that he was loftier of heart than beseemed his deserts; but Gudrun treated him more graciously for this, despising pomp and riches … (Gudrun, 14)

Only Kudrun’s portrayal benefits from this description. Herwig’s glories are reduced to bravery with no discernible effects and, rather than being known for his success in battle, he is known for being the haughty king of a poor land. Nonetheless, Letherbrow certainly means the attribute ‘of ancient race’ to be taken positively. Lengthy traceable genealogy rooted in a heroic past is important to her, and she opens her introduction with a foundation myth for her audience: ‘[T]he ancestors of the ruling European races came, in ages past, from the plains of Asia’ (Gudrun, xiii). Herwig’s ‘ancient race’ may even be intended to excuse Kudrun’s ultimate choice of him over Hartmut. Letherbrow’s revisions here only make sense with recourse to her earlier description of the poet’s complex treatment of Hartmut and Herwig as ‘in a modern writer … proof of consummate art’ (Gudrun, xxxvii–xxxviii). This is supported by another comment in the introduction invoking the ‘modern’ audience and their literary context: the suggestion that, if Kudrun were torn between ‘her betrothed husband and her admiration for Hartmut’, then ‘[t]his idea may probably find a response in the minds of readers possessed with the ideas of modern romance’ (Gudrun, lxiv–lxv). By presenting Herwig in what is almost a negative light at his first appearance, Letherbrow introduces a greater tension for her readers over Kudrun’s ultimate decision. Ultimately, her rebalancing of the characterization of these two figures is a strategy to make her Gudrun more appealing to her contemporary readership by emphasizing the anonymous poet’s supposed similarity to a nineteenth-century novelist, and thus to make more resonant those other ideas she wishes to convey, chiefly the connection between her audience and the heroic past. But this strategy is not sustainable throughout the narrative. Once the abduction has happened and Kudrun is kept in Normandy despite having refused Hartmut, he is clearly complicit and no longer feasible as a suitor. In any case, the scene needs to be set for Kudrun’s ultimate reunion with Herwig. Hartmut, we read, grew impatient ‘and spake in foul scorn of her betrothed’, describing him as ‘the peasant king’ (Gudrun, 131). Herwig, by contrast, grows in stature. In battle, when he finally defeats and kills Ludwig, Letherbrow exaggerates the wounds he is fighting with, building tension for her readers during a crucial scene and increasing the scale of his achievement (Gudrun, 180–81). Letherbrow introduces other changes to make the text fit the tastes and expectations of her ‘modern’ audience, and to conform to her priorities. After Ludwig is killed and Hartmut is taken prisoner, for example, the forces led by Herwig and the Hegelings go in search of booty (‘dô sach man nâch gewinne dringen vil der recken’,

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Kudrun, stanza 1498). They not only sack and loot the town, but also commit wholesale slaughter of the inhabitants: dô sluoc man dar inne mán únde wîp der kindel in den wiegen verlôs dâ manigez sînen lîp.

(Kudrun, stanza 1501)

[Men and women were then killed within the town. Many children in the cradle lost their lives.]

Letherbrow instead writes: Meanwhile the Moorlanders sacked the town and slew the people; and of the burghers not one male was left, save the young children, whom they spared because of their tender years, and some old men who escaped into the woods and there perished miserably of hunger. (Gudrun, 189)

Presumably she felt that the indiscriminate massacre in the medieval text would have repelled her ‘modern’ audience. More significantly, she attributes the killings to the only group of non-white characters, thus avoiding depicting the people whom she has praised as the glorious ancestors of her readers as committing unprovoked murder of the innocent. While Siegfried and the Moors are part of the forces that free Kudrun in the medieval text, there is no indication that they are the instigators of the slaughter, let alone the only perpetrators. In fact, the heroic, if rough-aroundthe-edges, Wat, rather a favourite of Letherbrow’s, is an enthusiastic child murderer. When asked to stop, he replies du hâst kindes muot. … solten die erwahsen, sô wolte ich in niht mêre getrouwen danne einem wilden Sahsen.

(Kudrun, stanza 1503)

[You are thinking like a child. If they were to grow up, I would not trust them more than a wild Saxon.]

Letherbrow cannot allow her ‘iron-handed, true-hearted Wat of Sturmland’ to lead a bloody charge against children or other innocents (Gudrun, xxxvii). Even if ‘his outbursts of savage fierceness only serve as a foil to the scenes of peace and reconciliation which follow’ (Gudrun, xlvii), they must still be limited. He is allowed to remain the killer of the cruel Gerlint and the disloyal Hergart (Gudrun, 191–92), but killing innocent women, children, and old men is beyond the pale for a character who might be fierce and stern but is ultimately heroic. This last example encapsulates Letherbrow’s Romantic nationalist, indeed ethnonationalist, interpretation of Kudrun. It serves her purposes thoroughly: it revises the narrative to conform to contemporary tastes; it characterizes a pseudo-ancestral figure more positively; and it presents the only non-white characters in the text in a manner that conforms with the ‘hardening’ of racist attitudes across the nineteenth

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century, particularly from the 1850s onwards, with the result that, when her readers see themselves in the heroic Danes, that stature is improved by comparison with the savage ‘Moorlanders’. This is indicative of Letherbrow’s Gudrun as a whole. Through her ‘free prose version’ of Kudrun, she creates an imagined and constricted past, populated by valiant protagonists in whom her readers are invited to see themselves. This is accomplished both through paratext and the text itself. She states her case openly in the preface by alluding to the appeal of the ‘story’ to ‘modern tastes’, if only a ‘form suited’ to the purpose could be found (Gudrun, viii), and concluding with an explicit invocation of the heroism of the figures in the narrative, which then attributes their qualities, at least in part, to their Danish ‘stock’, and immediately draws a direct ancestral link between these characters and the best features of contemporary English people (Gudrun, ix). The longer introduction makes the same case in greater detail, with its fifty-three pages taking in a heavily romanticized account of ‘the Teutons’ (Gudrun, xiii), an indictment of the ‘incompetency of the scribes’ who transmitted Kudrun (Gudrun, xl), a brief excursus of the poem as conforming to (her understanding of) Christian doctrine (Gudrun, xlvi–xlvii), connections between Kudrun and earlier medieval German and English literature (Gudrun, lii–liii), and the social structure of the so-called ‘Germanic races’ (Gudrun, lvii). Just as the preface ends by summing up her overall intention for the work, the introduction concludes, ‘And now the writer must leave the little narrative in the hands of the reader, in the hope that he may find something in this old story newly told which may kindle love and reverence for the forefathers of our race’ (Gudrun, lxvi). These preoccupations are carried through to the text itself. ‘Priestcraft’ is excised in order to familiarize the religion of the text, which becomes an ethnic signifier. The structure and characterization are revised towards nineteenth-century norms, to enhance their appeal to a ‘modern’ audience. All this is in the service of making the work more accessible and, by removing supposedly extraneous later additions, more authentic. And ultimately, it is part of a strategy to cement the place of Kudrun as the cultural inheritance of Letherbrow’s English audience. The reader is invited to find ‘modern’ relevance in the narrative through their supposed ancestral connection with it. The work is done thoroughly. The audience does not need to read her extensive introduction in order to receive her message: although this would provide more argumentation, her task is accomplished by the text read in conjunction with the short preface. But none of this revision can disguise the fact that what is presented as ancient evidence for a superlative culture shared between medieval heroes and the contemporary world is nothing more than Letherbrow’s own modern creation. 36

36 Edward Beasley, The Victorian Reinvention of Race: New Racisms and the Problem of Grouping in the Human Sciences (New York and Abingdon, 2010), 15. Lisa Lampert-Weissig notes that medievalism is intrinsically connected with such attitudes: ‘Medieval studies as a discipline has its origins in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While its development was influenced by European nationalism, colonialism and imperialism, it also had a reciprocal influence on these developments and their accompanying ideologies’: Lisa Lampert-Weissig, Medieval Literature and Postcolonial Studies (Edinburgh, 2010), 20.

3 Nationalism and Colonialism: The Early German Reception of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign Florian Gassner

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n 31 March 1814, when Emperor Alexander I entered Paris side by side with King Frederick William III, Russia had reached the pinnacle of an unprecedented rise within European great power politics. Following its first successful foray into European military conflict during the Seven Years War (1756– 1763), the tsardom had consistently increased its political and military clout to eventually secure a seat among the power brokers that would shape the continent’s future at the Congress of Vienna (1815). As the historian David Saunders argues, at this time ‘the Russians’ authority was so great that they could have imposed their blueprint for the post-war world on their allies’.1 This led to an equally unprecedented demand for knowledge about an empire that, in the European imagination, still emanated some of the mystique that had so aptly lent itself to Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia (1785). As a result, an emerging market for Russian literature in translation served the interests of a reading public keen on identifying the characteristics of this nation on the rise. It is in this spirit that the first German history of Russian literature offered itself as a unique opportunity ‘uns mit dem Ausdrucke des innern Lebens eines Volkes bekannt zu machen, das durch seine politische Bedeutung die Aufmerksamkeit Europas auf sich zieht’ [to enlighten us as to the expressions of the internal life of a people whose political significance has caught European attention].2 Literature, the author Heinrich König believed, would ultimately disclose the benign essence of a nation on which Germans had thus far turned their backs.3 David Saunders, Russia in the Age of Reaction and Reform 1801–1881 (New York, 2014), 54. 2 Translations are by the editor and author, unless otherwise stated. 3 Heinrich König, Literarische Bilder aus Rußland (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1837), 3–4. 1

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Thanks to the enthusiasm for medieval literature that is characteristic of the Romantic period,4 the discovery of a Russian medieval epic, The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, caused a great stir in educated circles. The first modern edition was published in 1800, and within a year, the eminent German historian August Ludwig Schlözer had already reviewed this ‘ehrwürdige Russische Antiquität’ [venerable Russian antiquity]5 for the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, at the time one of the leading academic journals in the German-speaking world. In his review, Schlözer expressed the hope that a translation into a more familiar language (‘bekanntere Sprache’) would soon enable the audience to decide, ‘ob wirklich Ossianischer Geist in dem Slovo6 wehe (wie der Herausgeber aufs neue versichert)’ [if the Ossian spirit really flows through the tale (as its editor has recently assured us)].7 ‘Ossianisch’ here refers to the highly influential Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland (1760), a forgery of ancient Gaelic poetry published by the Scotsman James Macpherson, with the mythical Oisín (Ossian) as its protagonist. Generally accepted by contemporaries as the poetic record of a primordial Gaelic people, the collection famously triggered a pan-European fascination with vernacular ‘antiquities’. It also inspired the German writer and philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) to develop his seminal Volkslied project.8 In Herder’s mind, folk songs should be ‘gathered’ and ‘compared to understand both the distinctive character of individual peoples – and nations – as well as the universal wellspring of culture they have in common’.9 He similarly declared the ancient epic a ‘genre of national expression’,10 laying the groundwork for the Romantic enthusiasm for Europe’s oldest vernacular literature. In this context, Schlözer’s suggestion that The Tale of Igor’s Campaign might prove Ossianic in nature expresses the hope for a uniquely thorough insight into the soul of the Russian people. Popular interest in the Russian epic proved to be substantial: by the middle of the nineteenth century, nine distinct translations were available to German readers.11 However, Herder’s Enlightenment optimism, his belief that the study of folk songs would advance national rapprochement, was quickly thwarted by the political agendas and cultural prejudices informing the readers’ ‘horizon of understanding [which] determines the impact of the text’.12 To be sure, Heinrich König in 1837 4 Markus Schwering, ‘Romantische Geschichtsauffassung – Mittelalterbild und Europagedanke’, Romantik-Handbuch, ed. Helmut Schanze, 2nd edn (Stuttgart, 2003), 543– 57, 547–50. 5 August Ludwig von Schlözer, ‘Moskau’, Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, 19 (December 1801), 2029. 6 ‘Slovo’ (Russ.: слово) refers to the Russian title and is typically translated as ‘tale’ or ‘song’. 7 Schlözer, ‘Moskau’, 2029. 8 Matthew Gelbart, The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’: Emerging Categories from Ossian to Wagner (Cambridge, 2007), 103. 9 Johann Gottfried Herder and Philip V. Bohlmann, Song Loves the Masses: Herder on Music and Nationalism (Oakland, 2017), 21. 10 Ibid., 224. 11 Jutta Harney and Gottfried Sturm, ‘Zur Igorlied-Rezeption im deutschsprachigen Raum und bei den Sorben. Fragen der Übersetzung des Denkmals’, Zeitschrift für Slawistik, 33/2 (1988), 272–86. 12 Hans Robert Jauß, ‘Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory’, New Literary History, 2/1 (1970), 13.

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still shared Herder’s optimism, hoping ‘daß der finstere Blick, mit welchem wir, halb über die Achsel, nach der russischen Politik schielen, sich erheitert, wenn wir ihn auf die russische Literatur wenden’ [that the dark look we cast, half looking down our noses, at Russian politics, will be brightened when turned on Russian literature].13 In reality, however, these texts would often be instrumentalized to corroborate the chauvinistic and expansionist beliefs of the ‘Bürgertum’, the rising middle class. The reception of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign is a telling case in point. Early German reviewers presented their enquiries as objective investigations into the national traits of the Russian people (in itself a Romantic fiction), yet their judgements betray the gradual proliferation of xenophobic and, eventually, racist ideas that subsequently provided fertile ground for colonial ambitions. Thus, the reception of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign contributed to a discourse that eventually culminated in the notion of a German struggle for ‘Lebensraum’ in Eastern Europe. The rapid deterioration of German–Russian relations in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars is a striking development in modern European history. By the middle of the nineteenth century, geopolitical considerations, as well as the proliferation of racist ideology,14 had united Germans across the political spectrum in a repudiation of any alliance with the Russian Empire. A telling showcase of widespread Russophobia took place during the German National Assembly that had been brought about by the revolutions of 1848 and 1849. In the debates concerning foreign policy, the revolutionary university professor, publicist, and liberal delegate Carl Vogt (1817–1895) urged the assembly to accept ‘daß endlich einmal der Krieg beginnen muß zwischen der Cultur des Westens und der Barbarei des Ostens …, der berechtigte Krieg im Namen des deutschen Volkes gegen Rußland’ [that the war between western culture and eastern barbarism must begin at last … the justified war against Russia in the name of the German people].15 Karl Möring (1810–1870), a conservative delegate and captain in the Austrian army, similarly suggested that a military conflict was inevitable due to the terrible nature of Germany’s adversary: ‘An Rußland, ich spreche es unumwunden aus, hat Deutschland einen sicheren, einen furchtbaren Feind’ [In Russia, I say frankly, Germany has a guaranteed, a terrible enemy].16 This grim consensus across party lines is notable as it marks a radical departure from the previous generation’s attitudes towards the Russian Empire. Even before the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent formation of the Holy Alliance, Germans and Russians had gone through a protracted period of political and cultural rapprochement. Prussia, Austria, and Russia emerged from the eighteenth century as Europe’s ‘three eastern courts’,17 an informal alliance designed to mediate the partners’ political and territorial ambitions. A case in point is the gradual Partition of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795, generally understood König, Literarische Bilder aus Rußland, 3–4. Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present (Oxford, 2009), 114. 15 Franz Wigard, ed., Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen der deutschen constituirenden Nationalversammlung zu Frankfurt am Main, 9 vols. (Leipzig, 1848–1849), VIII, 5822. 16 Ibid., II., 1113. Emphasis as in the original. 17 Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 36. 13

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as an effort to conclude the geopolitical quarrel following the Seven Years War by satisfying all parties’ territorial ambitions: ‘the road of all-round compensation offered the best exit from the imbroglio’.18 At the same time, German scholars began to envision the Russian Empire as a future utopia, shaped by Enlightenment thought and governed by the rule of law. Johann Gottfried Herder was among those to expect great things from this rising power. In his Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769, Herder anticipates ‘ein neues Griechenland’ [a new Greece] north of the Black Sea,19 a civilization that would conclude ‘das große Werk “Kultur einer Nation zur Vollkommenheit”’ [the great work, [of bringing the] ‘culture of a nation to perfection’].20 The protagonists of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795/1796) also turn to Russia (and America) in response to the violence and chaos in the aftermath of the French Revolution. In light of the current ‘Welthändel’ [global quarrels] in which ‘die Besitztümer beinah nirgends mehr recht sicher sind’ [property is safe hardly anywhere],21 they decide to emigrate to those parts of the world where their Enlightenment project can continue. The peak of German enthusiasm for all things Russian came with the so-called Wars of Liberation following Napoleon’s failed campaign of 1812. Nationally minded writers and poets flooded journals and newspapers with panegyrics to Russia and its emperor, among them the liberal statesman Karl August Varnhagen von Ense (1785–1858). In an 1813 poem, Varnhagen traces the path of an allegorical sapling of European freedom that Peter the Great had transplanted to Russia before the tree began to wilt under French rule. Under the care of the tsars, the sapling ‘wuchs hundert Jahre fort und fort / Zum gewaltigen Riesenbaume’ [grew and grew for a hundred years into a great and mighty tree] until Alexander brought its fruits back to Europe: Und in jeglicher russischen Waffe blinkt ein Zweig von grünenden Schossen, Der vertraulich uns und grüßend winkt Als heimischer Freiheit Sprossen.22 [And in every Russian weapon twinkles a branch of verdant shoots, which beckons to us in confidential greeting, like the sprouts of native freedom.]

Jerzy Lukowski and W. Hubert Zawadzki, A Concise History of Poland, 3rd edn (New York, 2019), 152–53. 19 Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769’, Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769: Pädagogische Schriften, ed. Rainer Wisbert (Frankfurt am Main, 1997), 67–68. 20 Ibid., 20–21. 21 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre: Ein Roman (Munich, 1988), 564. 22 Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, ‘Die Russen in Holland’, in Denkwürdigkeiten und Vermischte Schriften: Sechster Band; Vermischte Schriften; Dritter Theil (Leipzig, 1843), 394. 18

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For Varnhagen, as for many of his German contemporaries, Russia had proven itself a worthy leader in the Concert of Europe. Thus, The Tale of Igor’s Campaign met with a most fertile intellectual environment when it first became available to German audiences in the early nineteenth century. The old Slavonic manuscript was discovered sometime in the 1790s, and supposedly in 1795 it came into the possession of Aleksei Musin-Pushkin, ‘a celebrated Antiquarian’.24 Five years would pass before the publication of a first complete Russian edition, but by 1797, an announcement in Le spectateur du nord, a Hamburg-based ‘journal politique, littéraire et moral’ [political, literary, and moral journal],25 was already making waves in German and European intellectual circles. Soon, excerpts appeared in journals across the continent, but it was not until 1811 that a complete and annotated translation was available to the German reading public.26 Joseph Zacharias Müller (1782–1844), a Prussian teacher who had studied Slavonic languages in Prague, introduced his countrymen to the story of Prince Igor and his heroic death in the struggle against the Polovtsians, a Tatar people encroaching on the domain of the Kyivan Rus’ in the late twelfth century. In his commentary, Müller addresses and confidently brushes aside the unresolved question about the epic poem’s author, not just because he believes in the text’s often disputed authenticity,27 but because he considers it to be of no concern for the poem’s message: 23

Wer besang nun diesen Zug. Diese Frage läßt sich historisch nicht beantworten, welcher Umstand indeß die Sache selbst wenig und nicht beeinträchtiget. Der wahrhaft poetische Geist, wo immer er hervorleuchtet, gehört der Nation an, und wird in eben dem Grade jede subjective Beziehung uns vergessen lassen, als das Gedicht selbst durch seine schöne objective Natur, oder seinen hohen nationalen Sinn uns anspricht.28 [Who now sang of this campaign. This question cannot be answered historically, though this circumstance does not in the least tarnish the thing itself. The truly poetic spirit, wherever it shines out, belongs to the nation, and every subjective 23 See Walter Pape, ‘“Juchheirassa, Kosacken sind da!”: Russen und Rußland in der politischen Lyrik der Befreiungskriege’, Russen und Rußland aus deutscher Sicht. 19. Jahrhundert: Von der Jahrhundertwende bis zur Reichsgründung, ed. Mechthild Keller (Munich, 1992), 289–314. 24 Andrew Kahn et al., A History of Russian Literature (Oxford, 2018), 89. 25 The programmatic subtitle of the journal. 26 For an overview of the early publication history, see: Gerhard Ziegengeist, ‘Das altrussische Igorlied in der intereuropäischen Rezeption von Aufklärung und Romantik (1797–1812)’, Zeitschrift für Slawistik, 33/1 (1988), 1–9. 27 For a contemporary discussion of this problem, see: Norman W. Ingham, ‘“The Igor’ Tale” and the Origins of Conspiracy Theory’, Russian History, 44 (2017), 135–49; Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak, ‘The Problem of the Authenticity of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign’, Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 78/6 (2008), 209–11. 28 Joseph Müller, ed., Heldengesang vom Zuge gegen die Polowzer, des Fürsten Igor Swätslawlitsch, geschrieben in altrussischer Sprache gegen das Ende des zwölften Jahrhunderts: In die teutsche Sprache treu übertragen, mit einer Vorrede und kurzen philologischen und historischen Noten begleitet (Prague, 1811), 13–14.

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aspect will escape us to the same degree that the poem itself speaks to us through its objectively beautiful nature or its lofty national spirit.]

Truly national poetry, Müller argues, is never the product of an individual, rendering the identity of the author irrelevant, even in cases where it could be positively established. A similar assessment came from Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), the younger of the famous brothers, who was among the first to review Müller’s edition of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign. In fact, Grimm in his review takes Müller to task for ultimately including some futile conjecture on the author’s identity. He emphatically insists: ‘[E]s hat sich dieses Lied, wie alles Epos, unwillkürlich gedichtet’ [This song, like all epic, spontaneously composed itself].29 The reflexive construction Grimm employs in this statement reveals much about the Romantic understanding of the epic genre. The idea that a poem could write itself suggests an organic relationship between the literary text and the cultural traditions by which it is informed. Thus, Grimm even more forcefully makes the point that epic poetry emanates not from the invention of an inspired author but, in fact, immediately from the soul of a nation. Both Grimm’s and Müller’s assessments of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign invoke the basic tenet of Romantic nationalism: ‘Kultur, Lebensstil und die wichtigeren sozialen Institutionen sind wesentlich national bestimmt, sie sind Ausdruck einer einheitlichen Kraft, die gemeinhin als Seele oder Geist des Volkes, Geist oder Charakter der Nation bezeichnet wird’ [Culture, lifestyle, and the important social institutions are nationally determined; they are expressions of a unified force, which can generally be designated as the soul or spirit of the people, spirit or character of the nation].30 In the early nineteenth century, the search for this ‘Volksgeist’ occasions an unprecedented enthusiasm for the study of language and history, but especially ‘für die Geschichte der Hoch-Zeiten des eigenen Volkes, für die Geschichte des eigenen Mittelalters, ja die Frühe der Teutonen, Angelsachsen oder der Kelten, bei denen das Elementare noch, so meint man, knospenhaft rein, unüberfremdet zutage tritt’ [for the history of the great periods/high points of one’s own people, for the history of one’s own Middle Ages, indeed the early history of the Teutons, Anglo-Saxons, or Celts, in whom the Elemental, one fancies, still manifests fresh and pure, uncorrupted by foreign influences].31 As is typical of the national movement, these enquiries quickly devolve into a competition to discover the most venerable nation based on age and so-called purity. In the German-speaking world, the Brothers Grimm helped lay the groundwork for this esoteric fascination with ‘the most ancient, heroic, epic-collective moments in the nation’s history’.32 In its primordial phase, ‘before native authenticity was addled by Roman, Christian, and foreign influences, lay the moment when the German nation enjoyed a pristine cultural authenticity, Wilhelm Grimm, ‘Heldengesang vom Zuge gegen die Polowzer, des Fürsten vom Sewerischen Nowgorod Igor Swätslawlitsch’, in Kleinere Schriften, ed. Gustav Hinrichs, 4 vols (Berlin, 1881–1887), II, 39–40. 30 Thomas Nipperdey, ‘Auf der Suche nach der Identität: Romantischer Nationalismus’, Nachdenken über die deutsche Geschichte (Munich, 1986), 111. 31 Ibid. 32 Joep Leerssen, ‘Notes Towards a Definition of Romantic Nationalism’, Romantik: Journal for the Study of Romanticisms, 2/1 (2013), 21. 29

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when priests, bards, and judges were essentially serving one and the same purpose: to articulate what it meant to be German’.33 The impact of these theories is evident, for example, in the early German reception of the Nibelungenlied, another medieval text that would eventually receive the title of national epic. Yet when a complete manuscript was first discovered by Enlightenment authors in 1755, it caused little sensation, and a first complete edition from 1782 was rather poorly received by the German public.34 Only with the popularization of the Romantic movement – which also saw the inauguration of the first chair for German language at a German university – did the text attract serious scholarly attention and gain immense popularity.35 It is a telling example for how ‘Romantic historicism had, in the century after Ossian …, furnished all self-styled nations of Europe with something that was now called a “national epic”.’36 Under these circumstances, it is understandable that contemporaries considered the translation of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign a significant event in the scheme of German encounters with Russia and its people. The poem promised a conclusive insight into the very foundations of this elusive nation. From the beginning, the German reception of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign takes the form of a comparative analysis with the goal of fitting the text into a ranking system. Müller, for instance, juxtaposes the Russian epic with works from classical antiquity and – as he believes – the Western European Middle Ages, and in both cases, he judges that the ‘Igorlied’ comes up short. ‘Freilich’, he asserts, ‘kann man unsern slawischen Dichter nicht ernstlich, weder mit der unnachahmlichen Vollendetheit des ächt episch plastischen Homer, noch mit den in seiner Art auch einzigen, aber uns demungeachtet weniger ansprechenden Gebilden eines Oßian vergleichen’ [Clearly we cannot seriously compare our Slavic poet, either with the inimitable perfection of the truly epically vivid Homer, nor with the creations of an Ossian, singular in their own way, albeit less appealing to us].37 It is unclear why exactly Müller ranks Homer above Ossian, but what seems to elevate both works over The Tale of Igor’s Campaign is that they are somehow unique, ‘einzig’ and ‘unnachahmlich’. This of course implies that the Russian text contains imitations and lacks originality, which would be a devastating verdict for a national epic. Müller subsequently identifies the factors that, in his view, had hindered the Russian people from attaining a higher level of cultural development, and he arrives at the notion of a highly masculine, self-destructive national sprit: ‘Ein starker männlicher Sinn, nur zu oft sich selbst zerstörend … Daher die kräftigen, mitunter sogar grellen Bilder, denen die schöne gemüthliche Besonnenheit, die Sanftheit des jonischen Himmels und das Mythisch-plastische des griechischen Dichtergeistes meistens entgeht’ [a vigorous masculine spirit, but too often self-destructive … Hence the powerful, sometimes even lurid images, which mostly fall short of the Ibid. Friedrich Panzer, Das Nibelungenlied: Entstehung und Gestalt (Stuttgart and Cologne, 1955), 21–25. 35 Otfrid Ehrismann, Das Nibelungenlied (Munich, 2005), 97–102; see also Siegfried Grosse, ‘Nachwort’, Das Nibelungenlied: Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch, ed. and trans. Siegfried Grosse (Stuttgart, 2003), 980. 36 Leerssen, ‘Notes Towards a Definition of Romantic Nationalism’, 22. 37 Müller, Heldengesang, 16. 33

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fine homely temperance, the gentle Ionian sky, and the mythic malleability of the Greek poetic spirit].38 Müller thus diagnoses a lack of that poetic equilibrium that had allowed the arts in classical Greece to flourish. He goes on to project this supposed lack of equilibrium on to the culture and history of the Slavic people as a whole, to explain their position in the rear-guard of civilization: Im Staate endlich wütheten Stürme auf Stürme, wodurch das Ganze der Nation nie zu einer gewissen gemüthlichen Ruhe gelangen konnte, die sowohl zum Schaffen, als auch zum Genuße der Geisteswerke erfordert wird. Sie konnten sich daher unter solchen Umständen nie auf eine gewisse allgemeine Stufe der Bildung und des Geschmacks erheben.39 [In the state, storm ultimately raged upon storm, so that the whole of the nation could never achieve the steady comfortable calm necessary for the creation or enjoyment of intellectual works. Under such conditions, they could therefore never rise to a certain general level of education and taste.]

In this instance, Müller’s interpretation of cause and effect is murky: it is not entirely clear whether political instability precipitated endemic violence, or whether an inherently violent nation proved unable to build a civilized society (although the latter position would be more in line with the thinking of Romantic nationalism). In any case, his reading of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign paints a deeply unfavourable picture of the Russian nation and, in a striking departure from the optimism of the German Enlightenment, puts the benefits of future cooperation into question. Ultimately, Müller’s analysis suggests that Russia would not and, in fact, could not meaningfully contribute to the project of human perfectibility that stood at the centre of Herder’s philosophy. Similar themes emerge from Wilhelm Grimm’s review of Müller’s edition, published in 1812 in the Heidelbergische Jahrbücher der Litteratur, at the time one of the leading forums for the Romantic movement. Grimm first contrasts the poem’s merits with the generally inferior achievements of Slavic culture. The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, he argues, is indeed ‘ein Stück reiner lebendiger Nationaldichtung, das dem slawischen Stamme, der sonst in geistigen Äusserungen dem germanischen nicht verglichen werden mag, zugehört’ [a piece of pure lively national poetry belonging to the Slavic line, which does not otherwise bear comparison with the expressions of German intellect].40 Even though Slavic artefacts in general should not be compared to the achievements of Germanic peoples, Grimm in this particular case seems amenable to making an exception. He even suggests that the Russian epic had retained that essence that distinguishes truly national epics and that pleases the godhead: ‘Der Lobgesang der Menschen, dem die Gottheit so gern zuhören mag …, ist auch hier nicht verstummt, und vernehmliche Töne dringen davon in diesem Liede zu uns’ [The human paean, to which the deity so likes to listen … is not silent

38 39 40

Ibid., 20–21. Ibid., 21–22. Grimm, ‘Heldengesang’, 33–34.

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here, and distinct tones come through to us in this song]. Ultimately, however, these qualities cannot belie what Grimm considers objective deficiencies that place The Tale of Igor’s Campaign at the bottom in the hierarchy of national epics: 41

Wie die Helden im Ossian fast nur der allgemeine Gegensatz zwischen edel und unedel, hell und finster unterscheidet und Finjal fast überirdisch wie ein Geist, dessen Schwert stets vernichtet, wenn er in den Kampf geht, erscheint, so zeigt sich auch in diesem Igorlied nicht jenes sinnlich Vollendete, Charakteristische, was das Nibelungenlied so ansprechend macht.42 [As the heroes of Ossian are almost only differentiated according to the general opposition between noble and ignoble, light and dark, and Fingal appears an almost supernatural being, whose sword always annihilates in battle, so this Igorlied also fails to demonstrate that sensual perfection, those characteristic elements that make the Nibelungenlied so appealing.]

Like Müller, Grimm does not explicate the distinct features of the ‘sinnliche Vollendung’ [sensual perfection] that elevates the German national epic over its Russian and Gaelic counterparts, but he is adamant that the one-dimensional characters and Manichaean world view of Igor and Ossian are indicative of a lesser epic quality, which – within the parameters of Romantic nationalism – also implies a lesser standing on the civilizational scale. Polite condescension becomes a common trait in the German response to The Tale of Igor’s Campaign. The half-intrigued, half-belittling attitude of Müller and Grimm reappears, for example, in a review from the Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände, at the time one of the most widely read journals for arts and culture in the German-speaking world. The author writes of the Russian epic: ‘Für den Freund alter Poesie ist das Gedicht seiner Eigenthümlichkeiten wegen interessant, denn es trägt ganz das Gepräge der Nationalität und des Alterthums; die Sprache ist kräftig, wenn auch hier und da etwas unbeholfen’ [For the aficionado of old poetry, the poem is of interest because of its idiosyncrasies, for it bears all the hallmarks of nationality and antiquity; the language is powerful, even if somewhat clumsy here and there].43 It is important to highlight that this reviewer is basing his critical assessment of the poem’s style on a translation: it is most unlikely that they had access to, or even the linguistic ability to study, the original. In any case, the main appeal of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign is perceived to lie in its exoticism, in its ‘Eigentümlichkeit’. This point is echoed in another contemporary review, penned by the seminal classical scholar and influential publicist Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729–1812): Zum Vergnügen möchte man das Werkchen wohl nicht lesen; aber wohl, um die Geschichte, und die poetische Behandlung in einem rohen Zeitalter, zu kennen. Ibid. Ibid., 38. 43 ‘Heldengesang vom Zuge der Polowzer des Fürsten vom sewerischen Nowgorod Igor Swätslawlitsch, geschrieben in alt-russischer Sprache gegen das Ende des zwölften Jahrhunderts’, Uebersicht der neuesten Literatur (Beilage zum Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände), 9 (1812), 35. 41

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Auffallend fremd und eigenthümlich ist eine Menge Bilder der Slavischen Dichter-Phantasie und ihr Ausdruck. Mit Ossian sind sie nicht zu vergleichen, in welchem sich auch eine weit cultivirtere Natur zeigt.44 [One would not read this little work for enjoyment, but perhaps in order to become acquainted with the history, and with the poetic treatment in a primitive age. Many images from the imagination of the Slavic poet are strikingly strange and idiosyncratic, as is their expression. They are not to be compared with Ossian, which demonstrates a far more civilized nature.]

Once more, the ‘Eigentümlichkeit’ is what seems most appealing about the text, and once again Ossian emerges as the benchmark for ‘civilized nature’, a benchmark that proves elusive for The Tale of Igor’s Campaign. The Slavic imagination can be said to have conjured a remarkable panorama of strange images, but Heyne is certain that the Russian epic will not attract anything beyond historical interest. Thus, The Tale of Igor’s Campaign contributes to an emerging discourse that conceptualizes Russia as a deficient nation. Gone is the optimism of the Enlightenment period, not just of Herder and Goethe, but also of Voltaire,45 Diderot,46 and numerous other writers and philosophers, all of whom believed that Russia could become a vehicle, if not a trailblazer, for progress on the European continent. Instead, the Romantic period popularized the notion of the Slavs as stragglers on the march towards civilization. The Romantic writer and scholar August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845) famously codified this irrational belief in a Slavic ineptitude for social and cultural progress with his etymologically incorrect assertion ‘daß die Slaven überall und unter allen Umständen zur Sklaverei bestimmt sind (welches Wort auch unstreitig von ihnen herkömmt)’ [that everywhere, and under all circumstances, the Slavs are destined for slavery (a word that undoubtedly comes from them)].47 In a series of lectures held in 1803, Schlegel essentially turns on its head Karl August Varnhagen von Ense’s image of a nation that had received, nurtured, and protected European freedom. Building on the hypothesis that it was Scandinavian (that is to say, Germanic) settlers who had first established the Rus’ principality, Schlegel suggests that any progress in Slavic lands has always been, and will always be, due to outside influence. ‘Aus einer ungemischten Slavischen Nation’, he explains, ‘wird schwerlich etwas sehr achtungswerthes’ [It would be difficult for anything noteworthy to emerge from an unadulterated Slavic nation].48 Having reviewed what he considers evidence of a Russian and Polish inability to self-govern successfully, Schlegel 44 Christian Gottlob Heyne, ‘Prag. Von Hrn. Joseph Müller, Doctor der Philosophie, und ehemahls Professor in Heiligenstadt, erhielten wir: Heldengesang vom Zuge gegen die Polowzer, des Fürsten vom sewerischen Nowgorod Igor Swätslawlitsch, geschrieben in altrussischer Sprache gegen das Ende des zwölften Jahrhunderts, in die teutsche Sprache treu übertragen, mit einer Vorrede und kurzen philologischen und historischen Noten begleitet’, Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 4 April 1812, 551–52, 552. 45 Voltaire, Russia under Peter the Great, trans. M.F.O. Jenkins (Rutherford, 1983), 251. 46 Léon Robel, Histoire de la neige: La Russie dans la littérature française (Paris, 1994), 79. 47 August Wilhelm Schlegel, Vorlesungen über Encyclopädie [1803], ed. Frank Jolles and Edith Höltenschmidt (Paderborn, 2006), 248. 48 Ibid.

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concludes that outside influence is indeed a necessity for Slavic peoples, even if it comes at the cost of destroying a significant part of the national culture. ‘So kann man fast nicht umhin zu glauben, daß einer Slavischen Nation fremde Einmischungen in die gesamte Masse, sollten sie auch anfangs zerrüttend und zerstörend seyn, nothwendig sind’ [One cannot hardly help thinking that a Slavic nation requires foreign involvement in all matters, even if it is initially disruptive and destructive].49 In the following decades, this train of thought becomes common currency in the German-speaking world, and it eventually develops its full destructive potential in the minds of the National Socialists. ‘The organization of a Russian state structure’, Hitler would argue, ‘was not the result of Russian Slavdom’s State-political capacity, but rather a wonderful example of the State-building activity of the German element in an inferior race.’50 By doing away with the German-born intelligentsia, he further suggests, the Bolsheviks had inadvertently undermined the integrity of the state. Therefore, it was incumbent upon Germans to prop up this deficient, straggling nation ‘by the industrious labor of the German plow which needs only to be given land by the sword’ [‘in der emsigen Arbeit des deutschen Pfluges, dem das Schwert nur den Boden zu geben hat’].51 In this sense, we can understand the German reception of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign as a minor but instructive link in an intellectual history that culminated in the atrocities of the twentieth century.

Ibid., 251. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf: Complete and Unabridged (New York, 1941), 951; German original: Hitler, Mein Kampf: Eine kritische Edition; Band 2; Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung, ed. Christian Hartmann, Thomas Vordermayer, Othmar Plöckinger, and Roman Töppel (Munich and Berlin, 2016), 1657: ‘Die Organisation eines Russischen Staatsgebildes war nicht das Ergebnis der staatspolitischen Fähigkeit des Slawentums in Rußland, als vielmehr nur ein wundervolles Beispiel für die staatenbildende Wirksamkeit des germanischen Elements in einer minderwertigen Rasse.’ 51 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 952–53; German original: Hartmann et al, Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1659. 49 50

4 Inhabiting an Unpredictable Past: The Paradoxes of Russian Cultural Historicism1 Michael Makin

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t is frequently said that ‘Russia is a country with an unpredictable past’,2 so it is no wonder that Russian cultural historicism, while having much in common with analogues elsewhere, is especially paradoxical, even contradictory, and certainly comes in multiple different versions. Hence what is called, for the purposes of this study, medievalism, is, in its Russian version, both shaped by and revealing of the specific fault lines of cultural history in Russia’s version of modernity and also paradigmatic in other ways for modernity’s problems with history in general. In the Russian context, hesitation over the word ‘medievalism’ is necessary: while the term ‘Middle Ages’ (srednie veka) is certainly used in Russian, the major polities and cultures of pre-modernity among the East Slavs are for the most part referred to without reference to that term. Meanwhile, the term ‘Russia’ (Rossiya) is also relatively recent, with its equivalent in the Russian language only becoming widespread in the seventeenth century. The East Slavic polities and their cultures before the eighteenth century are generally referred to as drevnyaya, kievskaya, moskovskaya Rus’ (Ancient Rus’, Kyivan Rus’, Muscovite Rus’) – Rus’ was the ethnonym most commonly used at the time by the East Slavs of the European medieval and early modern periods, while the adjective drevnii is usually translated as ancient. So not only does what a casual observer might call ‘medieval Russia’ by no means correspond to the territory of the Russian Federation today, nor to the three East Slavic republics of the Soviet Union, nor yet to the Russian Empire before that, but also, in Russian, the very terminology is significantly different: not Russia, but Rus’, not medieval, but ‘ancient’. Moreover, and as a further complication for the foreign observer, this East This chapter was written before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The expression, which is widely used, is often attributed to the satirist Mikhail Zadornov’s book, Velikaya strana s nepredskazuemym proshlym (Moscow, 1998). 1

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Slavic version of ‘antiquity’ is generally considered to last, notwithstanding some qualifications, until about the end of the seventeenth century. That is to say, from the earliest East Slavic settlements (a highly contentious landmark, but conventionally the eighth century), through the Kyivan and Muscovite periods, including the early Romanov tsars, and up to that traditional big break that supposedly produces ‘modern Russia’: the accession of Peter the Great, soon to call himself ‘Emperor’ (Tsar from 1682, Emperor from 1721 to his death in 1725) and his country the ‘Russian Empire’. Thus, while the timeline claimed for the medieval appears to assert a uniquely East Slavic experience, radically shifting territories and permeable borders constantly open the explicitly nationalist and even nation-building claims of medievalism in Russia to interrogation in the very international perspective that it seems constantly to resist. Furthermore, not only are the timeline and even the terminology different from elsewhere in Europe, and in very telling ways, but even the decisive nature of that Petrine break with the past, supposedly ushering in imperial modernity, also requires interrogation and qualification. There is a strong argument that, in fact, more of the cultural forms of East Slavic pre-modernity survive than in analogous cases elsewhere in Europe, in part because of the striking social divisions that were reinforced by the Petrine project itself. Therefore, recurrent and self-conscious looks back also have different consequences, associations, and even forms in East Slavic culture than elsewhere. Furthermore, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, vocal claims are made in all three of today’s sovereign states where East Slavic peoples are in the majority (the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Belarus) for the legacies of early Rus’. However, the counter-narrative must also be acknowledged: this ‘Russian’ history is, in fact, characterized by internal divisions of territory, ‘foreign occupations’, and associated ‘alien’ religious confessions. Most of Rus’ was for a significant amount of time paying tribute to Tatar overlords (whose role in the shaping of modern Russia is highly contentious), while much of the ‘cradle of East Slavic civilization’ around Kyiv was for a long time under the control of Catholic Poles and Lithuanians and thus culturally and politically remote from Muscovy. Again, an international perspective is essential to address the supposedly uniquely Russian past. For these reasons, the latter-day cultural (and political) reiteration of pre-modernity in the Russian Empire and again in the post-Soviet period, as well as the curious ways in which the ‘medieval’ past finds echoes even in the Soviet period, are especially fraught and paradoxical. Russian medievalism is probably at its most pronounced, intriguing, and, indeed, contradictory, in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At that time, ‘Russian-style’ architecture, in imitation of the forms of the seventeenth century, decorated every major townscape. Meanwhile, Russian belles lettres of the period were also full of motifs, language, and even genre forms in stylized imitation of pre-modern writing, while the visual arts were strongly marked by an analogous interest in pre-modern forms. When Russian modernism in art, architecture, and literature met the medieval, the results were also striking. However, since the appropriation of the cultural past is today particularly contentious, it is, perhaps, fitting to begin, not with the late nineteenth century, but with today’s Russia and its neighbours. Cultural and political gestures in post-Soviet Russia claiming direct and unproblematic continuity from Kyivan Rus’ through

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Muscovy, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union to Putin’s Russia are no less problematic than analogous claims made by Romanov official culture in the nineteenth century. Such claims seem untroubled by basic historical details, such as the fact that the first documentary reference to Moscow, at that time certainly a tiny settlement, comes only in 1147 (that is to say, long after the rise of Kyivan Rus’ and its associated cities and cultures), or the fact that the rise of Muscovy to dominance in at least part of the region does not begin until the fourteenth century, or yet the fact that its rise was aided greatly by the services provided by Muscovite princes to the Tatar overlords of Rus’ (notwithstanding later hostility to the so-called ‘Tatar Yoke’). Meanwhile, in today’s Ukraine many are keen to remind the world that it was the area around Kyiv that was the ‘cradle of East Slavic civilization’. In other words, it all starts with (modern) Ukraine, traced back more than a thousand years. There is even a movement in Ukraine today to rename the modern country Rus’.3 A tourist in today’s Russia seeking evidence of contentious appropriations need only drive past the Moscow Kremlin and admire – if that is possible – that monstrous new monument to the first Vladimir: (Saint) Vladimir the Great. He ruled Kyivan Rus’ from 980 to 1015, long before Moscow existed; and, as ‘baptizer of Rus’’, made Eastern Christianity the state religion. This massive statue, dwarfing the Kremlin, was installed in 2016, under the Vladimir in charge of Russia at the time, forming a powerful and highly ideologized statement of apparent continuity, much to the distress of the political and cultural elite in Kyiv, where a statue of Vladimir has been in situ for 150 years.4 After inspecting the Moscow Vladimir, the tourist might then travel fifteen kilometres northwest to admire the Izmailovo Kremlin, full, on a summer’s day, of tourists with selfie-sticks, and surrounded by twentieth-century high-rises. While the Kremlin in the middle of the city traces its origins to the mid-twelfth century, the Izmailovo Kremlin is a medievalist tourist trap of the twenty-first. This ‘Ancient Rus’’ theme park opened in 2007, when Yurii Luzhkov, an enthusiast of such projects, was Mayor of Moscow.5 In the middle of the complex stands what is supposedly the tallest wooden church in the country (fully functioning, dedicated to St Nicholas).6 Here mostly elderly Muscovites light candles and pray, respectfully bowing and crossing themselves as they leave, although, a few metres away from the doors of the church, a Museum of Vodka stridently beckons visitors. The design of this twenty-first-century Kremlin is as eclectic as its contents, although the primary visual referent is probably the ornate style of

3 Ivan Apuleev, ‘Nazvanie – Rus’ Ukrainu khotyat pereimenovat’’, gazeta.ru, 2020, https://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2020/05/18_a_13087345.shtml [accessed 24 September 2021]. 4 See Sean Griffin, ‘Putin’s Medieval Weapons in the War against Ukraine’, Studies in Medievalism, 29 (2020), 13–20. 5 See the page on the history and architecture on the website of the park: ‘Istoriya i arkhitektura’, Kreml’ v Izmailovo, 2019, https://www.kremlin-izmailovo.com/o-kremle/ istorija-sozdanija [accessed 24 September 2021]. 6 See the page on the Church of St. Nicholas on the park website: ‘Khram Svyatitelya Nikolaya’, Kreml’ v Izmailovo, 2019, https://www.kremlin-izmailovo.com/territorija/shemakremlja/hram-svjatitelja-nikolaja [accessed 24 September 2021].

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the seventeenth century, refracted through graphic and theatrical stylizations of the modernist period.7 If the tourist prefers something a little more high-brow, or, at least, with fewer selfie sticks, perhaps they should drive twenty kilometres south from the (original) Kremlin – but, again, well within modern Moscow’s massive expanse – and visit the Kolomenskoe Palace of the second Romanov tsar, Aleksei Mikhailovich (reigned 1645–1676).8 His wooden palace, built in 1667, fell into disrepair after the construction of the new capital, St Petersburg – that most tangible sign of that ‘Petrine break’ – and was finally demolished on Catherine the Great’s orders in 1768. However, the tourist can today visit this late pre-modern palace, because, again under Luzhkov, it was rebuilt from the ground up. It is not quite in the same place, and certainly not built with authentic materials and construction techniques, but the Tsar himself can, nonetheless, be found in his throne room, albeit as a cardboard cut-out. If the tourist wished to indulge the historicist project further, they would be glad to find that Moscow, especially, but other major Russian cities, too, abounds today in restaurants that claim to offer ‘Ancient-Russian’ fare, with décor that often seems to mix folkloric motifs with the style of pre-modern Muscovy, and menus that are equally eclectic. Restaurant Dobrynya, not far from the centre of Moscow, is one of many examples. It is named after the hero of a folk epic (Russian medievalism frequently runs together folk and explicitly pre-modern culture); its décor inside and out is vaguely reminiscent of that seventeenth-century ornamental style; its menu is full of game dishes, ‘traditional’ pickled items, and the like; and that menu is presented in an ornamental typeface that recalls Church Slavonic printed books.9 Many dishes explicitly state their historicist orientation, among them the ‘Old-Russian salad’. However, diners will probably be relieved to note the compromise between tradition and modernity expressed in the ingredients of the salad: chicken, tongue, eggs, potatoes, pickled cucumbers, carrots, onions, and mayonnaise. After indulging in Moscow’s modern historicism, a tourist could explore abundant analogues in other parts of Russia but might also stop in Kyiv on the way home. There it would be hard to miss that monument to St Vladimir, to be found even on Ukrainian bank notes, a few of which could fund a short out-of-town trip to the Ancient Kyiv Park. Here the ‘Principality of Ancient Kyiv’ has been re-created (opened 2008): ‘“The Kievan Rus Park” is a unique reconstruction of one of the most famous and at the same time the most mysterious medieval city [sic] of the [sic] Eastern Europe – Ancient Kiev of the V–XIII centuries, the capital of the greatest country –

On the popularity of this style in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Lindsey Hughes, ‘Cultural and Intellectual Life’, in The Cambridge History of Russia, I: From Early Rus’ to 1689, ed. Maureen Perrie (Cambridge, 2006), 692. 8 See the history of the palace on the Kolomenskoe Park website: ‘Dvorets tsarya Alekseya Mikhailovicha – istoriko-khudozhestvennaya rekonstruktsiya’, Kolomenskoe, 2021; http://www.mgomz.ru/ekspozitsii/dvorets-tsarya-alekseya-mihaylovicha-xvii-v [accessed 24 September 2021]. 9 Eleven-page menu: ‘Restoran Dobrynya’, RESTOCLUB, 2021, https://www.restoclub. ru/uploads/menufile/e/d/5/f/ed5fa640257d59b2d2ff5540e9bc509d.pdf [accessed 24 September 2021]. 7

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Figure 4.1: Church of St Nicholas, Izmailovo Kremlin. Photo: Michael Makin.

Kievan Rus’, proclaims the Park’s website.10 As the eight-hundred-year timeline suggests, the park is, again, strikingly eclectic, to the extent that it might even be called ahistoric. Within what claims to be a reconstruction of the earliest Slavic settlement in Kyiv (and elements of later centuries) sits another fully functioning Christian church, dedicated to St Basil – as well as a hut for a wizard and a zip line. The former, presumably, to recall the dvoeverie or persistence of pre-Christian beliefs and practices among the Christianized East Slavs; the latter for those who have had enough of inhabiting the past. As with the Izmailovo Kremlin in Moscow, it seems that Kyiv’s re-construction claims authenticity partly through the presence of an active Orthodox church, newly built in ‘Old-Rus’’ style, but the cultural and ideological agenda of the park is clearest in some of the information panels that dot its territory in Ukrainian and English, but not in Russian (whereas the park’s website offers versions in all three languages). For example, one describes ‘Great world capitals’: at the four corners of the panel are Ancient Rome, Ancient Constantinople, Ancient Babylon, and Ancient Jerusalem; in the middle is Ancient Kyiv. Having indulged these medievalist interests in two countries, the tourist might read, on an flight or train home, Vladimir Sorokin’s 2006 novel Day of the Oprichnik, which imagines a Russia of the immediate future, replete with virtual screens and laser guns, but that has cut itself off from the rotten West and returned to the politics, culture, and even language of the Muscovy of Ivan IV (‘The Terrible’, ruled

Anglophone version: ‘About the Project’, Ancient Kyiv, n.d., https://parkkyivrus.com/ en/about-ancient-kiev/content/48-about-project [accessed 26 April 2022]. Note that, apart from the website title, here the city is ‘Kiev’ (from the Russian), whereas the anglophone signage at the park itself uses the transliteration from the Ukrainian: Kyiv. 10

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Figure 4.2: Church of St Basil, Kyivan Rus Park. Photo: Michael Makin.

1533–1584).11 The eponymous hero of Sorokin’s novel is a latter-day example of Ivan’s oprichniki, who formed a kind of military-monastic order and waged a war of terror on the populace for six years in the middle of his reign. A well-read tourist would already know that Ivan IV himself is a highly contentious figure today – new monuments to him have been erected, removed, and/or disputed in recent years (Aleksandrov, Moscow, Orel); the famous Repin painting depicting his purported murder of his own son was slashed in the country’s greatest art gallery in 2018 (as it had been once before, in 1913).12 The disputes around Ivan – from the ongoing condemnation that was established as the dominant account of the monarch in Karamzin’s History of the Russian State (1818–1829) to the current movements for rehabilitation and even canonization as a saint of the Orthodox Church – speak eloquently about that ‘unpredictable’ Russian past with which this discussion opened, and equally eloquently articulate the divided opinions about Russia’s future path. If the violence and grotesque action of Sorokin’s novel (in fact, a brilliant, satirical, exaggerated portrait of Putin’s Russia) does not suit the tourist, perhaps a more relaxing read would do: the surprise winner of one of the major literary prizes of 2010, Elena Kolyadina’s Tsvetochnyi krest (Flower Cross).13 The novel is a ‘romp’ through sex and witchcraft in seventeenth-century Tot’ma and purports to reproduce in much of its dialogue the language of the period (although most scholarly, 11 Vladimir Sorokin, Den’ oprichnika (Moscow, 2006); translation by Jamey Gambrell: Day of the Oprichnik: A Novel (New York, 2011). 12 On the contentious issue of Ivan IV today, see K. Yu. Erusalimskii, ‘Zachem nuzhny pamyatniki Ivanu Groznomu?’, Istoricheskya ekspertiza, 22/1 (2020), 48–73. 13 Elena Kolyadina, Tsvetochnyi krest (Moscow, 2010).

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indeed most educated, readers would strongly disagree). The wisdom of the prize award and the quality of the novel were both, again, highly contentious issues.14 Reviewers were particularly struck by the opening words of the novel, in which a young priest asks the heroine at confession about her sexual practices, using a word that occurs just three times in the Church Slavonic Bible and twice in the Gospels (Matthew 15:17; Mark 7:19), where it is used with the meaning of ‘anus’.15 The tourist-reader, if Russophone, might also be appalled or amused, but would surely be struck, too, by the fact that an attempt at the partial reproduction of the language of the seventeenth century had been made in a work evidently aimed at a broad readership. If Kolyadina’s ‘jolly rubbish’ (her words)16 proves hard to get through – too much philological inaccuracy – a more highbrow choice, and, like Sorokin, but unlike Kolyadina, also available in translation, might be one of the most acclaimed novels of the last decade, Lavr (Laurus) by medieval scholar Evgenii Vodolazkin.17 This novel does observe philological accuracy, in using the language of, in this case, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – but in a fascinating ‘anti-historical’ blend with the expressly modern. And while it is, in one sense, a novel of education, it also and very clearly draws on pre-modern literary genres. Its broadly hagiographic shape also accommodates elements of pilgrimage writing, of the fantastical ‘romance’, and even of the herbarium. Meanwhile, the interweaving of quotations and references, especially to Christian scripture, gives the fabric of the text a definite ‘pre-modern’ quality, although in combination with some of the practices of postmodern fiction in the Slavic world. The novel, in which each subsection is marked by a Church Slavonic (alphabetic) numeral, almost certainly incomprehensible to most modern readers, is about the life of a protagonist who is, at various times, healer, holy-fool, pilgrim, monk, and ascetic – a figure the novelist considered, to crib a Russian phrase, a hero for our time. Lavr is subtitled Neistoricheskii roman (a non-historical, ahistorical novel), and, despite its many gestures to medieval genres and languages and to the classic historical novel, the narrative repeatedly fractures its primary temporal frame. One of the most striking examples comes early in the novel (Section 13 of the ‘Book of Cognition’), when the young protagonist and his beloved are walking in the spring woods: ‘All the forest’s grime had emerged from under the snow: last year’s foliage, pieces of rags that had lost their colour, and yellowed plastic bottles.’18 This, the most striking anachronism of many in the novel, troubled some readers,

14 See, among many examples, Varvara Babitskaya, ‘Skandal vokrug russkogo Bukera’, Snob, 4 December 2010, https://snob.ru/selected/entry/28282 [accessed 24 September 2021]. 15 The word that shocked and/or amused reviewers of Kolyadina’s novel, afedron, is a direct borrowing from the Greek, but, in its usage in the Slavonic Gospels, a misunderstanding of the original. 16 Maya Kucherskaya, ‘Russkii Buker dostalsya “totemskoi galimat’e” Eleny Kolyadinoi’, Vedomosti, 2010, https://www.vedomosti.ru/lifestyle/articles/2010/12/03/russkij_buker_ dostalsya_totemskoj_galimate_eleny_kolyadinoj [accessed 24 September 2021]. 17 Evgenii Vodolazkin, Lavr (Moscow, 2012); translation by Lisa Hayden: Laurus (New York, 2015). 18 Vodolazkin, Laurus, 66; Russian: Lavr, 82.

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evidently perplexed by the combination of re-creation and deconstruction.19 Equally telling is the constant interweaving of discourses, as is evident in another early passage, when the protagonist admires his beloved’s hair: Ustina went silent and calmly looked at him. As if she had not even sung. She did not avert her eyes. Her drying hair, not yet braided, shone, fluffy, around her head. Thy hayrie lockes are like a flocke of goates upon the mount of Galaad. In these forgotten times hair was more exciting than now because it was usually covered. Hair was almost an intimate detail.20

This short passage moves, very characteristically, from plain realist narrative to biblical quotation (in the original, in Church Slavonic; the unmarked quotation is from the Song of Solomon, 6:5), to commentary from the point of view of modernity. On the one hand, the interweaving of apparently clashing discourses is quite characteristic of pre-modern textuality, while, on the other hand, that formal gesture towards pre-modernity is broken semantically by the knowing commentary from a modern point of view. While these latest forms of Russian and East Slavic medievalism are particularly noteworthy and, indeed, remarkably prominent, as nations and people actively and in different ways remake the narratives of cultural history, and even remake the physical structures of the past, cultural historicism in the Russian Empire, particularly from the early/mid nineteenth century to the end of empire in 1917, was also, as already noted, prominent and paradoxical, while in the Soviet period, where official culture had almost no truck with the stylized reproduction of pre-modern form, another version of the pre-modern was created and inhabited, again reflecting the particularities of the East Slavic cultural path. As elsewhere, the emergence of industry, mass production, increased literacy, new ideas about history, and a new scholarly and/or antiquarian attention to the pre-modern past all contributed to the rise of cultural-historicist forms. Moreover, the final generations of Romanovs and their agents put particular emphasis on statements of unique Russian-ness, so certain forms of historicist architecture and other cultural forms became officially sponsored means of stating both difference from other countries and supposed continuity across time, as well as geo-cultural coherence across the vast and ethnically diverse imperial space. Meanwhile, some of the forms and practices of the past had themselves lasted longer or remained closer to the practices of the present in Russia than elsewhere. For example, the printing press did not overwhelm the manuscript book market until well into the eighteenth century. Moreover, a significant community within Russian society, the Old Believers – sectarians who had refused to accept seventeenth-century church reforms and regarded Peter the Great as the Antichrist – sustained manuscript book production, often of a very high quality, into the twentieth century, while denying the validity

For one such reaction, see Solovukha, ‘Uspokoite menya!!’ and subsequent discussion in the blog Chitaem knigi, 2014, https://chitaem-knigi.livejournal.com/1487196.html [accessed 24 September 2021]. 20 Vodolazkin, Laurus, 57; Russian: Lavr, 71–72. 19

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of modern, printed books. In contrast, again, to Western Europe, the Bible was not widely available in the vernacular until the middle of the nineteenth century. The first translation into Russian of the Christian Gospels alone was not published until 1818, and while most Orthodox Russians today will read the Bible at home in the Synodal translation into Russian produced in the middle of the nineteenth century, the liturgy, including all readings from the Bible, remains in Church Slavonic, the literary language created to bring Christian scripture to the Slavs in the ninth century and modified relatively little since then. By the nineteenth century, Church Slavonic was sufficiently remote from vernacular Russian that many native speakers of the latter would struggle greatly to understand it. Meanwhile, popular, ‘folk’ culture, with its proximity to the pre-modern, remained very alive throughout the nineteenth century among the mostly illiterate peasantry, on whose culture Peter’s reforms had had far less impact than in high culture. In architecture, the so-called ‘Russian style’ (sometimes the ‘Neo-Russian’ or ‘Pseudo-Russian’ style; hesitation over terminology is, again, telling) flourished, as its self-conscious imitation of pre-modern ecclesiastical architecture quickly overwhelmed Russian classicism and Russian baroque, to be blended later with aspects of art nouveau. The English Arts and Crafts movement also has analogues in the development of some of the more popular forms of historicist architecture and in its association with the applied arts.22 An excellent late example of the Russian style is Stepan Krichinskii’s cathedral of St Theodore in Tsarskoe Selo outside of St Petersburg (completed 1913). The cathedral is in the heart of the imperial summer settlement, within walking distance of Rastrelli’s baroque palace and Quarengi’s classical palace. It also adjoins the Theodore Settlement, another early twentieth-century project, in this case, of an entire ‘Old-Russian’ town, planned as the headquarters of the ‘Society for the Rebirth of Artistic Ancient Rus’’, which thrived in the years before the First World War.23 These projects were close to the interests of the Imperial Family, yet their clear links to Russian art nouveau – the lavish curves of the cathedral’s exterior – and to the syncretic interests of Russian modernism – costume, church vessels for services, the re-creation of an entire settlement – all speak of more than imperial sponsorship. 21

21 On the continuation of pre-Petrine cultural practices into the twentieth century, see N.V. Ponyrko, ‘Drevnerusskaya literatura posle Drevnei Rusi’, her introduction to the last volume of Biblioteka literatury Drevnei Rusi, ed. D.S. Likhachev et al. (St Petersburg, 2020), XX, 5–23. 22 By far the best guide to the history and varieties of the ‘Russian Style’ is E.I. Kirichenko’s magisterial Russkii stil’: Poiski vyrazheniya natsional’noi samobytnosti; Narodnost’ i national’nost’; Traditsii drevnorusskogo i narodnogo iskusstva v russkom iskusstve XVII– nachala XX veka (Moscow, 1997). 23 Russian interest in the Theodore Settlement, St Theodore Cathedral, and the Society of the Rebirth of Artistic Ancient Rus’ has increased greatly in the last two decades – the internet abounds with guides for tourists and other informational sites (for example, Russkii gorodok Tsarskogo Sela, n.d., http://natalya-ugliadelckina.narod.ru [accessed 24 September 2021]. For a brief account of the activities of the Society, see A.S. Fedotov, ‘Obshchestvo vozrozhdeniya khudozhestvennoi Rusi i razvitie kustarnykh promyslov severorusskikh zemel’’, Svyatye i syatyni severorusskikh zemel’ (Po materialam VII nauch. konf.), ed. N.I. Reshetnikova (Kargopol’, 2002), https://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/svi/aty/nor/thr/uss/kih/ zem/yel/30.htm [accessed 24 September 2021].

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Figure 4.3: St Theodore Cathedral, Tsarskoe Selo. Photo: Michael Makin.

The late Romanovs, for all their numerous Germanic ties, were great supporters of Russian-revival architecture and related forms, and, in the Theodore Cathedral and Settlement, participated in an overarching project of cultural reconstruction – their personal guards attended service in the Theodore Cathedral in sixteenth-century costumes. A useful comparison and contrast here is with the Scottish enthusiasms of the British Hanoverians. Again, a monarchy with German links goes native, but, to make its stylized gestures, it reaches to the cultural and geographical periphery of the islands, to regions that had so recently been rebellious and that remained culturally and linguistically distinct. The Romanovs, on the other hand, colonized, stylized, and asserted not a suppressed periphery, but a central line of pre-modern East Slavic history, primarily the culture of fifteenth-to-seventeenth-century Muscovy, out of which emerged their own dynasty. Aleksei Shchusev’s Convent of Saints Mary and Martha (1908) in a medieval quarter of Moscow is another striking example of imperial patronage.24 The patron of the convent was the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, who was, before her marriage to the Grand Duke Sergei, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, and so herself a fine example of that common marriage of German royal blood and Russian Orthodoxy, just as her convent itself is a remarkable blend of medievalism and art Shchusev would successfully negotiate the Soviet transformation, exchanging imperial patronage for new masters and historicism for new styles, as he went on to design the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square. On Shchusev, see Catherine Cooke, ‘Shchusev, Aleksei’, Grove Dictionary of Art, 2003, https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/ gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000078114 [accessed 24 September 2021]. 24

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nouveau. Long before Russian art nouveau, many grandiose nineteenth-century churches were built across the country in the unambiguously state-sponsored ‘Byzantine’ style – the massive Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, in the centre of Moscow, is a fine example. The work of the architect Konstantin Ton (Thon), it was intended to celebrate the Russian victory in the Napoleonic Wars. Constructed and decorated over four decades, it was finally consecrated in 1883 but blown up under Stalin in 1931. The House of Soviets planned for the site was never built; instead, an open-air swimming pool occupied what had been its foundation pit. At the very end of the twentieth century, the cathedral was rebuilt from the ground up (with a characteristic indifference for authentic materials and techniques). In other words, a reconstruction of a re-creation took place – a cultural double perspective by no means uncommon in post-Soviet Russia. More Russian than Byzantine and also built to support the state’s agenda is another huge church – of the Saviour on the Spilt Blood (1907), in St Petersburg – surrounded by buildings in styles far more typical of the city. Clearly drawing on Muscovite ecclesiastical architecture and echoing directly the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin (commonly known as St Basil’s, on Moscow’s Red Square, constructed 1561), it was built on the site where, in 1881, Alexander II was fatally wounded by a militant bomber. It is a striking statement of the desire, at the end of the imperial period, to make the Petrine capital look more Russian than Western. Deconsecrated in the Soviet period, it has now been lavishly restored and is one of the top tourist attractions in a city it in no way resembles. More modest structures also abound – a fine example is at the artists’ colony in Abramtsevo (flourished 1881–1892), where Russian arts and crafts met Russian high art, and where the builders and decorators of the Cathedral of the Saviour included the famous painters Vasilii Polenov, Viktor Vasnetsov, Il’ya Repin, and Mikhail Nesterov. The result, as Alison Hilton puts it, is a ‘group project’ that suffered from the ‘common confusion of antiquity with Russianness’, and where the interior decoration clashed with the Ancient Novgorodian sources of the architecture. Its creators, however, seem to have been untroubled by historical and stylistic contradictions, even though it was rumoured that one of the sponsors had ‘secretly rubbed the walls with grass, so that they would look mildewed, and thus seem older’.25 Comparison and contrast of the Russian style with the Gothic Revival, familiar across Europe and beyond, is apposite (the Gothic Revival did reach Russia, although examples are relatively limited). In contrast to the Gothic Revival, Russian-revival architecture is not international, but expressly national – even if the identity of that nation is contentious. Russian-revivalism travelled to the edge of empire (there are or were such churches in Helsinki and Warsaw, outposts of the nineteenth-century empire, just as there are ten thousand kilometres to the east in Vladivostok and all along the Pacific Coast of the Russian Empire), but it barely reached beyond the boundaries of that empire, except to serve diaspora communities: it was thus expressly Russian, whatever that might mean. However, like Gothic Revival, it was far from limited to church architecture – just as some of Europe’s great railway termini evoke Gothic vaulting, albeit in cast-iron and concrete, so, too, some of Russia’s big railway stations have a paradoxical, pre-modern touch, while other grand 25

Alison Hilton, Russian Folk Art (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1995), 229.

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buildings of the nineteenth century, public and domestic, evoke the pre-modern, East Slavic past. But here again there is a paradox: most Rus’ buildings were small (and domestic buildings nearly all wooden), so the open spaces of large, modern structures seem to form odd contrasts with the medievalist references, whereas the implicit claim made across Europe by grand Gothic-revival railway stations to be secular cathedrals of the industrial age is reinforced by the simple spatial similarities with their models. Gothic cathedrals and nineteenth-century railway termini alike make their visual statements through open space and interior elevation. Fine examples of the paradoxical relationship of form and function in Russian revivalist architecture sit on Red Square, no less, facing the Moscow Kremlin: stylized imitations of pre-modern market buildings, built in the later nineteenth century and equipped with the latest refrigeration, for modern trade, at around the same time as (open-plan) department stores were also opening in Moscow. These buildings, part of a project to re-muscovize the centre of Moscow, stand close to another monumental revivalist structure, the Historical Museum (built 1872–1883, the work of the architect Vladimir Shervud, whose British heritage makes him one of a significant number of artists of non-Slavic origin who contributed to Russian revivalism).26 The museum looks directly at St Basil’s at the other end of Red Square: medievalism again staring at medieval. The museum’s interiors were intended to provide a three-dimensional, reconstructed narrative of the East Slavic past, taking the visitors through a series of rooms decorated and appointed with items from different medieval periods. They were created at around the same time as interiors of some houses of the wealthy were also being furnished on the basis of pre-modern models, making it possible to inhabit the past not only at Christian worship, in a museum, on a city street, (with some qualifications) at a railway station, or at a commercial site, but also in the comfort of one’s own home.27 The modern tourist on Red Square will also note, next to the History Museum, both the Shrine of the Iberian Mother of God, the earliest parts of which dated from the seventeenth century, and the Kazan’ Cathedral (first mentioned in 1625). But the casual tourist may not be aware that these famous structures were both demolished during the early Soviet period, only to be rebuilt from the ground up in the immediate post-Soviet period. In other words, they are among the many medieval and, indeed, medievalist structures swept away by the Bolsheviks, only to be restored by their successors as Russian townscapes were radically re-shaped and re-Russianized, erasing, as it were, the erasures of the Communist period. In Moscow, but also in provincial Russia at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, vernacular Russian-style buildings also abounded. Especially for newly prosperous peasants benefitting from the possibilities of work in growing towns, and for newly prominent merchants, beneficiaries, and, indeed, engineers of Russia’s rapid industrial growth, the Russian style provided an accessible architectural language for the construction of residences that made powerful 26 Kirichenko, Russkii stil’, 185–90. On the Shervud dynasty and its impact on Russian architecture, see E.A. Luk’yanov and Yu. R. Savel’ev, Dinastiya Shervudov v istorii i kul’ture Rossii (Moscow, 2017). The architect of the Church of the Saviour on the Blood in St Petersburg was also of English descent: Alfred Parland. 27 Kirichenko, Russkii stil’, 200–6.

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statements about allegiances to a traditionalist idea of Russia, combined with an assertion of modernity, through their participation in the international practices of modern trade and capitalism. Brick and stone Russian-style buildings survive across the country, but many structures were in wood, often drawing on the work of the architect Ivan Ropet.28 Among the relatively few wooden survivals are the remarkable houses at Astashovo and Pogorelovo, close to one another in now almost abandoned villages in Kostroma Province. Both were built by peasants who had become wealthy working in big cities and had then returned to enjoy their wealth in their native villages.29 The Russian style was also very appealing to Old Believers, for obvious reasons (it referred to a pre-Petrine Russia), so that after the Edict of Tolerance of 1905, which granted religious freedoms to the Old Belief, including, at long last, the freedom to build their own churches, the predominant style chosen for new constructions was, predictably, historicist.30 The merchant class included many Old Believer families, so the philanthropic activities of the newly wealthy merchant dynasties provided another arena for the development of the Russian style in architecture. Russia’s greatest museum of national art is the Tret’yakov Gallery, founded by the wealthy factory owner Pavel Tret’yakov. The entrance to the gallery’s primary building, using the design of the artist and architect Vasnetsov, is intended to evoke an old-Russian palace. Russian medievalist literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was equally intriguing and contradictory (just as is its modern reiteration), and, as with architecture, it is often the formal, even linguistic features of medievalist stylizations that are particularly interesting. For example, imitations of the hagiographic genre abound in the late nineteenth century, some of them the work of Russia’s best-known realist author – Lev Tolstoi, no less.31 More interesting, perhaps, are the examples produced by a writer less well known to anglophone readers, Nikolai Leskov (1831–1895). Throughout his career, Leskov worked in areas and on themes that were not characteristic of the dominant modes of Russian realism at the time – he wrote far more sketches, short stories, and what he called ‘chronicles’ than novels; his narratives are often oriented towards the stylized imitation of oral storytelling; his favourite subject matter includes the life of the Orthodox clergy and the merchant class. Always an antiquarian and collector, late in life he turned to the so-called Prolog for a series of narratives modelled on the short hagiographies found in that collection. The Prolog is the Slavonic version of a Greek synaxarion; arriving in Rus’ in the Kyivan period, it became one of the most popular texts of East Slavic literature, expanding regularly as native Rus’ material was added to the Greek Ibid., 164–66. On Astashovo, see, for example, the Russian Geographical Society’s webpage devoted to the house: ‘Terem v Astahovo’, Russkoe geograficheskoe obshchestvo: Novosibirsk, n.d., http:// rgo-sib.ru/project/97.htm [accessed 24 September 2021]. The house is now restored and serves as a boutique hotel. On Pogorelovo, see ‘Terem krest’yanina-otkhodnika I. I. Polyashova’, Usad’by. Dvortsy. Osobnyaki, 2021, https://prousadbi.ru/blog/derevyannoe-zodchestvo/teremkrestyanina-otxodnika-i-i-polyashova.html [accessed 24 September 2021]. 30 Kirichenko, Russkii stil’, 157–58. 31 On Tolstoi’s reworking of hagiographies, see А.G. Grodetskaya, Otvety predaniya: Zhitiya svyatykh v dukhovnom poiske L’va Tolstogo (St Petersburg, 2000), 23–97. 28 29

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originals. Although it had fallen out of favour among Orthodox Christians by the nineteenth century, it was still widely read and copied by Old Believers. Leskov’s remarks on his use of sources are characteristically opaque, but it is clear that he studied some of the Prolog tales in detail, although much of his reworking of the originals is to invert their emphasis on traditional piety in favour of an orientation towards good works in the world (Leskov, unusually for a Russian intellectual, was familiar with and sympathetic towards Protestantism). For example, Leskov’s ‘Skomorokh Pamphalon’ (1887; translated rather awkwardly as ‘Pamphalon the Entertainer’) is a reworking of a short Byzantine hagiography from the Prolog.32 While radically revising and greatly expanding the source, the story preserves features of the hagiographic genre and introduces what appear to be quotations from the source. However, many of the supposed quotations in Church Slavonic appear, in fact, to have been modified or even invented by Leskov himself, as is the case with some of his other reworkings of the Prolog. In other words, the very device that appears to authenticate Leskov’s new version of the ancient text reveals, on close inspection, a strange inauthenticity.33 This play between antiquarianism and literary effect is entirely characteristic of Leskov’s paradoxical poetics. For the generation of writers after Leskov, the marriage of medievalism and modernism also produces intriguing offspring, none more so, perhaps, than in the work of Aleksei Remizov (1877–1957), who not only produced many stylized versions of pre-modern and folkloric narratives, but also produced manuscripts in pre-modern hands.34 Both Leskov and Remizov, like their twenty-first-century successors, simultaneously reiterate and fracture the genre models on which their own narratives are based. Leskov expressly historicizes his hagiographic narratives, providing commentary and historical references to contextualize what, in the original, is usually an unhistorical, abstract narrative, while Remizov is inclined to playfully introduce the present, as he does when the devils who have captured the protagonist of his version of the Tale of the Possessed Solomonia (original from the late seventeenth century) try to persuade her to eat, and thereby condemn herself to eternal presence in their world: 32 Nikolai Leskov, ‘Skomorokh Pamphalon’, in N.S. Leskov, Sobranie sochineni iv dvenadtsati tomakh (Moscow, 1989), X, 113–65; English version in Leskov, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Other Stories, trans. David McDuff (London, 1988), 255–336. 33 For example, in Chapter 3 of Leskov’s story, the Church Slavonic quotation otlozhi ot sebya vsyaku vlast’ [he set aside all power] is a modification of the original, while the koz’ya milot’ [goat skin] in quotation marks in Chapter 6 has no equivalent in the original – see Prolog entry for 9 December in the 1642 printed edition from the Moskovskii pechatnyi dvor: ‘Prolog dekabr’, Sobranie materialov o khristianskoi vere i staroobryadchestvo, 2017–2022, https://nashavera.com/biblioteka/12/13 [accessed 22 April 2022]. 34 Remizov’s medievalism is the subject of A.M. Gracheva’s Aleksei Remizov i drevnerusskaya kul’tura (Petersburg, 2000). For examples of Remizov’s reworking of premodern material, the anglophone reader should consult Marcia A. Morris, Russian Tales of Demonic Possession: Translations of ‘Savva Grudtsyn’ and ‘Solomonia’ (Lanham, 2014), where Remizov’s versions of two seventeenth-century tales may be compared with the sources. For examples of his manuscript work, see the Russian National Library’s virtual exhibition: ‘Aleksei Remizov i ego mir slavyanskikh azbukh’, RNB Virtual’nye vystavki, 2015–2021, http:// expositions.nlr.ru/ex_manus/remizov [accessed 24 September 2021].

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They came and went with food. They ate themselves and brought her full plates as well. But she wouldn’t touch anything. And this was noted with displeasure. ‘It’s not carrion, you know,’ they said. ‘We get everything from the big stores, top brands, nothing but the freshest.’35

In order to understand the specifics of Russian literary medievalism, it is worth looking at encyclopaedia entries on medievalism in English literature: they tend to direct the reader to works such as Tennyson’s Idylls of the King – fascinating narratives, certainly, and redolent of the contradictions of late Victorian England, but formally closer to such evidently modern products as the historical novel and historical genre paintings than to any pre-modern genre or linguistic models.36 In Russia, too, there were plenty of historical narratives about ‘Ancient Rus’’ written in the manner of the historical novel, plenty of modern statues, as already suggested, and plenty of historical paintings on supposedly medieval Russian themes, produced in the nineteenth century (that famous Repin painting of Ivan IV is but one of many examples), without formal or genre imitation of pre-modern models. These works, with an aesthetic profile perhaps more familiar to the Western reader or viewer, help to provide a context for the formally medievalist works. Yet, in so many Russian works, both for the late imperial period and for the post-Soviet period, the preoccupation not only with theme but also with form is striking. In them, the invitation to inhabit the past is stronger, and that past both more present and more elusive. A good example in the visual arts at the turn of the twentieth century is provided by Dmitrii Stelletskii, whose portrait of the young Count Olsuf ’ev (1913), now in the Tula Museum of Fine Arts, has been compared to medieval frescoes of ecclesiastical sponsors.37 Stelletskii was hired to paint the interior of Shchusev’s remarkable memorial church at Kulikovo Field (site of the first significant victory of Muscovite forces over the Tatars in 1380, where nineteenth-, twentieth-, and, with particular energy, twenty-first-century agents of Russian patriotism – latterly, the state itself – have erected memorials and museums). The church, a striking combination of motifs from pre-modern ecclesiastical and fortress architecture, was completed in 1917, but the interior was never painted, as the First World War and then the Bolshevik coup interrupted Russian revivalism. Stelletskii emigrated, taking with him the historicist aesthetic, expressed powerfully in his interior of the Church of the Trinity and Saint Sergius in Paris (consecrated 1925), one of the best examples of Russian medievalism in the diaspora, where historicist work is shot through with a double nostalgia – for the loss of both medieval Rus’ and modern Russia. This double nostalgia is also very evident in the post-emigration writing of Remizov. In the Soviet period, from 1917 to 1991, we see little, if any, medievalism, strictu sensu, in Soviet literature, art, and architecture. Most of the ‘Russian-style’ buildings that are now being carefully – or not so carefully – restored and even rebuilt from the ground up were treated with official hostility and popular indifference, just as a Morris, Russian Tales, 109. See, for example, Chris Jones, ‘Medievalism in British Poetry’, The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, ed. Louise D’Arcens (Cambridge, 2016), 14–28. 37 Kirichenko, Russkii stil’, 395, 398. 35

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Figure 4.4: Church of St Sergii of Radonezh, Kulikovo Field. Photo: Michael Makin.

significant number of actual medieval buildings – primarily churches – were deliberately destroyed, while literary works of the past that smacked of the ecclesiastical, as, inevitably, did much writing that looked to pre-modern models, received little official traction. And yet, even in that officially atheist state, with its supposedly, and aggressively, forward-looking culture, many reiterations of the pre-modern past can be found. On the social periphery, where popular religion survived, hagiographies, for example, continued to be read and even written, while at the very heart of Soviet power the discourse of the past certainly did have a presence, as the philologist Boris Unbegaun noted in a famous 1973 address: If one disregards the numerous loanwords, one can see that the Russian abstract, learned, and figurative vocabulary (precisely that which stamps an idiom as a language of civilization) continues to develop mainly along the traditional lines of Church Slavonic derivation. Quite naturally, it has annexed also the administrative area, which, in ancient Russia, was the exclusive privilege of the vernacular. In general the more abstract, or learned, or metaphoric, or ceremonious, the context, the more probable its expression in Church Slavonic elements. For example, the newspaper ‘Pravda’ usually describes the landing of Soviet astronauts in a flawless modernized Church Slavonic.38 From the Presidential Address of the Modern Humanities Research Association, read at University College, London, on 5 January 1973. First published in the Modern Language Review, 68/4 (1973), https://www.angelfire.com/nt/oboguev/images/unbegaun.txt [accessed 24 September 2021]. As the preface to that online publication makes clear, Unbegaun’s position is on the Slavonicist side of the debate about the emergence of modern literary Russian (the other side emphasizes the role of the vernacular). 38

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How then, in broad terms, should these many contradictory features of Russian (and neighbouring) historicism be contextualized and read? There are, of course, multiple approaches, and this conclusion traces but a few. First, the appropriation, remaking, and even physical inhabiting of the ‘ancient’ past is highly ideological – whether in terms of claims about (modern) national/ ethnic ownership, or about the mapping on to a modern state of an imagined cultural community of the past. Secondly, Russian cultural historicism is bound to be particularly anxious because of the evident and ongoing geopolitical modifications of the East Slavic polities. The boundaries and territories of these polities have undergone endless changes, expansions and contractions, invasions and occupations, from the ninth to twentieth centuries (and it would be unwise to anticipate that they are at an end). As has been noted, the coming of the Tatar-Mongol Empire brought non-Slavic overlordship to most of the early East Slavic communities in the thirteenth century; the centre of the first Rus’ civilization, Kyiv, was under Lithuanian or Polish control from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries; only in the seventeenth century did Russians begin to take control of Siberia; large parts of what used to be called Central Asia came under Russian control only in the nineteenth century and were lost to that direct control in the late twentieth century. Moreover, even in the early centuries of East Slavic civilization, but especially from the imperial period to the present, no (honest) account of what we call ‘Russian history’ can exclude the many non-Slavic, non-Orthodox peoples who have inhabited the territory now known as Russia and whose contributions to the civilization(s) of that territory are very different from what is often seen as the main line of historical development, based on the Slavic adoption of Byzantine Christianity. Thirdly, the story of the East Slavs can also be told in terms of massive and often disruptive historical breaks – from the coming of the Tatars in the thirteenth century to the coming of the Germans in the twentieth; from the arrival of the Romanovs in the early seventeenth century to the arrival of the Bolsheviks in the early twentieth; from the rise and expansion of Muscovy in the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, to the rise (and potential expansion) of Putin’s Russia in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Partially as a result, and especially because of the waves of destruction these breaks have brought, the modern experience of the historical fabric of the East Slavs is very different from that of, say, the British, whose mythologization of their history as continuity is reinforced by apparent material evidence and actual, almost obsessive, preservationism. The Tatar invasions swept away much of the material fabric of Kyivan Rus’, while the Bolsheviks and the Nazis were very effective in destroying much of what had survived from pre-modern times into the twentieth century. So-called ‘restoration’ after the Second World War often required rebuilding from the ground up, providing a model for the post-Soviet restoration of what Soviet power itself had destroyed. And, in both cases, restoration seems to represent an attempt to refabricate the material signs of historical continuity that are so much more evident in most Western European countries – where the narrative of unproblematic continuity they encourage can also be very misleading. Naturally, medieval structures have survived in parts of the country, but even in the obvious centres of medieval culture, caution is advised: that great medieval city, Novgorod

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the Great, was, in fact, almost entirely destroyed during the Second World War. Much of what the modern tourist admires is a rebuilding. In other words, moments of continuity, acknowledged breaks, material experience, cultural self-consciousness, and, conversely, unconsciousness all make for a very different kind of medievalism from other parts of Europe. On the one hand, it could be said that, in some ways, the Middle Ages never ended in Russia. Energetic manuscript production and dissemination continued into the twentieth century; significant social groups expressly rejected what is generally termed ‘modernity’; the official religion of the East Slavs sustained, in its liturgy and its texts, a literary language created in the ninth century that diverged more and more from spoken and written secular languages with every century. Thus, for every moment of dressing up as medieval Russians, as the late Romanovs did at costume balls, there will be a group of Old Believers who had simply continued to dress in pre-Petrine fashion. On the other hand, Russian artists and ideologues have repeatedly and consciously re-created East Slavic pre-modernity in modern times. The imaginary tourist whose journey and reading were suggested above, wishing to understand the paradoxical relations of today’s Russia to that ‘unpredictable past’, could do worse than simply take a panoramic view of Red Square, from the walls of the Kremlin itself (fifteenth/sixteenth century), to the so-called Cathedral of St Basil the Blessed (sixteenth century), on to the Russian-style Trading Rows (popularly known as GUM; late nineteenth century), then to the Kazan’ Cathedral (built in the seventeenth century, demolished in the 1930s, entirely rebuilt in the 1990s), and the Historical Museum (late nineteenth-century monument to the Russian style). The project of inhabiting an unpredictable past would thus be strikingly visible at what is often presented as ground zero for the modern state itself.

II

Someone Else’s Past?

5 The Medievalism of Gregor Jordan’s Ned Kelly Sabina Rahman

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he story of Ned Kelly has been part of the Australian cinematic experience since the early days of cinema. His image, captured in photographs and illustrations, had already been romanticized to depict a national hero,1 but the films contributed to the continued mythologizing of what has been referred to as a ‘quintessentially Australian story’.2 This valorization of a criminal has not always been well received, and dissenting opinions by critics such as Graham Seal and Doug Morrissey point towards the significant body of historical records to indicate that Ned Kelly and his gang were violent criminals and not the heroes they have become in the public imagination. These objections are largely ignored within modern popular culture where Ned’s heroic status is stoically maintained. From being the subject of a sympathetic portrayal in a Booker Man Prize-winning novel by Peter Carey,3 to being showcased as a national symbol in the Sydney Olympic Games opening ceremony, the historical Ned has been side-lined for the charming battler Ned, a symbol of the Australian spirit. Historian Geoffrey Serle suggested that the Kelly Gang were ‘the last expression of the lawless frontier in what was becoming a highly organized and educated society, the last protest of the mighty bush now tethered with iron rails to Melbourne and the world’.4 By describing Ned in this way, Serle evokes a romanticized Wild West narrative, and certainly the archetype of the bushranger and the western outlaw have a lot in common, not least that they tend to pin their claim to sympathy on a link to the medieval outlaw, Robin Hood. M.I. Ebbutt, a commentator from the early 1900s, states: See Graham Seal, Ned Kelly in Popular Tradition (Melbourne, 1980), 122. Peter Fitzsimons, Ned Kelly: The Story of Australia’s Most Notorious Legend (Sydney, 2013), xii. 3 Peter Carey, The True History of the Kelly Gang (Brisbane, 2000). 4 Geoffrey Serle, The Rush to Be Rich: A History of the Colony of Victoria 1883–1889 (Melbourne, 1971), 11. 1

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it was therefore natural in these latter days that a class of men should arise to avail themselves of the unique opportunities of the time – men who, loving liberty and hating oppression, took the law into their own hands and executed a rough and ready justice between the rich and the poor which embodied the best traditions of knight-errantry, whilst they themselves lived a free and merry life on the tolls they exacted from their wealthy victims. Such a man may well have been the original Robin Hood, a man who, when once he has captured the popular imagination, soon acquired heroic reputation and was credited with every daring deed and every magnanimous action in two centuries of ‘freebooting’.5

Ebbutt’s assertion is typical of the larger reception of Robin Hood and his anti-authoritarianism. Noted by Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren as a ‘good outlaw’,6 Robin Hood has achieved and maintained international appeal as someone that wants to, or is willing to, redress the balance between social classes,7 and this archetype can be extended to other outlaw heroes, too. Popular portrayals of Jesse James, for example, represent him as robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, despite a lack of evidence that he and his gang shared any loot from their robberies with anyone outside their close kinship networks.8 Likewise, Ned Kelly is often celebrated as Australia’s equivalent of Robin Hood,9 a medievalist romanticization that legitimizes the white settler community of Australia. This romanticized Ned was captured most notably on film in 2003 by Gregor Jordan, who maintains the cinematic tradition of representations of Ned Kelly by presenting an unabashedly sympathetic and heroic Ned. This chapter will examine this film through the lens of medievalism to suggest that Ned’s continued romanticization lies in his implicit association with the medieval. Jordan’s film links Ned Kelly with Australian ideals and Australia itself. But the film is not original in constructing him as the embodiment of ‘mateship’ and honour: Ned’s associations with war and the diggers have been used to create a hero narrative that is fundamentally a reconstitution of the codes of chivalry to create a medievalized hero who can serve as an emblem for the country. The story of Edward ‘Ned’ Kelly begins with his birth into a poor family in the former British colony of Australia some time in December 1854. He was the third of eight children born to Ellen Kelly and John ‘Red’ Kelly, a transported Irish convict. When he was around eleven, his father was sentenced to six months’ hard labour for being unable to account for meat that was in his possession and being unable to pay the ensuing fine. Red died shortly after serving his sentence, leaving the then twelve-year-old Ned as the eldest male of the household. The Kelly family struggled to make a living, and, after a few years, they moved to the small Victorian town of Greta to be closer to Ellen’s family. It was from this point that they began to attract M.I. Ebbutt, Hero-Myths and Legends of the British Race (London, 1915), 314. See Thomas H. Ohlgren, Robin Hood: The Early Poems, 1465–1560 (Newark, 2007), 52; Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography (Ithaca, 2003), xi. 7 Jeffrey Singman, Robin Hood: The Shaping of a Legend (Westport, CT, 1998), 1. 8 Kent L. Steckmesser, ‘Robin Hood and the American Outlaw: A Note on History and Folklore’, The Journal of American Folklore, 79/312 (1966), 349. 9 A cursory Google search of the two outlaws yields results from hundreds of newspaper articles and opinion pieces that range from the late 1800s to the present day. 5

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police attention and claimed to be victims of police persecution. Ned was arrested as a teenager for associating with the known bushranger Harry Power and served two prison terms for a number of offences, the longest stretch from 1871 to 1874 on a conviction of receiving a stolen horse. He later joined the ‘Greta mob’, a gang known for stock theft. On 15 April 1878, a violent confrontation with a policeman occurred at the Kelly family home when constable Alexander Fitzpatrick arrived at the Kelly residence to arrest Dan Kelly, Ned’s younger brother. Fitzpatrick was by all accounts an unreliable policeman, described at Victoria’s Public Records Office as one ‘known to be fond of both drink and women’.10 In Fitzpatrick’s account of the incident, he stated that he was peaceably within the house when Ned Kelly appeared in the doorway and shot at him. Ellen Kelly hit him over the head with a shovel and all present beat him senseless. Ned’s account was that he was two hundred miles away. His mother later told him that Fitzpatrick arrived at the house drunk, threatened to shoot her, and was tricked into believing that Ned was outside. He was cornered and overpowered by Dan, who then sent him away unharmed. Although the facts have never been established, Ned and Dan went into hiding after that night, later joined by their friends Joe Byrne and Steve Hart. Ned was indicted for attempted murder, and Ellen Kelly was arrested and imprisoned for three years on the charges of aiding and abetting the attempted murder of Fitzpatrick. While on the run, the Kelly Gang killed three policemen who were on their trail at Stringybark Creek. On 25 October 1878, Sergeant Kennedy was dispatched to search for the Kellys, accompanied by Constables McIntyre, Lonigan, and Scanlon. The Kelly Gang attacked the camp while Lonigan was alone, and Ned shot him dead. When Kennedy and Scanlon returned to the camp, they attacked. Scanlon was shot and killed, McIntyre escaped, and Kennedy’s body was found a half mile away from the campsite as Ned chased him down before executing him in what he later presented as an act of mercy. As a result of the public outrage to the Stringybark Creek murders, Victoria’s Parliament rushed through the Felons’ Apprehension Act, coming into effect on 1 November 1878, which outlawed the gang and penalized anyone who gave any aid, shelter, or sustenance to the outlaws. By February 1880, what Seal refers to as the ‘deification’ process of Ned Kelly had begun.11 The gang had garnered some public support by destroying any selector mortgage papers that they came across, thus relieving the mortgage holders of their debts. Newspapers of the era were reporting on their gentlemanly behaviour while they were in the town of Euroa, where they treated the women and children kindly even as they held them hostage. Songs, ballads, and orally transmitted yarns were written about their exploits, whether real or imaginary, immediately after the events and became the precursor to Kelly’s viability as a media hero. Noting the power of the press, Ned Kelly dictated the first of his letters during the Euroa siege, intending it to be published. The Cameron Letter attempted to give Ned’s side of the story Public Records Office of Victoria, ‘Ned Kelly: Australia’s First Iron Man, Public Record Office Victoria, 2018, https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/online-galleries-andexhibitions/ned-kelly [accessed 27 November 2020]. 11 Graham Seal, Tell ’Em I Died Game: The Legend of Ned Kelly (Melbourne, 2002), v. 10

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and, while not published in its entirety, served to increase sympathy for Kelly. The Kelly Gang held up another bank in Jerilderie, and Ned again dictated a letter to be printed in the press. In this manifesto letter, known as the Jerilderie letter, Ned Kelly denounced the police, the Victorian government, and the British Empire and gave his own account of the events leading up to his outlawry. He demanded justice for his family and the rural poor, while threatening dire consequences for those who defied him. Aided by public opinion and an extensive network of sympathizers, Ned Kelly and his gang operated as bushrangers and evaded the police for two years. In 1880, the Kelly Gang attempted to derail and ambush a police train and became engaged in their final stand. He and his gang, dressed in armour fashioned from stolen plough mouldboards, battled with the police at Glenrowan. Ned Kelly was the only survivor from the gang and was severely wounded before capture. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by hanging. Although a petition to have his sentence commuted was reported to have garnered thirty thousand signatures, he was hanged on 11 November 1880 at the Old Melbourne Gaol and buried in an unmarked grave on the grounds. His last words were famously reported to have been ‘such is life’.12 The first colonial settlers of Australia were enthusiastic practitioners and consumers of medievalism,13 which appealed to the sense of yearning and loss so characteristic of nostalgia. The algos and pathos at the core of nostalgic longing replace memory with fantasy ‘masquerad[ing] as memory’,14 and contrive to create the agonized poignancy of specifically medievalist nostalgia.15 This replacement of memory with fantasy is particularly important in the context of Australia, a land colonized by the British since the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. Australia was the exception to British imperial colonization practices in that no treaty was drawn up setting out terms of agreement between the settlers and native proprietors.16 As a result, there was a European seizure of land and water resources from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders across the continent. The Australian frontier wars consisted of the systematic killing of indigenous people, with evidence of the massacre of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continuing into the 1930s.17 Recent research has 12 As Fiona Leahy and Helen D. Harris demonstrate, different newspapers reported different final words, from ‘such is life’ to ‘I suppose it has come to this.’ The gaol warden, however, had been closest to Ned as he was on the gallows, and wrote in his diary that Ned’s final words were mumbled and too soft to hear. Nonetheless, the legends of these final words persist. See Fiona Leahy and Helen D. Harris, ‘The Identification of Ned Kelly: A Historical Perspective’, in Ned Kelly: Under the Microscope, ed. Craig Cormick (Melbourne, 2014), 7–28. 13 See Louise D’Arcens, Andrew Lynch, and Stephanie Trigg, ‘Medievalism, Nationalism, Colonialism: Introduction’, Australian Literary Studies, 26/3–4 (2011). This issue provides a fantastic overview for studies into parliamentary, political, theatrical, literary, and popular medievalisms from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. 14 E.B. Daniels, ‘Nostalgia: Experiencing the Elusive’, in Descriptions, ed. D. Ihde and Hugh J. Silverman (Albany, NY, 1985), 84. 15 Helen Dell, ‘What to Do with Nostalgia in Medieval and Medievalism Studies?’, Emotions: History, Culture, Society, 2/2 (2018), 274–91. 16 Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: A History since 1788 (Sydney, 2010), 18. 17 Lyndall Ryan et al., ‘Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788–1930’, The Centre for 21st Century Humanities, 2019, https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres [accessed 27 November 2020]; Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence: Queensland’s Frontier Killing Times (Sydney, 2013).

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shown the scale of the death of Aboriginal people, which, it has been suggested, may well constitute genocide when considered alongside the forcible removal of children from Aboriginal communities.19 The colonialist settling of Australia is thus a story of a violent conquest. The massacre of Aboriginal peoples, their slavery, and their kidnapping all served to decimate a people.20 Having disregarded its native history, and declared Australia terra nullius,21 ‘void country’, the colonists, craving authenticity and connection with the land, particularly because of the forced immigration to Australia of a significant number of colonists, clung to supposedly medieval material to create a fantasy of memory to promote belongingness. Medievalism in this context, as is often the case, refers to an idea of the Middle Ages rather than a time period, and white settler medievalism, where medievalism could supplant indigenous culture and provide ‘narratives of European cultural identity … in new geographic locations’,22 is the kind of medievalism that was practised in Australia post-colonization. The pastness of medievalism makes it special, as the value of pastness in a place that has been artificially and violently constructed to be past-less can be used to create a national narrative and heritage. This sort of narrative is particularly evident in films about Ned Kelly, which, from the first feature film released in 1906, contrive to create a new myth of national identity, culminating in the idealized heroic narrative presented in the Gregor Jordan 2003 adaptation. There is a manufactured nostalgia created early in Jordan’s film, which begins with a pseudo-Celtic song, the soundtrack to a young Ned Kelly rescuing Richard Shelton from drowning. The first words uttered as the camera pans across the golden, sunburnt hills and valleys of Australia are Ned in a voiceover saying, ‘I was the hero of Hughes Creek.’ There is an evocation of a time past using the imagery of untouched Australian bushland. It is a striking but stark beauty, with native flora and fauna captured, not just for its strangeness to international audiences, but also for its exclusivity to Australia. This opening posits the film as being fundamentally about Australia, and Ned tells us explicitly that he is ‘the hero’ from this land, tied to it, as he is himself tied with a sash to honour and celebrate his bravery: a sash of green and gold, the national colours of Australia. This heroic idealization is maintained without much subtlety as a youthful Ned finds a runaway mare. This horse, the Postmaster’s stolen horse that sees Ned sent to gaol, is very pale in colour, a deliberate alteration of the historical truth. The 18

18 The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, ‘Serving Their Country’, AIATSIS, n.d., https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/articles/first-encounters-and-frontierconflict [accessed 27 November 2020]. 19 Thomas James Rogers and Stephen Bain, ‘Genocide and Frontier Violence in Australia’, Journal of Genocide Research, 18/1 (2016), 83–100. 20 Commonwealth of Australia, ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population, Australian Bureau of Statistics’, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2007, https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/ bfc28642d31c215cca256b350010b3f4!OpenDocument [accessed 27 November 2020]. 21 Kingsley Palmer, Australian Native Title Anthropology: Strategic Practice, the Law and the State (Canberra, 2018), 15. 22 Helen Young, ‘Whiteness and Time: The Once, Present, and Future Race’, Studies in Medievalism, 24 (2015), 42.

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Jerilderie letter describes her as ‘a chestnut mare docked tail very remarkable’. The potent heroic imagery of Ned riding into town on a white horse, having already been declared the hero of Hughes Creek, is not one to be ignored. This imagery is embedded in medievalist and medievalismist tropes of the chivalric hero from St George to Sir Lancelot.23 Ned’s heroic nature is tied into his Australianness, despite the stylistic choice to emphasize apparently foreign attributes. Heath Ledger’s performance leaves no doubt about Ned’s immigrant background as he plays him with an Irish accent. Ned’s status as an immigrant is important to the canonizing of the heroic Ned as it establishes him within an existing tradition of bushrangers. It is estimated that over two thousand bushrangers operated between 1789 and 1880, beginning with John ‘Black’ Caesar, an escaped convict of African descent sent to the penal colony of New South Wales for stealing.24 Indeed, in the early years of the British settlement of Australia, the bushrangers were all escaped convicts, and so were all, by definition, immigrants. These figures were frequently Irish and were romanticized by ballads such as The Wild Colonial Boy. The ballad tells the story of a Jack Dolan, who roamed ‘through Australia’s sunny shores’ in 1861 as a bushranger, terrorizing and robbing the rich before being shot down in a gunfight with the police. There is a distinct emphasis in these ballads on the unfairness of British forces towards the Irish convicts that had been sent to Australia for petty crimes.25 Though by the 1820s the term ‘bushranger’ had evolved to refer to those who abandoned their legal and social rights and privileges to take up robbery, their associations with the Wild Colonial Boys remained, since the bushrangers themselves were mostly second-generation immigrants, the Australian-born sons of convicts, and their actions were frequently interpreted in a politicized manner. Ned Kelly could thus, as an Irish Australian and the son of a transported convict, become a national figure for Australia as he is coded within these pre-existing relationships of plucky Irishmen being victimized by agents of the state. Within this model, where the Irishman is victim of the state, it is easy to erase or ignore the narratives of conquest and the fact that these Irish settlers, whether free or transported, are participants in the oppression and annihilation of the people whose land they are now occupying. Ned Kelly’s Irish heritage was also a feature of the 1970 film Ned Kelly, in which Mick Jagger played the titular character as an Irishman. Heath Ledger’s Ned, however, is definitively Australian despite his accent. When he meets Julie, an invented love interest in the 2003 film, she says, ‘you’re Irish’, with a smile. He responds with a, ‘my Da was from Tipperary but I was born here’. Establishing Ned as Australian is important to his narrative because it goes beyond simply aligning him with the famously downtrodden (emigrant) Irish. He is an underdog by being Irish, but his long-term cultural value lies in his Australianness. This Australianness, as noted earlier, is complicated. After the gang has formed, Ned encounters an Aboriginal man in the bush while they are doing some target practice. This scene is significant 23 Gerard J. Brault, Early Blazon: Heraldic Terminology in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Woodbridge, 1997), 34–35. 24 Robert Coupe, Australian Bushrangers (Sydney, 1998). 25 Anastasia Dukova, A History of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and Its Colonial Legacy (Brisbane, 2016), 35.

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to the narrative as a whole, as it ties into the war narrative that will be expanded on later, but it is also important to Ned as a character: from this moment, he is depicted as at war with the tyrannical Victorian police force. The indigenous man walks close to the clearing, looking curiously at the men. Ned wheels around to aim at him, takes a moment to take note of whom he is aiming at, and lowers his weapon. This recognizably Aboriginal person, one who represents native Australia, is no threat to Ned, exhibiting the oppressor status of Irish settlers. Perhaps this scene could be readable as a demonstration that Ned is not at war with Australia, but there is some destabilizing dissonance here. The Aboriginal man is set apart from Australia. His Otherness in comparison to Ned, and from everyone seen so far, is stark. Ned does not shoot the man, but as he stands there, gun poised, there is an intrinsic demonstration of power, of who now possesses the land, how they claimed it, and who will now be the focus of its legends. Ned is, after all, ‘the hero’ of Hughes Creek. He wore the green and gold of the land. He rode through town on the white horse. His medievalist imagery, as he stands in the woods, an outlaw, doing target practice like an Australian Robin Hood with his band of Merry Men, constructs him as historically significant, and the Aboriginal man as an outsider to this new medievalized Australian narrative. Robin Hood iconography in the film is easily recognizable, given Robin Hood’s long history in performance. There are records showing that Robin Hood narratives had been performed as early as 1473,26 and the performance aspect of these narratives cannot be discounted even in their ballad forms.27 Jeffrey Singman notes the scale and variety of Robin Hood material in pre-cinematic performance, from play games, Morris dancing, and short scripted performances to scripted plays for commercial purposes,28 but it was his appearance on screen that took him from being a mythic hero into what Stephen Knight calls ‘international stardom’.29 Rob Gossedge notes that ‘[a]t its core, the tradition is based on iconographic motifs rather than narrative episodes. Its key, instantly recognizable signs of forest, longbow, and disguise [are] easily appropriated and made relevant to new social meanings.’30 As a result, these elements are instantly recognizable, even when the iconographical motifs are transferred to bearded men with guns in outback Australia. Robin Hood is one of the main figures whom we associate with medieval culture, medievalism, and neomedievalism,31 and he is also one of the main figures whom we associate In a letter to his brother in 1473, Sir John Paston complains that he is lacking performers for the parts of ‘Robynhod and the shryff of Notyngham’ since losing some of his servants in Norfolk. See: Sir John Paston, The Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Norman Davis (Oxford, 1979), 461. 27 David Atkinson, The English Traditional Ballad: Theory, Method, and Practice (London, 2016), 23. See also Nigel Wheale, Writing and Society: Literacy, Print, and Politics in Britain, 1590–1660 (London, 1999), 153. 28 Singman, Robin Hood, 78–97. 29 Stephen Knight, The Politics of Myth (Melbourne, 2015), 88. 30 Rob Gossedge, ‘“We Are Robin Hood”: The Outlaw Tradition in Contemporary Popular Culture’, in Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Popular Culture, ed. Gail Ashton and Dan Kline (New York, 2012), 251. 31 Alexander Kaufman, ‘A Desire for Origins: The Marginal Robin Hood of the Later Ballads’, Studies in Medievalism, 24 (2015), 53. 26

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with anti-authoritarianism, rebellion, and political resistance. By aligning Ned with Robin, therefore, there is a strong thread of medievalism linking Ned to the figure of the good outlaw, and with forceful resistance to wrongful authority. Where Robin represents these ideals as a steadfast hero of England, the Irish Australian figure of Ned divests the Robin Hood myth of its Englishness and adopts the ideals for Australia to create a new history for the new settlers. In Jordan’s film, Ned’s Australianness is frequently represented by the landscape and the use of pathetic fallacy. After the incidents of Stringybark Creek and the reframed murder in that scene of the three policemen as self-defence and a mercy killing, the Australian landscape becomes darker. The sky is overcast, and thunder sounds above. There is a gnarled, desolate looking tree, stripped of its lushness. A dingo lurks in the rain. A bush stone-curlew pecks ominously at the ground while a tawny frogmouth ruffles its feathers against the deluge. Ned’s emotional state is represented in these inherently Australian images. The particularness of the landscape and its harshness also serve to align Ned Kelly with contemporary Australians through particularly Australian anxieties. In order to flush the gang out of hiding, the police in the film deliberately light bushfires. The Kelly Gang flee and are seen broken, tired, and wrung out, an image that is familiar to Australians in bushfire season. The threat of bushfires is a grim prospect that Australians face every summer, and the damage and loss of life can be significant as illustrated by the table below, which outlines some of the worst recorded cases (in chronological order).32 Table 5.1: Most extensive and deadliest Australian bushfires.

Most extensive fires Date

Hectares burned

Deadliest fires Date

Human lives lost

1851 – 6 February ‘Black Thursday’

5 million

1851 – 6 February ‘Black Thursday’

12

1898 – 1 February ‘Red Tuesday’

260,000

1898 – 1 February ‘Red Tuesday’ 12

1938–1939 December– January ‘Black Friday’

2 million

1905 – 1 December

12

1944 – January–February

1 million

1926 – 14 February–March ‘Black Sunday’

60

32 Data compiled from Commonwealth of Australia, ‘Feature Article 4: Natural Disasters in Australia’, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010, https://www.abs.gov.au/ ausstats/[email protected]/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article52008?opendocument &tabname=Summary&prodno=1301.0&issue=2008&num=&view= [accessed 12 November 2020], and from Commonwealth of Australia, ‘Year Book Australia’, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/second+level+view?ReadForm &prodno=1301.0&viewtitle=Year%20Book%20Australia~2012~Latest~24/05/2012 &&tabname=Past%20Future%20Issues&prodno=1301.0&issue=2012&num=&view=& [accessed 12 November 2020].

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1965 – Gippsland

300,000

1939 – December–January ‘Black Friday’

71

1983 – 16 February ‘Ash Wednesday bushfires’

510,000

1942

20

2003 – January–March ‘2003 Eastern Victorian alpine bushfires’

1.3 million

1943 – 22 December

10

2006–2007 – 1 December–6 February ‘Eastern Victoria Great Divide bushfires’

1.2–1.3 million

1944 – December–February

51

2009 – 7 February ‘Black Saturday’

450,000

1952 – January–March

10

1962 – 14–16 January

33

1965 – 17 January

7

1969 – 8 January

23

1977 – 12 February

8

1983 – 16 February ‘Ash Wednesday’

47

1985 – 14 January

3

1997 – 21 January

3

1998 – 2 December

5

2019–2020 – 5 September 18.6 to March million

2009 – 7 February–March ‘Black 173 Saturday’ 2019–2020 – 5 September– March

34

Bushfires cause significant devastation that has long-term effects on the nation. As a result, deliberately lit bushfires are a cause for public concern and a topic of public discourse. In 2013, Dr Janet Stanley from the Monash Sustainability Institute linked deliberate lighting of bushfires to limited intellectual capacity and anger.33 The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission lists the likely arsonist to be ‘men with interpersonal difficulties, drug or alcohol dependence’ with ‘some form of mental health problem’ and ‘an extensive criminal history, with many crimes that were not identified or prosecuted’.34 Tabloids and DJs call the arsonists ‘mongrels’ and ‘scum’, the

Jeannette McMahon, ‘Why Do People Deliberately Light Bushfires?’, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2013, http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/10/22/3874350. htm [accessed 12 November 2020]. 34 State Government of Victoria, ‘Deliberately Lit Bushfires’, Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, 2009, http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/finaldocuments/volume-2/PF/VBRC_ Vol2_Chapter05_PF.pdf [accessed 16 December 2021]. 33

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lowest dregs of society.35 In the eyes of a modern Australian audience, the policemen lighting the bushfires in the film are therefore the bad guys, wrongful authority figures performing actions that contemporary Australian audiences are likely to read in a particularly negative way, as traitors, as un-Australian. Our established heroes are pitted against these men and end up cowering amidst sun-bleached rocks, covered in red dirt and ashes. In a voiceover, Ned says, ‘I’ve watched gravel fade. Dust settle into crust. I’ve seen drips of water turn to stone that defied gravity. I’ve turned blood red with cave mud. I’ve been a bloody rock.’ These words would have had particular resonance in 2003, when Australia was going through the worst drought on record and had suffered one of its most extensive bushfires. This situation is grim, the harshest we have seen Ned face in this film, but through it he looks after his brother and his friends before sating his own needs. In these dire moments, he demonstrates his embodiment of the supposed Australian virtue of mateship. The Honourable Justice Michael Kirby identified mateship as a virtue of ‘the peculiar “egalitarian” society which grew up in the wake of convict transportation’.36 Sidney Baker claims that, in Australian-English, the concept of mateship gained spiritual significance and became ‘a state of mind’ that was distinctively Australian.37 Mateship is generally accepted as a universal spirit that incorporates into concepts of Australianness sentiments like a ‘fair go’ for all (egalitarianism) and loyalty to one’s mates (fraternity).38 These sentiments of egalitarianism and fraternity exist in medieval texts, and contemporary scholarship in Robin Hood studies makes note of the homosocial imperative in the cycle. The brotherhood of men living in the woods as a community is a fixture of the tradition that was present in its earliest recorded incarnations,39 and indeed revisionist and reformist ideologies of the Robin Hood texts were infused with camaraderie and fellowship to promote the sense that unity amongst the ranks will bring a desirable outcome for all. Thus mateship is infused with medievalismist imperatives, and is easily identifiable in Ned Kelly’s cinematic history, even from the first ever feature film. The Story of the Kelly Gang begins with

35 See, for example, ‘Editorial: Firebug Scum Will Be Caught and Feel the Full Force of the Law’, The West Australian, 2021, https://thewest.com.au/opinion/editorials/editorialfirebug-scum-will-be-caught-and-feel-the-full-force-of-the-law-ng-b881790444z [accessed 26 April 2022]. 36 As quoted in A. Delbridge et al., eds, Macquarie Dictionary, Federation Edition (Sydney, 2001), viii. 37 Sidney J. Baker, The Australian National Dictionary: A Dictionary of Australianisms on Historical Principles, ed. W.S. Ramson (Melbourne, 1988), 109. 38 See Kenneth Morgan, ‘Mateship’, Oxford Dictionary Plus: Society and Culture (Oxford, 2016), https://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:2460/view/10.1093/ acref/9780191823541.001.0001/acref-9780191823541-e-74 [accessed 26 April 2022]. For the particular importance of the idea of the ‘fair go’, see, for example: McKenzie Wark, ‘Meritocracy in the Land of Mateship’, The Australian, 23 October 1996, 33. 39 Jeffrey Singman, Robin Hood, 36; Andrew of Wyntoun, Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, ed. David Laing (Edinburgh, 1872), 263, lines 3523–26; Walter Bower, Scotichronicon in Latin and English, ed. Simon Taylor and D.E.R. Watt with Brian Scott (Aberdeen, 1994), V, 354. All further references are from this text unless otherwise noted. See Knight, Robin Hood, 5; Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales (Kalamazoo, 1997), 25–26.

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the Kelly Gang sitting together atop horses, an image of camaraderie and friendship, the epitome of Australian mateship. These are the Merry Men of the Australian bush. Similar images exist in all subsequent Ned Kelly films: the men are jocular, united, and fiercely loyal. In Jordan’s film, when Ned is first released from prison, Aaron Sherritt and Joe Byrne meet him at the gate. There is no music as a gaunt and subdued Ned and his friends trudge towards home through paths thick with mud. However, as Aaron works his charm into cadging a lift from a passing acquaintance, a lilting flute returns, and they laugh as they jump on to the back of a wagon. The ideals of mateship, which began with the two men meeting him at the exit of the gaol, are beginning to solidify here as they are filmed to be quite literally in it together. This merry mateship, along with its allusions to the Robin Hood myth, is brought up explicitly during the final act as Steve Hart, accepting that the stand at Glenrowan is now a suicide mission, smiles and says, ‘a short life but a merry one’. As we have seen, one of the principal aspects of mateship is the quintessentially Australian idea of the ‘fair go for all’. Ned’s first troubles with unfair and tyrannical rule come early in the film. Having found a horse he identifies as belonging to Isaiah Wright, he rides into town and is accused of theft, threatened and shot at by Constable Hall. Though Ned reacts angrily and attacks the officer, the swelling music is sympathetic, the mournful strings telling of a passionate youth who was roused to anger because he was unfairly treated. The injustice of his treatment by state police is further represented in the later bar scene, in which Ned, having stepped in when Fitzpatrick grabs hold of his sister Kate, is stared down by three other officers. They grumble about his acting like ‘he owns the place’ and how he ‘needs taking in a peg or two’. They are men driven by vindictiveness. Fitzpatrick, Kate says, knows nothing of hard work: ‘[S]leeping and drinking and beating up yellow fellas is all you seem to do.’ And Ned tells us in a voiceover, when his family’s horses are stolen, that the Victorian Police are ‘the biggest thieves and liars the sun ever shone on’. As they storm in to arrest Ellen Kelly, they deliberately destroy the Kellys’ possessions before dragging Ellen away and punching Kate in the stomach. Despite these policemen banding together as a group, they are not part of the Australian mateship culture because they represent fundamentally unjust authority. Ned stands in stark contrast to these embodiments of illegitimate authority. The victimization of his friends at the hands of the State Police allows Ned to stand as a hero. He robs banks, giving the money to his friends to pay the debts they accrued for helping him: quite literally stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Where the State Police are, in Ned’s words, ‘liars and crooks’, the Kelly Gang are carefully shown not to conform to such labels. When Steve takes a watch from an old man during a robbery, Ned orders him to give the watch back saying, ‘if we act like common thieves, that’s just what they’ll call us’. Ned has a mission, and it is not common thievery. As he says, his ‘brethren have been unlawfully imprisoned and blacklisted from their selections. How do you expect me to behave other than to stand up against this treatment?’ When he begins dictating the Jerilderie letter during a bank siege, it is depicted as a community affair, with the hostages laughing 40

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The Story of the Kelly Gang, dir. Charles Tait, J. and N. Nevin Tait, 1906.

Figure 5.1: ‘Suit of Armour Made by Kelly Gang Displayed at the Exhibition Buildings in the Carlton Gardens’ in 1933. State Library of Victoria.

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and even joining in. Again, Ned is allied with the people. He is not at war with Australia but with those elements that are un-Australian. This has distinct echoes of Robin Hood, as both Robin and Ned are depicted as being fiercely loyal to their countries, their insurgencies represented as acts of patriotism. Battler people who are just trying to eke out a living, and those who abide by the tenets of mateship, are all his people. His war is with those that he identifies in his manifesto, the ‘brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly fat necked wombat headed big bellied magpie legged narrow hipped splawfooted sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords which is better known as Officers of Justice or Victorian Police’. Ned’s speech, beginning with laughter, camaraderie, and mateship, ends with a sombre Ned concluding, ‘I am a widow’s son outlawed and my orders must be obeyed’, to a fanfare. These trumpets and his demands draw on another link of mateship: that of war. Andrew Lynch proposes that war lies at the heart of contemporary medievalism, and that the rekindled interest in knightly codes of combat provides a ‘new theatre for existing concerns’.41 The medievalism of this film and its associated war motifs are fundamentally tied into the white settler narrative. In 1847, Alexander Harris wrote of pastoral workers who worked in the otherwise solitary bush and how they found that ‘habits of mutual helpfulness arise, and these elicit gratitude, and that leads on to regard. Men under these circumstances often stand by one another through thick and thin; … a man ought to be able to trust his own mate in anything.’42 These principles were adopted by gold diggers in the mid-1800s, and the term ‘digger’ re-surfaced during the First World War. Australian and New Zealand soldiers, the Anzacs, ascribed it to themselves and their mates as a term of affection due to the trench-digging aspect of that war. A study of Anzac soldiers in 1974 concluded that ‘mateship was a particular Australian virtue, a creed, almost a religion’. 43 Of the 237 Australian soldiers surveyed who served in the First World War, one in three said the experience of mateship was incomparable. The importance of mateship was so aligned with the narrative of war that it was used during the First World War to encourage men to vote in favour of conscription, appealing to male guilt at letting their mates down.44 Mateship was defined through the experience of trench warfare, concentration camps, hunger, injury, forced labour, and the boredom and terror of war. These experiences are implied in Jordan’s film in the Ned who comes out of gaol. The youthful sweetness of the earlier adult Ned Kelly is gone when he exits the doors of the prison. Darkness is cast over him. He is leaner, harder, made that way by what he has suffered. While he was not at war, the results of falling afoul of a tyrannical regime are the same. In a voiceover, Ned makes the allegory literal: ‘But wasn’t this about protecting the ones I loved? The ones who gave me food and shelter, even the clothes on my back? And therefore, wasn’t it now a war?’ Andrew Lynch, ‘Medievalism and the Ideology of War’, The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, ed. Louise D’Arcens (Cambridge, 2016), 135–38. 42 Alexander Harris, Settlers and Convicts or, Recollections of Sixteen Years’ Labour in the Australian Backwoods (London, 1847), 160. 43 Bill Gammage, The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War (Melbourne, 2010), 291. 44 See Peter Pierce, ‘Perceptions of the Enemy in Australian War Literature’, Australian Literary Studies, 12/2 (1985), 166–81. 41

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This declaration of war brings the narrative into sharper resolve with regard to its medievalism. The egalitarian ideals of mateship connect with ideas about duty and honour. Ned and his gang’s actions at Stringybark Creek are now aligned with Australian diggers against tyranny. The gang are seen to be acting honourably. At the camp, Ned shouts a warning to the policemen and only kills Lonigan after he fires first. When the other men return, Scanlon again fires first, despite a warning. Ned is seen to be acting out of self-defence. When Kennedy falls, still alive, drowning in his own blood, Ned puts his coat under his head and says, ‘I’m sorry I shot you.’ His eyes fill with tears as he exclaims, ‘God forgive me’ before shooting Kennedy in the head to alleviate his suffering. He whispers, ‘God forgive me’, again afterwards. When Kate visits her mother in gaol, she also makes it clear that this incident was not without honour as she says, ‘it was a fair fight … Better them than Ned.’ The execution of Kennedy is mitigated by all the above factors. It is not murder. Ned kneels in front of Kennedy as he shoots him. The film is careful to communicate that this is not a grudge that needed to be settled. This killing was a kindness. And the blood that coats his hands after is a reminder of the grim reality of war. This implicit war imagery is made explicit by the Kelly Gang’s armour, a symbol that is clearly intended to evoke specifically medieval warfare. In Jordan’s film, the gang first put on the armour after they have taken over the Glenrowan Hotel, holding the patrons as hostages. A crowd gathers around them, and a man softly declares, ‘knights in shining armour’, looking completely captivated as the gang don their suits made of steel ploughshares, leather, and bolts. The film’s representation of this armour is remarkably accurate: the suits the Kelly Gang wore at the siege in Glenrowan were indeed made from stolen farm materials in what sounds like a deliberate inversion of the concept of swords to ploughshares, where military weapons or technologies are converted for peaceful civilian applications.45 That pacifist biblical ideal has failed. Ned, who wanted to be a simple peaceful farmer, converts civilian tools into medieval military technology. By reproducing the armour here, and by having the man call them ‘knights’, the film references not just true Ned’s history, but overtly ties this history to various medievalisms and therefore deliberately romanticizes this story. When they leave the inn to engage in the battle with the police that have gathered outside, despite knowing that they have no chance of winning this fight, they stand together. In Jordan’s film, the Kelly Gang protect the hostages. They are brave, and their fall is tragic. Joe, shot in the groin, collapses and dies. Dan sobs brokenly as Steve kills himself before he follows suit: they are not criminals meeting their just ends but effectively children, forced by circumstance and tyranny into war. Ned, who had run out of the back of the hotel to attempt to attack the police flank, hears the gunshots and realizes that the gang are dead. Even though Ned could at this point have escaped relatively unharmed as he was undetected, he fires a round into the air to draw the attention of the gathered policemen. He stands with his gang and From Isaiah 2:4 ‘He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’ The New Oxford Annotated Bible, ed. Michael D. Coogan (Oxford, 2018). 45

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falls with them too. Just in case we had any doubt, right up until he falls and is taken to gaol, he is still wearing his sash of green and gold: a hero wearing an emblem of this new Australia under his medievalesque armour. Medievalism, it has been argued, is ‘the process by which all forms of cultural expression in the British Isles build for themselves a myth of origin’.46 Beyond this geographical region, the supplanting of indigenous history with white settler history is facilitated by casting this type of European antiquarianism and indigenous ethnology as ‘competing discourses for understanding the colony’s past’.47 Though there is some recognition of indigenous culture and its history, the colonizers’ antiquarian impulse is simultaneously engaged in erasure. Journalist Martin Flanagan wrote that ‘what makes Ned a legend is not that everyone sees him the same – it’s that everyone sees him’.48 The quasi-mythic figure of Ned Kelly is both fundamentally Australian and fundamentally medievalist. The medievalism of Ned Kelly, though, is detached from historical specificity. He takes none of Robin Hood’s Englishness with him. The real Ned Kelly was the twice-imprisoned son of a convict. He was arrested four times before the age of fifteen. He was known to keep the company of cattle and horse rustlers and to be a rustler himself. He was known to be unquestionably violent, the killer of three policemen, an armed bank robber, and he attempted to derail a train to cause a large-scale massacre at Glenrowan. The historical Ned Kelly was just a man, and as the promotional posters for the film acknowledge, he is dead. But the legend, the medievalist Robin Hood figure created for and by Australia, lives on, the nation’s heroic bushranger. Such is life.

46 Chris Jones, ‘Medievalism in British Poetry’, The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism, ed. Louise D’Arcens (Cambridge, 2016), 14. 47 Louise D’Arcens, ‘“The Last Thing One Might Expect”: The Mediaeval Court at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition’, The La Trobe Journal, 81 (2008), 37. 48 Martin Flanagan, ‘Rebels Who Knew the End Was Coming, But Stood Up Anyway’, The Age, 2013, https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/rebels-who-knew-the-end-wascoming-but-stood-up-anyway-20130329-2gz9t.html [accessed 30 November 2020].

6 ‘The Northland of Old’: The Use and ‘Misuse’ of (Medieval) Iceland Hannah Armstrong

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hen visiting modern Iceland, a tourist need not have any special appreciation or interest in the Middle Ages to notice that it is a country preoccupied by the medieval. From touching down at the airport in Keflavík, where the first-class premier lounge has been named the ‘Saga Lounge’, to their arrival in the country’s capital of Reykjavík, where shop fronts proudly display an assortment of Viking-related products, a visitor is assailed by various medievalisms. If they choose to take part in one of the many guided tours that run from the city, they will no doubt be regaled by stories of the country’s past that emphasize the continuities between the Norse settlement and the modern European nation. Elements such as the closeness of Modern Icelandic and Old Norse-Icelandic, the former of which is often erroneously described by Icelanders and travel writers alike as ‘the language of the Vikings’,1 and the fact that many contemporary Icelanders can trace their ancestry back to the island’s first settlers in the ninth century, are common inclusions for tour guides.2 Indeed, it can sometimes seem that if it is not related to the medieval, then it is not worth knowing. For example (one of many), see: Ragnar Jónasson ‘Can the language of the Vikings fight off the invasion of English?’, The Guardian, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/ oct/17/viking-language-invasion-english-iceland-icelandic [accessed 13 December 2021]. For an in-depth discussion of Modern Icelandic and its development from Old Norse, see: Stefan Karlsson, The Icelandic Language, trans. Rory McTurk (Exeter, 2004). 2 This is in part due to the eleventh-century text, Íslendingabók (Book of the Icelanders), which provides an unusually detailed account of the names and genealogies of Iceland’s early settlers. An online database of the same name has attempted to compile a complete genealogy of all modern Icelanders and now claims to have records for 95 per cent of the Icelandic population born after 1703. This website is accessible for all those with an Icelandic national identity number and currently has 241,000 registered users – two-thirds of the country’s population. The site enables many Icelanders to trace their ancestry all the way to the island’s settlement. 1

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For anyone interested in medievalisms, then, Iceland is a valuable case study. Due to its geographical isolation, caught as it is in the North Atlantic between Europe and North America, its settlement towards the end of the first millennium is deliberately broadcast as being far more definite than other countries that might be regarded as having their foundations in the medieval past. It is a medieval origin story apparently not obscured by the mists of time, but seemingly well documented through the Íslendingabók.3 Although it is far beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a definitive description of Iceland’s relationship with its medieval past, it is hoped that it will serve as an introduction to the country’s national medievalisms, the transnational medievalisms that have been projected upon it, and the ideological debates they provoke. Just as the island geographically straddles the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, so too does Iceland currently straddle the two opposing diodes of international medievalism, engaging in both nationalistic discourses (‘who are we and how did we come to be here?’) and being commercially beholden to foreigners with, as Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul put it, ‘[an interest in] someone else’s medieval past’.4 Both have a significant cultural impact, yet these two modes of medievalism are, at present, growing ever further apart. At a time in which we are perhaps more aware than ever before of the physical and political impact of medievalisms when used by white supremacist groups, a country that both understands itself as originating in Norse culture, and that many foreigners perceive still to be ‘Viking’ in some respects, demands our careful thought and attention.5 This chapter will attempt to prompt such a conversation whilst charting the rise in British interest in Icelandic medievalisms, moving from the Victorians who regarded the distant island as a kind of Avalon, a place in which medieval legends lived forever, to the more modern visitors to the country, whose interest in Iceland’s medievalisms are far more decoupled from any kind of historical specificity.6 Whilst the chapter does not follow the reception of any particular work or singular idea, it hopes to prompt consideration of what is at stake when even the landscape of a country comes to be regarded as medieval.

See n. 2 above. For a critical edition, see Íslendingabók – Kristni Saga: The Book of The Icelanders – The Story of The Conversion, trans. Siân Grønlie (London, 2006). 4 Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul, ‘The Idea of “the Middle Ages” Outside Europe’, in Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World, ed. Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul (Baltimore, 2009), 21. 5 This chapter was completed shortly after the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, in which neo-Nazis employing various medievalisms attempted to overturn the 2020 Presidential Election. For more on their use of Norse medievalisms, see Richard Fahey, ‘Marauders in the US Capitol: Alt-right Viking Wannabes & Weaponized Medievalism’, University of Notre Dame: Medieval Studies Research Blog, 2021, https://sites.nd.edu/ manuscript-studies/2021/01/15/marauders-in-the-capitol-alt-right-viking-wannabesweaponized-medievalism-in-american-white-nationalism [accessed 15 April 2021]. 6 This chapter focuses largely on British and anglophone responses to Iceland, but much could equally be written on its reception in regions such as Germany or Scandinavia. 3

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Changing Perceptions: From ‘Of Yseland to wryte is lytill need’ to ‘Why we go there’ Iceland is simultaneously recognizable as European whilst also being marketable as strange and Other. This is a significant element of its appeal to Western tourists.7 When depicted in foreign media, Iceland and Icelanders are frequently presented as being kitsch, parochial, or otherwise more intimately connected with history and folklore than other European populations; the country often features in the novelty sections of news outlets with stories about roads being rerouted to avoid upsetting the Huldufólk (‘hidden people’ or elves).8 The anthropologist Kristinn Schram has described this phenomenon, which he calls ‘the exoticising of the inhabitants of the North’, in his study of Icelanders and Icelandic identity abroad, labelling it ‘borealism’.9 Schram’s term is derived from the Latin borealis (meaning ‘north’) and Edward Said’s theory of orientalism (that is, the critical study of Western portrayals of Middle Eastern and Asian cultures).10 Borealism, as described by Schram, is not a recent development but one that encompasses the wide range of Othering responses to Icelanders across the centuries. Iceland, and the North more broadly, have been imagined, both now and in the past, in numerous and frequently contradictory ways. The North, as Peter Davidson wrote, can be ‘a place of darkness and dearth, the seat of evil. Or, conversely … a place of austere felicity where virtuous people live behind the north wind and are happy.’11 One such contradiction is the simultaneous representation of Scandinavian men as embodying traditional masculine norms, sometimes going so far as to be labelled ‘Vikings’, and the high regard in which Scandinavian countries are held as supposed bastions of gender equality. In contrast to the people and cultures that all too often experience the detrimental impact of Western orientalism, for Iceland borealism has proven to be an economic boon – in particular, given international fascination with the country’s Norse (often cited as ‘Viking’) roots. The publicity events that were hosted by the Icelandic bank Glitnir prior to the 2008 financial crash are a prime example of the exploitation of foreign interest in Norse medievalisms. During such events, the traditional Icelandic midwinter festival, þorrablót, was transformed into a parodic and self-effacing affair to attract foreign investors. Invitations to the 2007 þorrablót read: Feeling horny? No wonder! The time to grab your shovel, dig up last year’s flotsam and roadkill and set about eating it with a narrow selection of Icelandic firewater is upon us again! So, grab your beard/braid your hair (as appropriate) and glimpse Valhalla at Glitnir’s 7th London Thorrablot Party on 28th February 2007. On offer will be all the usual ambrosian delights of Viking cuisine, including esoteric parts Karen Oslund, Iceland Imagined (Seattle, 2011). Such perceptions were recently distilled in, of all places, Netflix’s 2020 comedy, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (dir. David Dobkin), which included numerous tongue-in-cheek references to Vikings, elves, and the problems of finding a partner on an island with a tiny population. 9 Kristinn Schram, ‘Banking on Borealism: Eating, Smelling and Performing the North’ in Iceland and Images of the North, ed. Sumarlidi Isleifsson (Quebec, 2011), 305–28. 10 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978). 11 Peter Davidson, The Idea of North (London, 2005), 21. 7

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of sheep, accompanied with some innovative intoxicating liquids from the frozen North. We are delighted to invite new friends, and old, to a party whose popularity over the years has depended on the guests’ inability to remember what the food was like the previous year. See you there!12

This invitation is a veritable bingo card of Icelandic stereotypes: the freezing cold, unusual food, and, naturally, Vikings. What is particularly important to note, though, is the implication of continuity between Iceland’s medieval past and its modern present and people. However, this active identifying of the modern nation with its Norse past was not entirely for the benefit of overseas visitors and investors. Prior to the financial crash (known in Icelandic as The Hrunið, ‘The Crash’, or kreppa, ‘crisis, tightening’), the language used by Icelanders to describe the seeming success of Icelandic banking and investment frequently invoked forms of Norse medievalism. The businessmen who bought up foreign companies were described as ‘Útrásarvíkingur’ or ‘outvasion Vikings’, and deliberate comparisons were drawn between this new breed of risk-taking and thrill-seeking investors and the hypermasculine image of Iceland’s first settlers.13 In 2005, in a now infamous speech at the Walbrook Club in London, then President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson explained that one of the core reasons for the country’s business success was the heritage of discovery and exploration, fostered by the medieval Viking sagas that have been told and retold to every Icelandic child. This is a tradition that gives honour to those who venture into unknown lands, who dare to journey to foreign fields, interpreting modern business ventures as an extension of the Viking spirit, applauding the successful entrepreneurs as heirs of this proud tradition.14

The ready identification of Iceland’s medieval past as a source of pride and instruction is a relatively recent phenomenon, and one that arose from Iceland’s independence movement as it strove to split from the Kingdom of Denmark, something it only achieved in 1944.15 As Icelanders actively sought a sense of collective national identity, they found it in an appreciation for the Icelandic language (which, due to the island’s relative isolation, is closer to Old Norse than other contemporary Nordic languages) and in the belief of a Golden Age, prior to the island’s subjugation by its larger Nordic neighbours, when the country was run as a kind of proto-democracy. According to historian Sigríður Matthíasdóttir, this supposed Golden Age during Quoted in Schram, ‘Banking on Borealism’, 15. For an account of the lead up to, and consequences of, the financial crash in Iceland, see Eirikur Bergmann, Iceland and the International Financial Crisis: Boom, Bust and Recovery (Basingstoke, 2014), 6-7. 14 Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, ‘How to Succeed in Modern Business: Lessons from the Icelandic Voyage’, The Reykjavík Grapevine, 2008, https://grapevine.is/mag/ articles/2008/10/10/how-to-succeed-in-modern-business-olafur-ragnar-grimsson-at-thewalbrook-club [accessed 15 April 2021]. 15 For an account of Iceland’s independence movement, see: Anna Agnarsdóttir, ‘Iceland: The Emergence of the Nation State’, in The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, ed. E.I. Kouri and Jens E. Olesen (Cambridge, 2016), II, 992–1008. 12 13

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the Icelandic commonwealth became ‘the primary model for the modern nation state’.16 This imagined past was, as Katla Kjartansdóttir summarizes it, ‘the age of the commonwealth, the age before foreign rule, and thus “the age before everything went wrong”’.17 As with so many instances of medievalisms fuelled by nationalism, at its heart was the belief that if the nation could return to the values of its forebears, then it could overcome the current challenges it faced. Whilst the emphasis amongst modern Icelanders on their Norse history is to some extent ironic and knowing, such an active and widely embraced interest in national medievalisms has over the years provided a rich ground on which overseas interest could be sown.18 As Old Northernism,19 which sought a so-called ‘Germanic’ medieval foundation for Northern European culture as opposed to a Mediterranean classical one, took hold in countries such as Britain and Germany, Icelanders sought to levy international interest in their past to address their contemporary concerns.20 For example, following the 1875 eruption of the Askja volcano, the Cambridge-based Icelandic scholar, Eiríkur Magnússon (1833–1913), gave a number of lectures through which he hoped to raise awareness and relief funds for his countrymen back home.21 To achieve this, he heavily flattered the crowd, claiming that the ‘wealthiest and most civilised’ of Iceland’s early settlers came from England, and that they had brought with them hallmarks of their culture, such as the Beowulf story.22 Such claims of hereditary and cultural kinship were intended to elicit sympathy but also to overcome centuries-old stereotypes of Iceland as somewhere only of interest for extracting resources. The English attitude to Iceland prior to the eighteenth century is perhaps best summarized in the fifteenth-century Middle English verse treatise the Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, in which it is noted that ‘Of Yseland to wryte is lytill need / Save of Stokfische.’23 By propagating the idea of a shared medieval past, nineteenth-century Sigríður Matthíasdóttir, Hinn sanni Íslendingur. þjóðerni, kyngervi og vald á Íslandi 1900–1930 (Reykjavík, 2004), 372. Quoted and translated in Katla Kjartansdóttir, ‘The New Viking Wave: Cultural Heritage and Capitalism’, in Iceland and Images of the North, ed. Sumarlidi Isleifsson (Quebec, 2011), 461–80. 17 Katla Kjartansdóttir, ‘The New Viking Wave’, 464. 18 For a discussion of ‘ironic … identities’, see: Schram, ‘Banking on Borealism’, 305–28. 19 A term coined by Andrew Wawn in The Vikings and the Victorians (Cambridge, 2000). 20 The notion that a united ‘Germanic’ cultural identity existed during late antiquity and the early medieval period is a tenacious one, with frequent references in both public and scholarly publications. However, the usefulness and even the accuracy of this term is now under question. For an in-depth discussion of the validity of the label, as well as its function since the early modern period as a tool for ethnic categorization (and even segregation), see: Interrogating the ‘Germanic’, ed. Matthias Friedrich and James M. Harland (Berlin, 2021). 21 For a deeper discussion of the event, and of Victorian interest in Iceland and Vikings more broadly, see Wawn, The Vikings and the Victorians, 11–12. 22 Ibid., 12. 23 George Frederic Warner, ed., The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye: A Poem on the Use of Sea-Power, 1436 (Oxford, 1926), 41. For an overview of Anglo-Icelandic relations, and the presence of indentured Icelanders in England, see: Baldur Þórhallsson and Þorsteinn Kristinsson, ‘Iceland’s External Affairs from 1400 to the Reformation: Anglo-German Economic and Social Shelter in a Danish Political Vacuum’, Icelandic Review of Politics and Administration, 9/1 (2013), 113–37; Peter Fleming, ‘Icelanders in England in the Fifteenth Century’, in Resident Aliens in Later Medieval England, ed. Mark Ormrod, Nicola McDonald, and Craig Taylor (Turnhout, 2017), 77–88. 16

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Icelanders hoped to raise international interest as well as capital – not so unlike their twenty-first-century banking descendants – and in doing so, they laid the ground for those British transnational medievalisms that sought to reconnect with what they understood as their ‘Germanic’ cousins.24 Thanks to the popularity of Old Northernism during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Iceland was propelled to the fore as a place in which, as one Icelandic writer at the time put it, ‘the northmen races can read their past’.25 Encouraged by claims of historical and cultural kinship between the two islands, many Britons began to look to Iceland and its Old Norse history to uncover their own origins. In tales of daring Viking sea raids, they saw the prelude for Britain’s own later imperialism and naval dominance.26 The primary route by which these new Norse enthusiasts interacted with Iceland’s past was through its medieval literature, in particular its sagas. Scholarly interest in Old Norse language and literature began with texts such as George Hickes’ (1642– 1715) Thesaurus Linguarum Septentrionalium (1703–1705), and Bishop Thomas Percy’s (1729–1811) Five Pieces of Runic Poetry (1763), the latter of which included both Icelandic texts and English translations. Initially, the British appetite was for poetry and mythology, and even the first saga translated into English, Friðþjófs saga hins frækna (George Stephens, 1839) was a fornaldarsögur, a romantic saga genre set within an imagined legendary past. It was not until twenty years later that a complete English translation of Brennu-Njáls saga (George Webbe Dasent, 1861) appeared, and with it the Victorians’ introduction to the Íslendingasögur (the Sagas of Icelanders). Unlike fornaldarsögur, these sagas were not set in the mythical past but claimed to tell, to varying degrees, real histories of early Icelanders. These claims appeared to be verifiable: many of the place names referenced were still identifiable during the Victorian period, as they are today. Despite their apparent veracity, however, the Family Sagas, as they are sometimes known, are themselves the product of later medieval Icelanders’ search for national origins – but for their Victorian readers, they were like a window into a lost world. That these hugely popular tales were rooted in a still-identifiable landscape was a source of fascination for British saga readers.27 For those with the money and the stomach to make the rough sea crossing, it was possible not only to read about the heroic deeds of Gunnar of Hlíðarendi but to stand in the very valley that he famously declared to be too

24 One example of this claim of kinship between Britain and Germany (and Northern Europe more broadly) is Thomas Cartwright’s children’s book, Sigurd the Dragon Slayer: A Twice Told Tale. When introducing his second telling of the Sigurd/Siegfried story, Cartwright wrote: ‘[I]t is a fine old yarn, worthy of being kept alive, for all time, by the children of the North. This is certainly the feeling of our cousins the Germans, in whose veins, as in ours, runs the blood of the Vikings’; Thomas Cartwright, Sigurd the Dragon Slayer: A Twice Told Tale, 2nd edn (New York, 1908), 57. My sincere thanks to Mary Boyle for alerting me to this example and Cartwright’s work. 25 Jón Stefánsson (1907), 294. Cited in Wawn, The Vikings and the Victorians, 283 (Wawn does not give a title here, but notes in the 2002 paperback edition, xii, that the omitted source is Stefánsson’s Iceland: Its History and Inhabitants (Washington, DC, 1907)). 26 Wawn, The Vikings and the Victorians, 63. 27 Ibid., 142.

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beautiful to leave when he was sentenced to outlawry. Such visitors included some of the Victorian era’s most famous writers and artists, most notably William Morris, as well as the likes of W.G. Collingwood (1854–1932), the latter of whom published a book in collaboration with Icelandic scholar Jón Stefánsson, titled A Pilgrimage to the Saga-Steads of Iceland, in which he documented their travels both in prose and via sketches he made of the sites they visited. Collingwood’s choice of the term ‘pilgrimage’ is highly evocative, suggesting as it does that he hoped in some way to commune with the sites and their long-gone medieval residents. Tellingly, in the introduction to the book, Collingwood wrote that ‘we make no attempt to describe modern Iceland’ and that ‘though not unattended with their pains and pleasures, [our travels] were hardly exciting enough to make a book about’.29 It is clear that, for Collingwood at least, modern Iceland itself held little allure, but through its remaining ‘saga steads’ he hoped to be brought closer in some way to the medieval past that so enthralled him. Another Victorian who documented their experiences of Iceland was writer and traveller Elizabeth Jane Oswald (1830–1905) in her book By Fell and Fjord; Or Scenes and Studies in Iceland.30 The preface begins: 28

This little book is a record of travels in Iceland, of which the pleasure was greatly enhanced by the saga-lore previously acquired, and the legends gathered by the wayside. I am not aware that any other book about Iceland has taken the special line that I have attempted to follow in mine – the connection of the land with the sagas.31

If this opening was not explicit enough, Oswald helpfully titled her opening chapter ‘Why We Go There’, professing that ‘[i]t was the literature that brought me – the vivid Sagas which set the men and women of the past before us as if we had known them ourselves’.32 William Morris similarly addressed the question of why travellers such as himself made the difficult journey in his poem ‘Iceland First Seen’, in which he writes: Why do we long to wend forth through the length and breadth of a land, Dreadful with grinding of ice, and record of scarce hidden fire, But that there ’mid the grey grassy dales sore scarred by the ruining streams Lives the tale of the Northland of old and the undying glory of dreams.33 28 As the artist W.G. Collingwood did, as recounted in his book: W.G. Collingwood and Jón Stefánsson, A Pilgrimage to the Saga-Steads of Iceland (Ulverston, 1899), 30. 29 Collingwood and Stefánsson, A Pilgrimage, 1. 30 For a chapter dedicated to her writings on Iceland, see: Dimitrios Kassis, Representations of the North in Victorian Travel Literature (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2015), 205–34. 31 Elizabeth Jane Oswald, By Fell and Fjord; Or Scenes and Studies in Iceland (Edinburgh, 1882), v. 32 Oswald, By Fell and Fjord, 1. 33 William Morris, ‘Iceland First Seen’, Poems by the Way (London, 1892), 37–40.

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Morris’ choice of language emphasizes that this northern medieval dream is a living one, one that, for those who are brave enough to undertake the journey, is physically accessible. For Victorian saga lovers such as Collingwood, Oswald, and Morris, travelling to Iceland involved not just journeying to another geographical location but to a different, and much older, temporality – one in which the sagas and their heroes were very much still present.34 To paraphrase Svetlana Boym, these Victorian travellers wished to visit time like space.35 While many in nineteenth-century Britain turned to Romantic medievalisms within their own country – indeed, Matthew Townend has convincingly argued for the importance of regionalism within Victorian medievalisms – part of the allure for visitors to Iceland was the fact that it had to be journeyed to and, even once there, travel had to continue largely on foot or horse.36 The linguistic preservation, including that of place names, which we have already observed, was matched, in part due to a lack of industrialization, by the relatively unchanged landscape that so appealed to travellers like Morris. This was a medievalism defined by its remoteness, both geographically and (apparently) temporally. And as we shall now see, these medievalisms are still a significant draw for contemporary travellers, even if the stories they hope to connect with are based in modern film and television franchises rather than saga literature. Iceland as Medievalized Landscape on Screen Over the past two decades, Iceland has risen to prominence as a prime filming location, particularly for sci-fi and neomedieval television shows and films: the list includes Beowulf and Grendel (2005), Stardust (2007), Thor (2013), The Martian (2015), Star Wars (2015–2019), and most famously, HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011– 2019). That the country is a favourite amongst cinematographers and directors should be no surprise. With its dramatic and memorable landscapes, including glaciers and black sand beaches, Iceland has proven very useful for filmmakers wishing to create something striking and – as we shall see – ‘medieval’. In both its original incarnation as a series of novels, A Song of Ice and Fire (1996– present), and in its subsequent HBO TV adaptation, Game of Thrones has famously marketed itself as ‘authentic’, purporting to represent a ‘real’ Middle Ages, warts and all – most controversially when defending its numerous depictions of sexual assault on women.37 Its author, George R.R. Martin, confessed in a 2011 interview that, whilst he was a great admirer of the work of J R.R. Tolkien, he was not a fan of the ‘Disneyland Middle Ages’ that he alleges features in the work of Tolkien and his 34 Other notable travellers to Iceland who wrote about their experiences include Sabine Baring-Gould, Iceland: Its Scenes and Sagas (London, 1863), and Frederick Metcalfe, The Oxonian in Iceland; or, Notes of Travel in that Island in the Summer of 1860, with Glances at Icelandic Folk-Lore and Sagas (London, 1861). 35 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, 2001), xv. 36 Matthew Townend, ‘Victorian Medievalisms’, The Oxford Handbook to Victorian Poetry, ed. Matthew Bevis (Oxford, 2013), 166–83. 37 Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun, ‘Representation of Rape in George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” and Robin Hobb’s “Liveship Traders”’, Extrapolation, 60/1 (2019), 1–22.

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imitators. Martin and his many readers instead prefer a grimmer view of the medieval period, one claiming to be ‘root[ed] in reality’, in which life is unrelentingly bleak and tough.38 In his seminal essay, ‘Dreaming of the Middle Ages’, Umberto Eco termed this a ‘Barbaric Age’ medievalism.39 Such medievalisms, according to Eco, are ‘Dark par excellence’ and focus on a conception of a Middle Ages that was dominated by violence and bloodshed.40 When adapting Martin’s bestselling novels, Game of Thrones’ showrunners found in Iceland an ideal filming location, one that could be used to provide viewers with the kind of Middle Ages they expected to see on screen. Iceland’s vast lava fields and bare mountainsides offered an unfamiliar and evocative terrain on to which Martin’s sprawling world could be projected, often with little need for extensive post-production editing. The by-products of this are locations that are easily identifiable and often reachable by viewers who visit the country, which they do in significant numbers. Like their Victorian forebears, fans of Game of Thrones travel great distances to visit the locations of their favourite stories. A cursory search online for related tours returns tens of thousands of results. Depending on a fan’s dedication and commitment, such tours can vary in length from day trips from Reykjavík to five-day excursions that crisscross the country. Unlike saga visitors such as William Morris, however, these tourists are not attempting to find a geographical space in which they can experience an earlier temporality but rather to visit the closest approximation to a place that has never really existed. The urge to visit locations connected to fictional characters is by no means new: admirers of the fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes have visited his address of 221b Baker Street for well over a century.41 In his work into the phenomenon of TV detective tours (such as the Inspector Morse-themed walks around Oxford), Stijn Reijnders has coined the term ‘places of the imagination’ to describe locations that become so closely associated with a fictional world that tourists travel specifically to see them. Although visitors are motivated by a wide array of reasons, Reijnders argues that in taking part in these tours they all ‘construct and subsequently cross a symbolic boundary between an “imagined” and a “real” world’.42 The same is true for much of international popular medievalism. For Game of Thrones fans, for instance, Iceland is a discrete space in which they can explore and experience much of the medieval-ness of the show, and then definitively leave it behind when they journey home. Reijnders’ ‘symbolic boundary’ is made physical in the national borders that must be crossed to access the place that has become the stand in for the fantasy world they wish to glimpse.

38 ‘John Hodgman Interviews George R.R. Martin’, The Sound of Young America, 2011, https://www.pri.org/stories/2011-09-21/john-hodgman-interviews-george-rr-martin [accessed 15 April 2021]. 39 Umberto Eco, ‘Dreaming of the Middle Ages’, Travels in Hyperreality (1967), trans. William Weaver (London, 1986), 69. 40 Ibid. 41 Stijn Reijnders, Places of the Imagination: Media, Tourism, Culture (Farnham, 2011), 3. 42 Stijn Reijnders. ‘Places of the Imagination: An Ethnography of the TV Detective Tour’, Cultural Geographies, 17/1 (2010), 48.

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How, though, is this medieval authenticity achieved when, unlike saga readers travelling to find sites linked to the early Norse settlement, there is no actual historical referent?43 One of the primary routes by which this is accomplished is through the marrying of local heritage with the show’s neomedieval fantasy. As Reijnders notes, when local businesses and institutions ‘[give] themselves a place in the story’, they can both capitalize on the source material’s commercial success and lend authenticity to the fictional world, which in turn generates more tourist interest.44 For a country such as Iceland, with its history of consciously using the medieval past to achieve its modern ends, it is undeniably beneficial to have had a blockbuster neomedieval franchise filmed on location there. Not only does that attract tourists, whose spending has been an essential part in the country’s recovery from the 2008 financial crash, but tourists with an interest in media such as Game of Thrones are also more likely to patronize tourist sites with noted Viking connections. This has been exploited for a wide array of products aimed at tourists, from tours such as ‘Iceland – Beyond the Wall’, which promises that you will ‘learn about how the Free Folk, like the ancient Vikings, lived and survived in their harsh environment’,45 to the liberal mixing of merchandise, so that Game of Thrones memorabilia is sold amongst cartoonishly hypermasculine figurines of Vikings and everyday goods (such as tea and salt) that have been rebranded as Viking. A T-shirt that bears the Game of Thrones moniker ‘King in the North’ can happily be sold alongside another that depicts a Viking in a horned helmet.46 What makes such medievalist mixing viable is what Laurie Finke and Susan Aronstein term the chain of meaning, which underpins all interpretations of heritage sites. Such sites are inherently symbols, since the thing they signify, in this case the Norse past, is absent and must be represented or mediated to modern viewers by means of signs or recreations.47 Norse Iceland must necessarily be interacted with through a substitution that then ‘[lets] loose what might best be described as a chain of meanings whose movements cannot be fixed or calculated in advance or controlled, even by so powerful an authority as authenticity’.48 There is, therefore, a symbiotic relationship between neomedieval media, such as Game Andrew B.R. Elliott has described this phenomenon, in which the feelings evoked by the medieval outweigh the need for an evidenced historical source, as ‘banal medievalism’: Elliott, Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the TwentyFirst Century (Cambridge, 2017), 12. 44 Reijnders, Places of the Imagination, 18. 45 ‘Game of Thrones – Iceland: Beyond the Wall’, major travel, 2021, https://www.major. travel/tour-detail.php?id=3927 [accessed 15 April 2021]. 46 The image of the horn-helmeted Viking was invented by costume designer Carl Emil Doepler for the 1876 debut performance of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. Since then, the horned helmet has gone on to become the universal shorthand symbol for all things Viking, despite there being no archaeological or historical evidence of their ever having been worn. For a fuller history of this phenomenon, see Roberta Frank, ‘The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet’, International Scandinavian and Medieval Studies in Memory of Gerd Wolfgang Weber, ed. M. Dallapiazza (Champaign, 2001), 199–208. 47 Laurie Finke and Susan Aronstein, ‘Conjuring the Ghosts of Camelot: Tintagel and the Medievalism of Heritage Tourism’ in Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture, ed. Gail Ashton (London, 2015), 202. 48 Ibid. 43

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of Thrones, and Iceland as a country. For Iceland, being a ‘place of the imagination’ and an example of transnational medievalism is an economic advantage, and one that many businesses are all too happy to embrace. Conversely, for HBO, being associated with a form of medievalism that has its roots in an actual medieval past provides a new veneer of authenticity that allows them to deflect critiques of their representation of race and gender. Many fans of the show who visit shoot locations in Iceland will come away with their suspicions confirmed that the medieval period, whenever and whatever that might be, was indeed a barbaric age. But why is Iceland such an appealing place for filmmakers? Practicalities such as generous government subsidies and long bright summer nights that allow for longer filming schedules cannot be ignored,49 yet it is still striking how prevalent it is as a filming location in neomedieval media. One particularly plausible reason is that onscreen the landscape itself becomes a form of medievalism, one that conforms to the audience’s expectations of what a medieval place ought to look like. In their study of Western European medieval landscapes, John Howe and Michael Wolfe observe that contemporary perceptions of medieval ecology typically suppose that the generalized medieval landscape was a terrain largely uncultivated by humans. In reality, it was an environment that had been ‘thickly inhabited for millennia, a place usually characterized by carefully managed arable pastureland, and forest’.50 What might appear to a contemporary viewer as an untamed wilderness would, to a medieval observer, be a clearly carefully managed resource. The modern public’s perception of medieval landscapes is largely shaped through their consumption of neomedieval media, which in turn becomes self-perpetuating. As Valerie Johnson, who has coined the term ‘ecomedievalism’ to describe this phenomenon, argues, ‘since producers are themselves audiences, influenced by and referencing other productions, the desire for forests becomes a never-ending cycle … The greenwood becomes constitutive of itself, and the human networks that create and maintain the greenwood are blurred and erased.’51 Just as Eco suggested that there were ten little Middle Ages, so too can we describe ecomedievalism as having different facets. Some are utopian, embracing the greenwood of Robin Hood’s Merry Men and pastoral idylls, whilst others are more akin to Eco’s barbaric medievalism. The latter is the medievalism embodied by the Icelandic landscape. This is evident in remarks such as those of HBO’s vice-president of production, Janet Graham Borba, who said that ‘[f]or the Far Northern locations of Game of Thrones, we wanted something shatteringly beautiful, barren and brutal. In Iceland, we found all of that.’52 ‘Barren and brutal’ certainly fits within the conception of Eco’s barbaric medievalism, as does Wolfe and Howe’s adjective of choice, ‘primordial’.

Film in Iceland, n.d., https://www.filminiceland.com [accessed 15 April 2021]. John Howe and Michael Wolfe, ‘Introduction’, Inventing Medieval Landscapes: Senses of Place in Western Europe, ed. John Howe and Michael Wolfe (Gainesville, 2002), 2. 51 Valerie Johnson, ‘Ecomedievalism: Applying Ecotheory to Medievalism and Neomedievalism’, Studies in Medievalism, 24 (2015), 34. 52 Temperatures, Film in Iceland, 2016 (archived from the original), https://web.archive. org/web/20160910000428/http://www.filminiceland.com/fantastic-light/temperatures [accessed 15 April 2021]. 49 50

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The extent to which these values are projected on to the landscape and the power that they wield to convey ideas to an audience is perhaps best demonstrated by an example of a film shot in Iceland that stretches its medievalism credentials into the fantastical. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016, dir. Gareth Edwards) is a stand-alone film within the Star Wars series – a franchise that is famously saturated with medievalisms. It is an imaginary universe filled with princesses and questing knights, and a quasi-chivalric order designed to harness the power of advanced weaponry for the protection of the masses.53 It is fitting, therefore, that Rogue One’s opening scenes were filmed in Iceland and make use of the famous black sand beach, Reynisfjara, on Iceland’s south coast. Although Game of Thrones and Rogue One embody two very different forms of neomedievalism, they both clearly employ the ‘barren and brutal’ aspects of Iceland’s ecology to act as physical signifiers of viewers’ assumptions about the barbaric nature of the medieval. Furthermore, neither franchise is rooted in a specific time or place within a historically defined medieval period. However, rather than straining the audience’s credulity, this lack of historical specificity only strengthens the perceived links between Iceland and a temporally untethered ‘medieval’.54 The perceived Otherness of Iceland and its landscapes therefore enhances the other-worldliness, and indeed the medieval-ness, of the narratives on screen. The supposed alterity of Iceland’s landscape should not, however, be thought of as a purely modern phenomenon. In Morris’s poem, ‘Iceland First Seen’, for instance, a great deal of emphasis is placed on the bleak panorama of ‘grey grassy dales sore scarred by … ruining streams’ as being the harsh but noble home of the ‘tale of the Northland of old’.55 The uses of the Icelandic landscape on screen become part of the feedback loop of a transnational medievalism that designates the country as being both geographically and temporally distant; audiences approach media with preconceptions about the medieval, which are learned in turn from previous encounters with medievalisms; their perceptions are confirmed on screen; and if they should visit Iceland, they will discover that many of these sites do indeed have a medieval past, confirming for them that bleak, barren, and sparsely populated ecologies are indeed signifiers of the medieval. The primary motivation to visit Iceland may have changed since the days of Collingwood, Morris, and Oswald, but the desire to travel from the mundane and everyday into a space that embodies the visitor’s expectations of the medieval still prevails.

Previous scholars of medievalisms in Star Wars include Umberto Eco, who scornfully referred to it, and other neomedieval pop culture productions, as ‘psuedo-medieval pulp …, midway between Nazi nostalgia and occultism’: Eco, ‘Dreaming of the Middle Ages’, 62. 54 Andrew Elliott has argued that such medievalisms are at their most powerful ‘precisely when there is no expertise or historical knowledge required to decode it’; Elliott, Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media, 23. 55 Neither is it an exclusively transnational medievalism, as demonstrated by Emily Lethbridge, who has written on the use of the Icelandic landscape in sagas as a medium for the transmission of narratives: Emily Lethbridge, ‘The Icelandic Sagas and Saga Landscapes: Writing, Reading and Retelling Íslendingasögur Narratives’, Gripla, 27 (2016), 52. 53

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The ‘Misuse’ of Medieval Iceland As originally conceived, this chapter intended also to shine a light on the ‘misuse’ of Icelandic and Norse medievalisms. However, during its long gestation, debate within medieval studies, particularly regarding the growing subfield of the ‘Global Middle Ages’ and the importance of decolonizing the academy, has led to a growing awareness that racists and far-right groups do not merely misappropriate an otherwise politically neutral discipline but that the idea of the medieval itself has its foundations in political whiteness and colonialism.56 Within Viking studies and Norse medievalism, this has the additional weight of having largely been founded as part of Scandinavian nationalist independence movements that included racial paradigms.57 When white terrorists, such as those who stormed the US Capitol in January 2021 or who marched in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, employ Norse medievalisms, it is not sufficient to see them as bad eggs who can be either repudiated or re-educated as to the more global reality of the Viking Age.58 Rather, it is necessary to recognize, as Sierra Lomuto writes, that invocations of the medieval have and continue to be used as ‘a node of colonialist ideology’.59 The medieval in Iceland has been used, as explored in this chapter, to meet the expectations of twenty-first-century viewers of neomedievalism – affirming their belief in a Middle Ages that was defined by its bleakness and violence. This emphasis on what Amy Kaufman has called ‘muscular medievalism’,60 a focus on hypermasculine warrior motifs and a belief in the importance of brute strength, attracts far-right groups including many who subscribe to neopagan or ‘Heathen’ views.61 White supremacists see in Iceland a ‘white homeland’, somewhere settled by a ‘Germanic race’, whose isolation has preserved its culture, language, and – as they see it – racial purity. Such interpretations are only strengthened by scholarly rhetoric that emphasizes the supposedly bloodless settlement of the island in 874. Prior to the Norse settlement of the island, there is no archaeological evidence for its occupation – although some historiography suggests that it may have been previously discovered by Irish monks.62 Daniel Remein has argued that there is ‘a curiously celebratory tone’ in much archaeological and historiographical writing about the settlement of Iceland, a tenor that ‘rings softly with a kind of European and anthropocentric

56 The concept of a Global Middle Ages has been spearheaded and brought to prominence by Geraldine Heng. See Heng, ‘The Global Middle Ages: An Experiment in Collaborative Humanities, or Imagining the World, 500–1500 C.E.’, English Language Notes, 47/1 (2009), 234–53. 57 See Fredrik Svanberg, Decolonizing the Viking Age (Stockholm, 2003). 58 For an analysis of medievalisms employed by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, see WanChuan Kao, ‘Identitarian Politics, Precarious Sovereignty’, postmedieval, 11/4 (2020), 371–83. 59 Sierra Lomuto, ‘Becoming Postmedieval: The Stakes of the Global Middle Ages’, postmedieval, 11/4 (2020), 503–12. 60 Amy Kaufman, ‘Muscular Medievalism’, The Year’s Work in Medievalism, 31 (2016). 61 For an exploration of neopaganism, its ties to white supremacy and Norse medievalisms, see Shannon Weber, ‘White Supremacy’s Old Gods: The Far Right and Neopaganism’, Political Research Associates, 2018, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2018/02/01/white-supremacysold-gods-the-far-right-and-neopaganism [accessed 15 April 2021]. 62 Grønlie, Íslendingabók, 4.

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manifest destiny’.63 For white supremacists, then, Iceland is a place defined by its settlement by the Norse; until their arrival, it was ‘an empty land, yearning for human colonists’, and ever since, one that is indelibly marked by their occupation.64 Troublingly, the holders of such views find apparent justification for them in contemporary Icelandic politics. As noted by Eirikur Bergmann, all of Iceland’s national parties, whether on the left or the right, hold nationalist views to varying degrees. This is due to the country’s medieval origin myth and relatively recent independence; not only is the country politically split along the left–right axis but also an internationalist–isolationist one.65 In recent years, this has manifested in a national debate centred on Iceland’s Muslim community, who make up only around 0.12 per cent of the population, as well as increased anti-immigration rhetoric.66 For white supremacists, such discussions, including statements such as those by the vice-chairman of the Icelandic Liberal Party (Frjálslyndi flokkurinn), who declared it a ‘black day in the history of the nation’ when citizens of Eastern European EU countries gained the right to work in Iceland,67 are not only a dog whistle for political isolationism, but also a racial one. There is, of course, a contradiction in Iceland’s own pride in its medieval origins when its politicians deride the supposed ‘pre-modern-ness’ of Muslim-majority countries. As Alaric Hall has noted in his study of post-financial crash Icelandic fiction, ‘an interest in Iceland’s medieval literature and folklore is almost always articulated alongside another kind of medievalism: an Orientalist, dystopian medievalism … which labels much of the Islamic world “still medieval”, and abjects it as unable to belong to modernity’.68 This ongoing tension is one that exposes the lie of the supposed authentic medievalism; ultimately, the medieval can mean whatever its user needs it to. Not every visitor to Iceland is interested in its medieval past, but such is the ubiquity of its invocations of the Middle Ages that all will undoubtedly come into contact with it. Thanks to its geographical isolation, for anyone who does not live there or have close connections to the country, it will always occupy a space of marginalization and Otherness, and thereby be a place open to metonymies and symbolic substitution. Modern Iceland emerged from nationalist medievalisms and continues to be shaped by them, but it is also the product of an international tourist gaze that has used the island for its own purposes. Thanks to the advent of modern technology, the interpretation of Iceland’s history and landscape is not confined to those wealthy enough to travel there, but through its role on our screens it can 63 Daniel Remein, ‘“Uninhabited”: Eco-colonial Anxieties in Late Medieval Icelandic Saga’, New Medieval Literatures, 19 (2019), 155. 64 Ibid., 158. 65 Eirikur Bergmann, Nordic Nationalism and Right-Wing Populist Politics: Imperial Relationships and National Sentiments (London, 2017), 109. 66 Kristín Loftsdóttir, ‘Negotiating White Icelandic Identity: Multiculturalism and Colonial Identity Formations’, Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 17/1 (2011), 19. See also Bergmann, Nordic Nationalism, 116–17. 67 Quoted in Bergmann, Nordic Nationalism, 111. 68 Alaric Hall, Útrásarvíkingar! The Literature of the 2008 Icelandic Financial Crisis (Santa Barbara, 2020), 56–57.

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subliminally shape perceptions of what is understood to be authentically medieval all around the world. Tourism to the ‘land of fire and ice’ was Iceland’s lifeline following the financial crash. Looking ahead to the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it remains to be seen whether the country can pull off such an economic miracle again, and what part its Norse heritage might play. But at a time when the far-right is emboldened, it is essential that medieval studies does not simply decry their use of the Norse past but that its practitioners work to expose the power structures and origins of such medievalisms. We cannot call it a ‘misuse’ when such deployments work exactly as they were intended.69

The extremist uses of the Norse past are further explored by Eirnin Jefford Franks in Chapter 11. 69

7 ‘Out of My Country and Myself I Go’: A Discourse of the Troubadour in British and Irish Literature Kayleigh Ferguson

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espite their relatively brief historical existence, the troubadours of medieval France have endured for centuries in the imagination thanks to continued interest from scholars and frequent reinterpretation in both academic studies and fictional renderings. Many readings and characterizations fill in the blanks of missing evidence, either reinventing or entirely glossing over historical and geographical fact. With so little extant detail on the existence and work of the troubadours, this fate may have been inevitable. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British reimaginations of the medieval French troubadour offer a particularly useful prism through which to explore how this came to be the case, alongside its implications for the broader picture of how we understand medieval history. How the troubadours, unique to medieval France, found their way into Romantic literature in Britain and Ireland is no mistake or coincidence; in them, Romantic writers saw something rare and exotic, yet familiar and relatable, and engaged in this medievalism by bringing them out of one context and into another. This is no isolated resurfacing of random medieval texts and artefacts: this is part of the story of the emergence of the disciplines of archaeology and manuscript studies, which awakened medieval historiography, which would beget international scholarship and readership, only further sparking interest for popular writers of all genres. This intentional, though not always fully informed, reimagining of medieval cultures is a typical example of medievalism. There is plenty of scholarship today that recognizes the rose-tinted legacy of this reception tradition of troubadour identity in literature, art, and other media. Take, for instance, Grove Music Online from the Oxford Dictionary of Music’s statement in their entry on troubadours and trouvères: ‘The romantic idea of the troubadour in the nineteenth century is slowly fading before the careful, more realistic appraisal built by scholars over the years. Far from being a carefree vagabond “warbling his

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native woodnotes wild”, the troubadour was characteristically a serious, well-educated and highly sophisticated verse-technician.’1 This is echoed in other pieces of scholarly work, such as those by Elizabeth Fay, John Haines, and Maureen McLane, to name just a few.2 This assertion is a useful starting point, but, as I will demonstrate, it also invites challenge. Often enough, the troubadour has been associated with a similar but distinct figure, the minstrel. The colourful trope of the wandering minstrel – a happy-golucky free-roaming songster – is typically a caricature far from any real historical personage. Further obscurity of the troubadour stems from their similarity to the trouvères, their Northern French predecessors. There is no one time period, circumstance, or group of people responsible for the recurring misperceptions of the troubadours. Every generation has a habit of reinterpreting history for itself. The Enlightenment and Antiquarian movements in the eighteenth century ignited a revived scholarly interest in medieval literature and music in Europe, Britain included, and this carried into the nineteenth century by way of historiography as well as the arts; medieval history was written and rewritten many times over in fictional literature, and medievalism as a phenomenon continues to adapt, flourish, and even pervade modern-day media and academia. The interpretation and reinterpretation of medieval history were not novel or unique to the Enlightenment, nor novel or unique to Romanticism, nor to Britain and Ireland. By its very nature, much of medieval history has been resigned to interpretation regardless of who is reading it or when; wherever there is absence in detail, a reader will naturally fill it in themselves in order to better understand it. This chapter will examine the ways in which the period from roughly 1750 to 1850 curated troubadour medievalism, primarily in a British context, and attempt to find a more linear trajectory from the end of antiquarianism and manuscript readership through to the fictional poetry that followed. Eighteenth-century British medievalism took place within a broader European context. The eighteenth century was a pivotal point in the library world, when libraries frequently and more readily began to move from private, personal collections owned and accessed only by individuals into public institutions. As these institutions gradually became more state-funded than privately owned, they became more accessible to the commoner and lay reader.3 Following the antiquarian trend of collecting rare materials came the later trend of wanting to show them off, taking a lead from the field of archaeology: Herculaneum was unearthed in 1738, prompting John Stevens, Ardis Butterfield, and Theodore Karp, ‘Troubadours, Trouvères’, Grove Music Online, 2001, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.28468 [accessed 10 December 2021]. 2 See Elizabeth Fay, Romantic Medievalism: History and the Romantic Literary Ideal (New York, 2002); Elizabeth Fay, ‘Troubadour’, in Medievalism: Key Critical Terms, ed. Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz (Cambridge, 2017), Chapter 30, cited here from the unpaginated Glassboxx eBook; John Haines, Eight Centuries of Troubadours and Trouvères (Cambridge, 2009); Maureen N. McLane, Balladeering, Minstrelsy, and the Making of British Romantic Poetry (Cambridge, 2011). 3 In this context, ‘public’ means the upper- and middle-class societal elite as well as university students, not the general public. See Karl Schottenloher, Books and the Western World (Jefferson, NC, 1989). 1

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the subsequent excavations that led to the rediscovery of Pompeii, and people who had the scholarly and financial means to do so began collecting what they found. For findings from the Middle Ages, this meant a new stewardship of arguably its most revealing extant artefacts: books and manuscripts.4 In 1713, the Marchese of Verona, Scipione Maffei, came across manuscripts from as early as the sixth century, mostly literary works, in a local cathedral; four years later in Wurzburg, the cathedral dean, Christoph von Hutten, rediscovered the cathedral’s library collection, which also housed early manuscripts. In Britain and Ireland, institutions such as the British Museum and Lambeth Palace in London, Archbishop Marsh’s Library in Dublin, and the Advocates Library in Edinburgh rose to prominence through similar discoveries. The British Museum was founded in 1753 upon the previously private collection of Sir Hans Sloane and, as the name implies, these types of libraries served a double function as museums.5 As such, and despite being public spaces, the stacks were typically closed and circulation kept internal. They did, at least, exhibit items of interest separately from the stacks – this is by no means a recent development. It was commonplace for the rarest and most interesting or unique items to be displayed rather than shelved.6 This, in part, is where select medieval manuscripts come into play. Increased public holdings led to increased interest from scholars and researchers, which perpetuated a cycle of libraries and museums developing their collections further to accommodate growing interest,7 and this was a fundamentally internationalist pursuit. It remains uncertain what was displayed because there is no extant log of eighteenth-century circulation statistics, but there was certainly a connection between this trend in library curation and the publication of medieval historiographies from the second half of the eighteenth century. Manuscripts were being consulted as primary sources – they did circulate but, as mentioned, internally – and while philologists, musicologists, and literary scholars found particular value in many of them, their research outputs often came with additional embellishments or omitted original nuances. The practice of forbidding readers from personally annotating the materials they were consulting had not yet been standardized, and transcriptions tended to err on the side of interpretation rather than replication. In an early multi-volume critique of the Istoria della volgar poesia from 1702, Italian poet Mario Giovanni Crescimbeni had edited the first known published trouvère melody. Crescimbeni had initially wanted a troubadour, not trouvère, piece to articulate the essence of Provençal music and text; unable to find one (or at least one apt to his purpose), he published a trouvère work instead, Thibaut de Champagne’s Je me cuidoie partir,8 and did not explicitly distinguish troubadours from trouvères in his account. Though practitioners of a shared art, the lingual/dialectal, musical, and regional differences between the earlier, southern troubadour and the later, northern trouvère were not so easily interchangeable. Instead of explaining these

4 5 6 7 8

Haines, Eight Centuries, 275. Schottenloher, Books, 279–80. Alan Charles Kors, Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (Oxford, 2004), 309–401. Schottenloher, Books, 283. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1591 (Chansons notées et jeux partis).

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differences, Crescimbeni tersely described the piece as ‘simple, if not coarse’.9 If we compare the Thibaut manuscript to Crescimbeni’s publication,10 the latter clearly modified the diction and spelling of the text, not to mention the simplification of the square notation: the engraver mimicked the recently reformed notational style of equalist chant,11 which would have drastically altered any nuances specific to a trouvère melody. Couple this with the fact that the rhythmic modes and lingual abbreviations of troubadour and trouvère pieces were already obscure enough to the modern reader, and the ideas of rhythm here are easily convoluted. Rhythmic modes and palaeographical stylizations of such medieval melodies were more often than not predetermined, well known, and self-evident to the medieval reader, and might therefore have been all but non-existent to the eighteenth-century reader. Language, too, experienced modification: Old French and Occitan, as well as other earlier regional dialects, were either neglected or rewritten in modern French or English, depending on the readership.12 In 1756, French scholar Étienne Barbazan had made an attempt to publish a collection of medieval music with minimal editing,13 leaving the melodies in their original but less than reader-friendly notations. This found very little success, either commercial or editorial, and was almost completely overshadowed by a similar collection compiled by antiquarian Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Le Grand d’Aussy, who deliberately catered to both the seasoned scholar and the lay reader.14 Le Grand d’Aussy regarded his collection as a copie réduite, a sort of watered-down version, of which he remarked: ‘Without saying something different I felt I could at times say it better.’15 Le Grand d’Aussy’s approach became commonplace by the end of the century, and text and lyrics as well as musical notation would routinely be altered or even replaced in order to convey history in a way more comprehensible to the contemporary reader. As a result, ‘the Middle Ages had found a central place in public and scholarly musical imaginations; the troubadour playing his lute was already ubiquitous… [and] an unprecedented study of the sources had now made the troubadours and trouvères legitimate objects of archaeological study’.16 French interest in popularized adaptations of troubadour and trouvère material only accelerated from here. In 1780, composer Jean-Benjamin-François de La Borde published his Essai sur la musique, which contained three whole chapters on trouvères with edited melodies. Unlike both Barbazan and Le Grand d’Aussy, La Borde included multiple settings, from the originals to edited interpretations, owing ‘to the need to make trouvère music as comprehensible to as wide a readership as possible’.17 Despite the Haines, Eight Centuries, 109. Crescimbeni, Commentari alla sua Istoria della volgar poesia (Venice, 1702), ii, 283–84. 11 Haines, Eight Centuries, 110. 12 William Burgwinkle, Nicholas Hammond, and Emma Wilson, The Cambridge History of French Literature (Cambridge, 2011), 20. 13 Etienne Barbazan, Fabliaux et contes des poétes françois des XI, XII, XIII, XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris, 1756). 14 Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Le Grand d’Aussy, Fabliaux ou contes du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle, traduits ou extraits d’après divers manuscrits du temps (Paris, 1779). 15 Haines, Eight Centuries, 94. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 115. 9

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differences between trouvère and troubadour music, the treatment of their songs and poems later on was quite the same. This interest was not limited to the troubadour/trouvère homeland. One of the most notable musical historiographies was written by historian Dr Charles Burney, the General History of Music (1782), and this collection included a troubadour melody. The only known troubadour melody published in the eighteenth century therefore appeared in England, rather than France. Compare this to at least thirty trouvère melodies published in France around the same time and coming from a corpus wherein the number of troubadour melodies was about a third of that of trouvère sources.18 After discovering it in the Vatican,19 Burney published the tune – Gaucelm Faidit’s lament on the death of Richard I – in its original notation and language, then produced beside it a facsimile translated from Old French into English with contemporary notation to better suit the modern reader. He had translated and transcribed this himself in the hope of appealing to both the layman and antiquarian scholar, as well as appealing specifically to an English audience via a revered English king.20 The piece was now much more accessible to them in a familiar language and a notational style that the contemporary musician could read.21 Burney does not attempt to claim this Old French work as a piece of English cultural inheritance, but to depict historic connections and relationships across cultures and imagined communities. Medieval French interest in an English king became an eighteenth-century tool to arouse English interest in medieval French culture. Regardless of whether or not primary source material contained enough concrete detail to satisfy the curiosity of students and scholars, interest in studying medieval manuscripts persisted, leaving the reading and interpreting of troubadour lyrics and text up to the readers’ discretion and imagination. Imagination, however, is dependent on memory: one cannot imagine a colour one has never seen. It is also dependent on the work and imagination of others. Later authors – often learned scholars themselves – could not have interpreted the memory recorded in manuscripts as they did if their predecessors had not edited their contents. And their contents could not have been edited without the public work of libraries and curators. When manuscript studies considers texts as more than merely their written parts and rather as artefacts, the memory inherent in the text – how it was written, the circumstances of those who wrote it, how it travelled, how it was read and by whom – adds an entirely new dimension to medieval historiography. As the National Geographic remarked in 2014, the Middle Ages are ‘a world carried in our shared imagination’.22 Helen Young draws on this, further asserting that shared ‘imagination often owes more to myriad popular culture manifestations of medievalism than it does to history, and that imagination can reveal Linda Paterson, in collaboration with Luca Barbieri, Ruth Harvey and Anna Radaelli, and with an appendix by Marjolaine Raguin, Singing the Crusades: French and Occitan Lyrics Responses to the Crusading Movements, 1137–1336 (Cambridge, 2018), 254. 19 Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Reginae Latinae 1659, f. 89v. 20 Haines, Eight Centuries, 89. 21 For a side-by-side comparison of the notation, see Charles Burney, A General History of Music (London, 1782), 243–44. 22 Janet Goldstein, ‘Inside the Medieval World’, National Geographic, 1 January 2014. 18

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more about the anxieties of the present than the nature of the past’.23 This sentiment rings true not just for our century but for those that preceded it, as an examination of post-eighteenth-century literature reveals. As a result of the antiquarian imperative to preserve and bring to light early artefacts and manuscripts, writers, whether scholars or fiction authors, found the space to use medieval settings creatively. The aesthetics of derelict castles and chivalric romance entered the popular imaginative domain, often, in Britain, coded as romantically foreign.24 Indeed, the nineteenth century was the perfect breeding ground for a flowery, colourized rewritten history of the Middle Ages. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, which came early to Britain, Romanticism blossomed in tandem with much contemporary historiography. The rapid establishment of industrial society inspired an equally rapid counter-revolt, leading many movements within the arts and philosophy to focus on the rejection of such a society and its perceived restraints. It was out of this revolution that genres such as romantic and ecological poetry; newer, contemporary forms of travel writing and fiction, such as the novel featuring a heroic protagonist; and others were first seeded, and academic interest in the Middle Ages influenced other media as well. This is evident most strongly in literature and art, which were perhaps the two elements most integral to the Romantic movement. Despite its indebtedness to continental Europe, British voices often attribute Romanticism, like the Industrial Revolution, to these islands. As epitomized by Peter Quennell, both ‘originated in England and would reach [their] highest point on English soil’. Literature, in Quennell’s view, was Romanticism’s loudest voice, with ‘a long series of English writers … [who] were to thunder against the destructive progress of industrial England, which threatened to degrade and destroy every human quality they valued’.25 In response to industrialization, the arts in particular sought to preserve that which was considered sacred to human nature from the confines of hardening society: the natural world, imagination and individuality, youthfulness, and freedom. In this process, a predisposition for saccharine beauty often prevailed, with the arts commonly subjected to rose-tinted biases that, at the very least, bordered on the inauthentic. The medieval past was no exception, and the melding of the Middle Ages with Romantic preoccupations – in other words, Romantic medievalism – came to be a movement of its own.26 Though it runs closely alongside the historiography of the time, Romantic medievalism must be distinguished as a mostly intentional or creative adaptation of the Middle Ages to suit the contemporary understandings of Romanticism, as opposed to straightforward misunderstandings or biases of historical opinion. It was not a simple recording of what little was known or researchable about the medieval period, but rather a deliberate attempt to modify and translate for the contemporary reader. This generalized Middle Ages was not solely based on a British, let alone an English, medieval past. Indeed, as noted above, much of the period’s medievalism is fundamentally international in nature, and the appeal of troubadours, trouvères, 23 Helen Young, The Middle Ages in Popular Culture: Medievalism and Genre (Amherst, 2015), 1. 24 Fay, ‘Troubadour’. 25 Peter Quennell, A History of English Literature (London, 1981), 291. 26 Fay, Romantic Medievalism, 4.

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and their poetry to Romantic writers is specifically so. Its international nature is, however, in many ways incidental. As Elizabeth Fay summarizes it: ‘[T]he troubadour sets himself against his audience as a unique man whose distinction lies not in his ability to embody a tradition or ideal, as with the knight, but in his individualism. The troubadour figures the individual’s resistance through a linguistic politic that seems appropriate to the current times.’27 This figure was, therefore, an obvious shorthand for a number of Romantic medievalist priorities, though it was immediately creatively reimagined. There are a number of other factors that made the troubadour an appealing figure for the Romantics, not least their historical circumstances. They operated in a relatively limited place and time and, as with much of medieval culture, had long disappeared by the time interest in them arose. During the nineteenth century, the troubadours were, to all intents and purposes, an extinct and safely exotic species of poet that only existed in historical legend or as the faintly echoing voices behind their surviving manuscripts. It would be significantly easier for Romantic writers to project their ideas on to a specific type of character if that character were not seen as real, or at least did not present itself for any form of real-life comparison. As we shall see, the troubadours’ ambiguous nature facilitated the blurring of lines with other more well-known figures, such as minstrels and the trouvères, and left their definition up for discussion. The gap in the historical record was therefore not a disadvantage: instead, it provided the space for creative reception. It probably explains why the better-documented trouvères did not feature so prominently in nineteenth-century medievalism. The troubadours’ relative lack of documentation was a product of the political upheaval around the Albigensian Crusades in the thirteenth century, which forced the troubadours and their patrons to choose sides, ultimately straining the cultural unity of the Languedoc to a point from which it would never quite return.28 The trouvères were established in the north of France, which was less politically divided, and thus economically more stable. They also flourished somewhat later than the troubadours, closer to the rise in popularity of polyphony, which helped to create an environment more conducive to the patronage of songbooks.29 If Burney and Crescimbeni had trouble finding troubadour-specific melodies as distinct from the trouvères, it was largely because fewer pieces survived to the eighteenth century – though their kind of work certainly contributed to the survival of what material remained by this point. But where this gap has posed a problem for editors and historians, both then and since, it was a boon to creative writers. What does survive of the troubadours, aside from the few extant manuscripts of their pieces, includes their own biographical works, which, unfortunately, are also unhelpful when it comes to understanding them objectively. Accompanying many chansonniers and manuscripts were vidas (Occitan for ‘life’), detailing the poets themselves, as well as the razos (‘reason’) that served to annotate the poems themselves. However, ‘neither the lives nor the commentaries are completely reliable sources of information. Most were written long after the troubadours themselves 27 28 29

Ibid., 4. Elizabeth Aubrey, Music of the Troubadours (Bloomington, 1996), 5. Ibid., xvii.

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had died, and fancy is often indistinguishable from fact.’30 This situation is mirrored by the later writers of both history and fiction, who employed notably flowery language and interpretation when examining and writing on the troubadours – they are behaving as did the biographers and troubadours themselves. In this regard, it is difficult to attribute modification only to later interpretations when strict accuracy is scarcely available in the surviving material to begin with. Broadly understood, though, a sense of the troubadours and trouvères, though a product of medieval France, was not unfamiliar in nineteenth-century Britain, and readers would not have had to go deep into an archive to encounter it – though, as we have seen, the archival remains would have been, in any case, of limited use. In the nineteenth-century British imagination, troubadours quickly lost their geographical specificity, becoming subsumed in more generalized traditions, like minstrelsy and balladry, similar poetic forms that were alive and well in Britain, and before the rise in popularity of prose fiction and novels, when these became the main methods of storytelling. Unlike the troubadour craft, which was limited to the southern and south-western regions of France, minstrelsy extended across the continent and survived long after the troubadours’ demise.31 Alongside the study of French manuscripts and the publication of medieval historiographies in Britain and Ireland, therefore, the familiar and recognizable figure of the minstrel played a part in bringing these medieval French poets to nineteenth-century Britain. The minstrels helped loosely to carry-on troubadour and trouvère traditions, which had ignited similar movements further afield in the medieval period itself, such as the Minnesinger of Germany. Some of the styles present in troubadour compositions may have been carried by minstrels directly as they spread throughout Europe. The blurred boundary between troubadours and minstrels is not simply a case of creative – as opposed to historical – interpretation. The antiquarian discourse of so-called ‘ancient minstrelsy’32 brought the craft into a new, seemingly more academic light, and learned authors found a revived understanding with which to employ their creative licence. No longer were minstrels the imposing figures associated with earlier bards and their epics, such as James MacPherson’s Ossian, but rather recognized as fellow poets and related to in a way that made eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers feel closer to them through their shared practice, which was understood to be storytelling. Seeing the familiar minstrel described alongside knights and troubadours in eighteenth-century historiographies further created a sense of connection between Romantic and medieval writers: not only did these authors find new, popular subject matter with which to write, but they felt that they personally resonated with the identities found within these settings. While the waves of interest in medieval history found a home predominantly in scholarly and academic writing throughout the later eighteenth century, the revival of the minstrel and troubadour as Romantic literary figures was most prominent in fiction and poetry. Terms like ‘troubadour’ were used to lend an air of romantic authenticity, while being detached from their verifiable historical position. Poetry in particular 30 31 32

Richard Hoppin, Medieval Music (London, 1978), 282. Paul Griffiths, A Concise History of Western Music (Cambridge, 2009). McLane, Balladeering, 133.

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was viewed as bridging this gap between the Middle Ages and Romanticism simply because of its history as an oral tradition: poetry as a craft was understood to have been practised in the same way for centuries before the advent of print and continued its course well afterwards. ‘Poetry not only precedes historical discourse’, Maureen McLane writes, ‘it was historical discourse.’33 At the same time, there were attempts to disentangle precisely what was meant by the terms ‘troubadour’ and ‘minstrel’; the lack of a clear distinction was not uniform in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the forefront of the antiquarian debates regarding literature and balladry, two antiquarian scholars, Thomas Percy and Joseph Ritson, published extensive discourse on different theories regarding what they termed ‘ancient’ minstrels (in their context, meaning from the Middle Ages) and their craft. This involved much debate over what and who minstrels actually were. Percy insisted that they were poet-musicians of the Middle Ages who performed what they themselves composed,34 while Ritson argued that they were hardly poets or authors, even less composers (which instead, according to his analysis, would have been the job of the troubadour),35 and were instead merely musicians by their own definition.36 Nonetheless, unattributed poetry and literature of the time, rather than simply increasing the corpus of troubadour literature, further obscured the notions of who was who. Indeed, without a clear and explicit definition of the minstrel, either in the Middle Ages or since, there was a good deal of confusion between these figures and others similar to them, some of it deliberate. Only twenty years ago, Norman Cantor even asserted that the terms ‘minstrel’ and ‘troubadour’ were used interchangeably in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,37 but both recent historical and antiquarian research contradict that idea. The lack of a concrete historical understanding of these different breeds of poets left plenty of room for interpretation on the part of writers looking to use or mimic them and their styles. These discussions came to the fore with the nineteenth-century revival of the ballad style, now drawing upon medieval and Renaissance poetry as a historical Other to antiquarians and Romantic writers. Using the voice of the Other places the Romantic author closer to the narrative while alleviating some agency and maintaining a distance. McLane concludes that ‘balladry and minstrelsy, not to mention the wonderfully engaged scholarship around it, give the lie to the Romantic fetish of originality: perhaps it is enough to aspire to do what the medieval minstrels and troubadours did, that is, to move, if not make, the song’.38 McLane is quite right to describe this usage and revival, especially as it pertains to the antiquarian debate, as a ‘pervasive medievalism’.39 In reviving the ballad style Ibid., 132. Thomas Percy, ‘An Essay on the Ancient Minstrels in England’, in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces of Our Earlier Poets, together with Some Few of Later Date (London, 1794), 377. 35 Joseph Ritson, ‘Observations on the Ancient English Minstrels’, in Ancient Songs from the Time of King Henry the Third to the Revolution (London, 1790), xxi. 36 McLane, Balladeering, 120. 37 Norman Cantor, Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (New York, 1999), 319. 38 McLane, Balladeering, 15. 39 Ibid. 33

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in Britain and Ireland leading up to the nineteenth century, writers also inevitably revived its pioneers, primarily non-British, certainly non-Irish, poets of the High Middle Ages, to embody a popular oral tradition, which was cast as a native one. This was a method of discussing the culturo-historical facets of poetry. Take, for example, Feramorz, the fictionalized troubadour-poet from Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh (1817), who explicitly identifies himself as a ‘troubadour’, and whose literary purpose is to narrate the poem itself, rather than drive, or even really interact with, the plot. Feramorz is not clearly cast as either British or French, but simply the word ‘troubadour’ implements a foreignness, a Frenchness, something Other, and therefore more exotic and interesting than ‘minstrel,’ which would have been familiar and common. Feramorz is intended to have an allure to him that Lalla Rookh’s betrothed does not, or else she would not be lured astray. In his own context, Moore witnessed both the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the French Revolution, and his writings allude to his reactions to these and political thoughts more generally.40 Whether deliberate on Moore’s part or not, describing Feramorz as a troubadour displaces him from other characters in a way that could not be thus articulated if he were anything else. A character who subtly toggles the liminality of the fourth wall, Moore’s troubadour represents the tradition of storytelling more than anything else, and even quite literally fades out of the reality of the story once the tales have been told.41 In instances such as this, the troubadour is a medium through which the author can tell a story or use it as a narrative tool to add dimension to the writing. More than merely characters or authorial self-insertions, though, the minstrel or troubadour character served in Romantic poetry as an allegory or representation of history itself. Writers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries sought to use troubadours and minstrels to represent the historical situation, the historic poetic tradition, the ideals of both medievalism and Romanticism, and any potential combination thereof. Writers saw commonalities between the two and either mistook or reimagined them depending on the context. Romantic authors appeared to relate to both troubadours and minstrels as poets, and their writings often feature a troubadour or minstrel character who, on closer inspection, appears to be a fictionalized version of the author, allowing him or her to interact with a fictionalized version of history. A prime example is John Clare’s The Village Minstrel,42 which embodies various shades of Romanticism, including through the rural, pastoral setting that permeates the story and the isolation that inspires the titular character to pursue poetry in the first place. Placing his young minstrel in such a setting and exploring the relation of his craft to the other villagers’ views is a method Clare uses to relate himself to popular culture and the traditions he is both portraying and participating in. The Village Minstrel is, in essence, an examination of the minstrel tradition and how it came to benefit the Romantic poet. Clare’s minstrel is not identified as a troubadour but embodies many tropes that had become associated with the hybrid minstrel-troubadour figure in Romantic writing. By making him a minstrel, Clare 40 Jeffrey Vail, ‘The Standard of Revolt: Revolution and National Independence in Moore’s Lalla Rookh’, Romanticism on the Net, 40 (2005), 1–3. 41 Feramorz is revealed at the end of Lalla Rookh to have only been a narrator of the story, and his presence as a character is left intentionally vague by the author. 42 John Clare, The Village Minstrel and Other Poems (London, 1821), I, 1–62.

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thoroughly domesticates him and his context, without appearing to lay claim to the actual and historical tradition of the troubadours. Regardless of whether they were depicted simply as minstrels, caricatures of troubadours, or anything in between, the portrayals of these figures later in Romantic literature remain fairly consistent in character and often serve these purposes. While Clare’s minstrel is anchored in his village setting, other Romantic writers embraced the itinerant nature of the troubadours. This corresponded well with Romanticism’s glorification of travel and its fascination with nature. Travel writing and literature on globalism took firmer roots in the Romantic era, trickling into fiction and poetry with ecological or journey themes, as well as rural or pastoral settings, and often featuring an over-beautification and idolatry of nature. The preoccupation with travelling, especially in solitude, stems from an obsession with the rejection of a constrictive industrial society and the confines of urban life. In On Going a Journey (1821), William Hazlitt writes: We go on a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others … We are lost to ourselves, as well as our friends. So the poet somewhat quaintly sings, out of my country and myself I go. Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them.43

The trope of the wandering minstrel is just that – of a wanderer – implying deliberate, aimless, or enjoyable roaming, rather than the reality that most travel undertaken by minstrels and the marginally less itinerant troubadours took place only to seek employment. In the latter case, many troubadours were forced to travel following the Crusades that had politically divided the southern regions of France. The later connection of travel and itinerancy to these figures may come from the regular combining of music and travel in fictional writing, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Songs of Travel exemplifies this, especially when he writes that ‘tuneful song built a palace in the wild’.44 Returning to John Clare, the very title of Vagabond in a Native Place articulates the relationship between, and intricacies of, travellers and the Romantic ideal. William Wordsworth, in ‘Why, Minstrel, These Untuneful Murmurings?’ (1827), poses this articulation in the form of an enquiry to a musician, romanticizing not only music, but also the worldliness of travelling and nostalgia for home. In response to the title question, the minstrel in question says, ‘Think of a harp so far from its own country, and forgive the strings’, equating homesickness on the road to a song played out of tune, followed later by the line, ‘What wonder then that the poor harp distempered music yields to its sad lord, far from his native fields.’45 In this way, the minstrel is used as a tool to represent the theme of travel in poetry. While this could simply be a method of authorial self-insertion in the form William Hazlitt, ‘Essay III. On Going a Journey’, in Table-Talk, Essays on Men and Manners (London, 1821), II, 53. 44 Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Home no more home to me, whither must I wander’ in Songs of Travel and Other Verses (London, 1896), 23–24. 45 William Wordsworth, ‘Why, Minstrel, These Untuneful Murmurings?’, in The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (London, 1827), II, 265. 43

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of a narrative device through which the author could more clearly articulate ‘angst and alienation’,46 the notion remained of the minstrel as a wanderer or traveller, thoroughly separated from his geographical origin, becoming part of the immortalization of the character. This mirrors the dissociation of the troubadour from his historical and locational context. The figure of the entirely displaced minstrel is brought to its apex by that most canonical figure of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century medievalism, Walter Scott.47 Certain editions of The Lay of the Last Minstrel contain a foreword by the author explaining some of his usage of medieval imagery for the purpose of a narrative poem. The prefaces articulate that a ‘minstrel’ was intentionally chosen to articulate an ‘ancient’ poetic style more reminiscent of the Middle Ages, though the story is set in the sixteenth century and was written in the nineteenth. The preface states: ‘For these reasons the poem was put into the mouth of an ancient minstrel, the last of the race, who, as he is supposed to have survived the Revolution, might have caught somewhat of the refinement of modern poetry, without losing the simplicity of his original model.’48 Simplicity, too, was idealized in Romanticism: it is easy to look at the past and regard it as straightforward when compared with modern troubles witnessed at first hand. That being said, ‘simplicity’ of poetry was at best a backhanded compliment, especially when used in the same sentence as ‘refinement’ when comparing older sources to modern ones. Thus, diminishing the historical Other only leaves more space for interpretation and modification. Furthermore, Scott characterizes minstrels as a ‘race’, making their romanticized Otherness far more complete than the straightforward Frenchness of the troubadours. The Last Minstrel is a world-weary and war-worn traveller who, despite the weight of the stories he carries, tells them with a captivating finesse that becomes the focal point of his narration. Like Clare’s Village Minstrel, Moore’s troubadour, or the similarly posed narrator of Wordsworth’s ‘Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle’ from Poems in Two Volumes (1807), Scott’s minstrel is a literary tool more than a character. His Ivanhoe, too, is highly indicative of how such medieval figures were viewed and understood by writers in the nineteenth century: as ‘the essence of medieval poethood, as the figure of historicized desire’.49 In becoming a method rather than a person or believable identity, the historic minstrel and foreign troubadour blur into the same figure and lose much of their substance, becoming more of a manifestation of the writer’s pen than any real or historical breathing subject. McLane describes this phenomenon in Scott’s Last Minstrel, with the minstrel being ‘imagined as the repository of tradition, a living archive, but also as the narrator of tradition … As “last of all the bards”, the minstrel is the figure through whom Scott can both represent minstrelsy and chronicle its obsolescence.’50 ‘How do we get from the minstrel, a historical figure,’ she asks, ‘to the minstrel as an allegory of the historical situation?’51 Fay, ‘Troubadour’. See, alternatively, Andrew Lynch, ‘Last Minstrels: Medievalism, Emotion and Poetic Performance in Walter Scott and Goethe’, postmedieval, 10 (2019), 423–38. 48 Walter Scott, unpaginated preface to The Lay of the Last Minstrel (London, 1805). 49 Fay, Romantic Medievalism, 5. 50 McLane, Balladeering, 130. 51 Ibid., 122. 46 47

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Wordsworth and Scott both sought to use the minstrel as a historically informed narrator in their poems, borrowing them from the antiquarians and repurposing them as a literary device. Scott, the famed medievalist, though, added layers of historicity that Wordsworth did not, bringing a new dimension to storytelling that spoke in the tongue of the past as well as donning its context. Even when not cast as the author him- or herself, then, the travelling poet-musician – whether troubadour or minstrel – crossing the countryside in song and solitude was the perfect canvas for Romantic poetic ideals: the divinity of nature, the emphasis on the individual and the artist, the rejection of conformity and industrial society, and ultimately the pursuit and reverence of freedom. The wandering minstrel – a carefree, often whimsical musical storyteller who thumbed his nose at society, suffered for his art, and was peacefully at one with himself and the beautiful pastoral backdrop he traversed – fitted precisely within Romantic poetry. As we have seen, what was often being romanticized was not the characters themselves but what they were serving as a medium to represent, particularly the ideals and perspectives of Romanticism. Romantic writers saw in the troubadour and minstrel what they wanted to see: artists like themselves who had been pummelled by the political ramifications of their changing societies, struggling to write and perform while railing against conformity and unrest.52 Poetry has always been a voice through which to articulate and challenge the state of a society, and ‘Romantic poets had met the minstrels and found they were themselves.’53 They could express their personal situations in a so-called ancient setting without having to shoulder the burdens of being identified as the ones to put them into words. Fay calls to attention some of the specific ways in which poets such as John Keats related to troubadours and minstrels, seeing them as ‘rebellious, politically compromised, and emotionally frustrated’ and admiring them for this.54 At the same time that Romantic writers admired the troubadours for their supposed free-roaming and untethered agency, they related to their extinction as they themselves were losing readership to prose fiction and the novel – even if the troubadours lost patronage because of political upheaval and conflict, rather than changing literary trends. While being somewhat ignorant to the troubadours’ system of employment, Romantic speculators also held an appreciation for the troubadours as inventors of the fin’amour genre; rather than being held captive by any kind of capital framework, the real barrier to freedom (in the eyes of the Romantics) was the unrequited or forbidden love evident in the medieval poems themselves, the romance between the troubadour or the knight This interpretation is not baseless and is echoed several times in Paterson, Singing the Crusades, with the observation that the troubadours were more politically influenced – as was their output – than the trouvères. Chapter 5, for example, shows a stronger political note to troubadour responses to the Fourth Crusade. Marjolaine Raguin-Barthelmebs’ Appendix A examines troubadour and trouvère crusading rhetoric, observing that troubadour poetry is prepared to offer a ‘[c]riticism of the diversion of the Fourth Crusade’ that is simply not found in Old French poetry – even if specifically secular politics rarely feature: Marjolaine Raguin-Barthelmebs, ‘The Words to Say It: The Crusading Rhetoric of the Troubadours and Trouvères’, in Linda Paterson, Singing the Crusades: French and Occitan Lyric Responses to the Crusading Movements, 1137–1336 (Cambridge, 2018), 276, 284. 53 McLane, Balladeering, 142. 54 Fay, ‘Troubadour’, Chapter 30. 52

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and the unattainable noblewoman. Free to roam a beautiful, pastoral backdrop but with a burdened and lovesick heart fitted the tropes of Romanticism and Romantic poets all too well.55 There were myriad ways in which Romantic authors used troubadours and other medieval(ized) characters to tell their own stories, but all return to the same general sentiment: projecting the ideals and circumstances of the present on to those of the past. This is what makes this phenomenon so emblematic of medievalism: it was narrating the modern day through history, creating and reflecting contemporary understandings of the past, as well as impressions of the present. While this might blur our attempts to understand these historical figures, it reveals how what was perceived to be history was read, understood, and transmitted to a wide eighteenth- and nineteenth-century audience. This is a remarkably valuable method of historical preservation, however unintentional. Whatever turn poetry took in its own historical discourse, from representing the oral tradition to nature poetry and travel writing, the minstrel was doomed to go with it, in turn obscuring the historical French troubadour through poets’ confused – deliberately or otherwise – terminology. This is not to say that Scott, Wordsworth, or Clare obliterated minstrel and troubadour history. Indeed, they preserved contemporary knowledge in such a way that it could be reinterpreted and passed on to a new generation of readers. From a modern archivist’s perspective, any preservation, even that which has been convoluted, is better than none at all. The antiquarian movement and later eighteenth-century culture should be considered together with the Romantic medievalism of the nineteenth century. We should, though, be cautious in assuming precisely how one led to another, or how these interpretations were inspired by those that came before them, or further influenced re-interpretations by the generations of writers and readers after them. While the Romantic era heavily employed medievalism in its media – indeed, popular perceptions of the troubadour were forever altered by its presence therein – no single author, piece, portrayal, or genre is responsible for the blurring of their history. Consequently, claims about a falsely romanticized troubadour identity, such as that with which we started,56 are not unfounded, but they also fail to take the broader literary and socio-cultural history into account. The different features of Romantic fiction all had a hand to play, as did the scholarly, non-fictional, and historiographic writings of the Enlightenment that laid the foundations for later literature. Somewhere in the course of their existence, and in that of the surviving sources that tell their story, both primary and secondary, the troubadours of the Middle Ages were revised and colourized into something almost entirely new. What we know of the troubadours, however, is that – like any group – they were not one single, limited type of people, and there was not one individual identity to lose. They were not a formal guild or union and did not adhere to a strict creed or practice: they were as individual as the poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and as the poets of today. Some were men, some women; some upper nobility, some educated clergy, some knights, some began impoverished; while many were peripatetic 55 56

Ibid. Stevens et al., ‘Troubadours, Trouvères’ (see n. 1 above).

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and did indeed travel extensively, others hardly left their homes; to consider them a single, uniform collective of artists would contradict the uncapturable multifacetedness of troubadour identity and obscure everything later poets adored in them. Rather than disregard the troubadours for lack of concrete detail and absence of evidence, British – and some Irish – writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries took what they had found in medieval France and gave it a new lease of life in a completely different time and place. Perhaps partly by witnessing a medieval French poetic interest in Richard I, an English king, Romantic British poets developed an interest in the troubadours. Faidit’s Lament for Richard I was a pivotal point in bringing the thirteenth-century troubadour over to eighteenth-century Britain and was what brought this medieval craft to attention before any Romantic fiction was conceived. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French writers were not focusing on troubadours and medievalisms in the same way and certainly not to the same extent – it was the Otherness of the troubadours that sparked this foreign fascination. This medievalism, in fact, is entirely reliant on this Otherness, having taken one figure from the past and reinterpreted it beyond its origins and timeframe. It was not the first discovery and reinterpretation of medieval poets and poetry, nor was it the last, but it was certainly one of the bigger waves in an ongoing historical ripple effect. This ripple of interpretations was essential to those that succeeded it. It preserved the Middle Ages in a way that extended outside of the archive and into the public imagination. It is perhaps because of the troubadours’ diversity and evasiveness that they were partially lost to history, yet it is also their vague nature and the creative licence imparted on their ambiguity that helped preserve and immortalize them. 57

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Aubrey, Music, 25.

8 ‘The old magic of the mind’: The Influence of Wales and Medieval Welsh Literature in John Cowper Powys’s Maiden Castle1 Felix Taylor

The ever-mysterious prose-epic of Wales, entitled Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi, which relates in its ‘four branches’ the strange story of Pryderi the son of Pwyll … is literally haunted by all manner of magical mixings up – I can use no other expression – of life and death and death with life; so that on all sides we grow aware of half-alive things and of half-dead things, of life vanishing as the death-mists rise or fall, of birth appearing even from the lap of death.2

A

fixation with Wales, its literature and mythology, appears to have grown in British novelist and philosopher John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) before he ever began to write serious fiction. Born in a small village in Derbyshire before moving to a vicarage at Montacute, Somerset, Powys was the eldest of eleven talented children (including Llewelyn and Theodore Francis, both writers), and was assured by his father the Reverend Charles Francis Powys of the family’s Welsh ancestors, or what he called the ‘Princes of Powysland’.3 Lack of genealogical evidence, however, did not dissuade Powys from continuing to maintain that he was descended from ‘an old Welsh family long ago established in the town of Ludlow in Shropshire in what were formerly called the Welsh “Marches”’.4 Whether or not the unsubstantiated claim contained any truth is immaterial to the effect it had on his world view and subsequent fiction; Powys’s fascination with Welsh mythology This chapter is based partly on the third chapter of my unpublished DPhil thesis, ‘Welsh Mythology & Folklore in the Novels of Arthur Machen, John Cowper Powys and Alan Garner’ (Oxford, 2021). 2 John Cowper Powys, Obstinate Cymric (London, 1973), 85–86. 3 John Cowper Powys, Autobiography (London, 1934), 26. 4 Ibid. 1

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deepened as he began to write his ‘Wessex’ novels – in particular the Dorchester-set Maiden Castle (1936) – providing him with the necessary tools to develop his personal ‘magical view of life’ as an opposing force to modern-day ‘transient scientific theories’.5 ‘[The] very act of writing stories’, writes Morine Krissdóttir, ‘constituted a ritual’ for the author; in the guise of ‘magician’, Powys would come to construct a spiritual system for himself wherein Wales and its mythology might be reshaped to serve his own personal philosophy.6 In this sense, this chapter argues that Powys’s romanticized and highly individual response to medieval tradition in Wales, influenced by the then-outdated theories of John Rhŷs, which will be discussed below, represents a decoupling of Welsh mythological texts from their historical reality. After graduating from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and teaching at several girls’ schools on the south coast, Powys became an extension lecturer in America for Oxford University in 1899, and the subject chosen for his second trial lecture was the Arthurian legend.7 For this task, Powys claims to have purchased the single book Studies in the Arthurian Legend (1891) by the Oxford Professor of Celtic, Sir John Rhŷs. This was the work of scholarship on which Powys would base many of his ideas about Welsh and Celtic mythology, and a book he read nine times on the boat back to America in 1929.8 The work was meant, writes Rhŷs, ‘to shed light on the Arthurian legend’ through an analysis of its origins in Welsh and Irish mythology.9 Its methods and conclusions became the basis for Powys’s later theories about the Mabinogi and the ancient ‘native’ Welsh people. In 1902, following this introduction to contemporary Welsh scholarship when Powys was living at Burpham, Surrey, he ‘suddenly acquired a passion for everything Welsh’: I bought Welsh grammars, Welsh dictionaries, Welsh modern poetry. I bought an elaborate Welsh Genealogy, called ‘Powys-Fadoc’, and mightily chagrined was I when I found no mention of my father’s ancestors in it! I bought everything I could lay hands on that had to do with Wales and with the Welsh people … [The] idea of Wales and the idea of Welsh mythology went drumming on like an incantation through my tantalized soul. I had no vision so far – that was still to come – of myself as a restorer of the hidden planetary secrets of these mystical introverts of the world, but the gods having made me, instead of a conscientious scholar, an imaginative charlatan, I resolved to realize with my whole spiritual force what it meant to be descended – to the devil with ‘Powys-Fadoc’ – from those ancient Druidic chieftains!10

Powys came to the realization that his family were not the direct descendants of the Princes of ‘Powysland’ as he had once thought, and yet Wales continued to permeate his view of the world: ‘[I]n this matter of Welsh mythology I became besotted!’ Ibid., 626. Morine Krissdόttir, John Cowper Powys and the Magical Quest (London, 1980), 40. 7 Morine Krissdóttir, Descents of Memory: The Life of John Cowper Powys (New York, 2007), 81. 8 Ibid., 252. 9 Sir John Rhŷs, Studies in the Arthurian Legend (Oxford, 1891), v. 10 Powys, Autobiography, 334–35. 5

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he writes in his Autobiography. By the mid-1920s, Powys had published several early novels, poetry collections, and philosophical works, but it was not until he had moved permanently to America to live with his new partner Phyllis Plater in rural upstate New York that he began a series of four books that would become known as his ‘Wessex’ novels (1929–1936). Though set within the boundaries of Dorset and its neighbouring counties, and constructed through a lens of the author’s childhood memories, Powys’s obsession with Welsh mythology and the ‘idea’ of Wales gradually enters his fiction as a dominant theme and an essential component to his own life ‘mythology’. The question that occupied Powys throughout much of his intellectual life was whether or not there existed a supernatural force beyond our material world. In one of his earliest published works of philosophy, The Complex Vision (1920), Powys declares that to achieve what he terms the ‘eternal vision’ (the ultimate reality beyond the material world), we must move from the individual conception of the world as a plurality of ‘separate person universes’ towards a kind of unifying synthesis of ‘souls’ both animate and inanimate.12 The human soul may attain this eternal vision in certain concentrated moments ‘wherein’, Powys writes, ‘what is mortal in us merges itself in what is immortal’.13 Powys rejected both traditional Christianity and Neoplatonism, and was drawn instead to a mythical, pre-religious image of the universe wherein all ‘beings’ – human, animal, plant, and the inanimate – existed on a continuum of consciousness. He subscribed to the pre-Platonic view, in other words, that all nature was an undifferentiated divine ‘soul-substance’, but that after early humans developed religious thought and a concept of themselves as individuals in history, this soul-substance became externalized. Powys’s later work In Defence of Sensuality (1930) advances the concept of an ‘ichthyosaurus-ego’, a primitive form of existence that can only be reached by sinking into oneself and that enabled the individual to access a kind of pre-historic, collective version of time.14 Powys came to associate this psychological introspection with the Welsh character, a view that would become intrinsic to his philosophy. Within this personal philosophy, Powys called for a return to a ‘magical view of life’, a non-rational form of consciousness that the author saw as originating in a remote past ‘whose … secrets have been almost lost amid the vulgarities of civilization’.15 Many early twentieth-century writers and artists, D.H. Lawrence and Hermann Hesse among them, were expressing a similar longing to return to a previous state of thought, to distance themselves from what Lawrence called ‘our false inorganic connections’ and move towards the now-repressed ‘spiritual knowledge’ sought after by British neo-Romantic writers like Mary Butts.16 This position, 11

Ibid., 335. John Cowper Powys, The Complex Vision (New York, 1920), 164. 13 Ibid., xi. 14 John Cowper Powys, In Defence of Sensuality (London, 1931), 10. 15 Powys, Autobiography, 401; Powys, In Defence of Sensuality, 10. 16 D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse (London, 1932), 224; Andrew Radford, Mary Butts and British Neo-Romanticism: The Enchantment of Place (London, 2014), 84; modernist in style, Butts positioned mythological, often Arthurian imagery within contemporary settings, best exemplified in Armed with Madness (1928), in which the grail is discovered in south England. 11

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which often expressed itself in a kind of anti-industrialism, was a reaction to the unrelenting progress of technology and disregard for the environment, alongside the post-Enlightenment dismissal of certain modes of thought – magical, mythical, animistic – as irrational vestiges of a pre-civilized society. Jan Marsh identifies the rise in anthropology as a product of this cultural reaction, one that promoted the study of isolated, rural societies, as well as the disciplines of folklore and mythology studies.17 Powys’s own conceptions of ‘magical thinking’ and ‘mythopoeic thought’, both terms developed in anthropological writings during this period, were indeed partly an expression of his aversion to modern scientific thought and technological advancement. Powys did not seek a literal reversion to any state of primitiveness, or to what Peter Fuller calls the ‘mythical contentment’ of the noble savage; rather he desired to access the ‘secret’ that he considered this world view to offer. Certain elements from Welsh mythology as they are explored in his novels provided Powys with the means, if not to provide a satisfying answer to the question of the supernatural, then to come to as near a conclusion as he was able. As his philosophy developed during the early 1930s and the introspection of the ichthyosaurus-ego became a component of his thinking, medieval Welsh literature also began to take a more prominent place in Powys’s fiction. On the one hand, the mythology of the Welsh, and the antecedents of the Arthurian legend identified by Rhŷs in mythological texts, are representative for Powys of the secret to life accessed through this ‘return’ to the pre-individuated mind.18 On the other, they resembled a contradictory whole for Powys and an acknowledgement of the extremes of human nature. It is a mythology that displays an ‘ancient wisdom’, writes G. Wilson Knight in his study of Powys’s novels, in which ‘seeming incompatibles, the opposites, of being and not-being, life and death, were somehow in alliance’.19 ‘I have Wales, Wales, Wales, to take refuge in’: Imagined Ancestry and Powys’s ‘Idea’ of Wales As Powys wrote in his Autobiography, it was the ‘idea’ of Wales and Welsh mythology that first drew his attention. At this point in his life, he had little direct experience with the country’s culture or its people, but he came to see a generalized, medievalist conception of Wales as a place ‘to take refuge in’ (335), a psychological retreat from the modern world. Powys expressed this intellectual longing to access his version of a mythical Welsh past chiefly through his fiction, which culminated in Maiden Castle. Maiden Castle takes its premise from an inversion of the events in Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge (1886): whereas Hardy’s Michael Henchard auctions off his wife and child at a county fair near Casterbridge (Hardy’s alias for Dorchester), Jan Marsh, Back to the Land: The Pastoral Impulse in British Art (London, 1982), 246. See Eirnin Jefford Franks, Chapter 11, 180 for another response to the idea of the (medieval) past as less individualized, which also draws on medievalism as a refuge from the industrialized present. Such ideas are explored in some detail by Kayleigh Ferguson in Chapter 7. On the other hand, Powys’s use of the medieval as a gateway to a more ancient past recalls the forged medieval map that is Kristina Hildebrand’s subject in Chapter 1. 19 G. Wilson Knight, The Saturnian Quest: John Cowper Powys; A Study of His Prose Works (London, 1964), 40. 17

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Powys’s protagonist Dud No-man buys a young acrobat, Wizzie Ravelston, from a quarrelsome circus owner.20 Powys sets the novel in the present day just as the initial excavations are starting on Maiden Castle, the vast earthwork overlooking Dorchester. The site was excavated between 1934 and 1937 by Mortimer and Tessa Verney Wheeler, and Powys would have begun his own work at a similar time. In March 1935, he goes one evening to hear one of the Wheelers lecture on the project, and the morning after, Powys visits the site itself: ‘On the top is a temple to Minerva & some Gaulish God who has three horns and three heads!’ he notes.21 The novel opens with Dud arriving in Dorchester to write his next novel, although his true motive, he admits to himself, is ‘to solve … the ultimate meaning of death itself ’.22 As with every ‘Powys-hero’ (protagonists who resemble the author in looks and world views), he considers himself a materialist and yet remains open to the existence of supernatural forces, ‘part of the interplay of powers within the cosmos who regard us as of no more importance than shoals of fish’ (author’s italics) (153). He moves to Dorchester to grapple with the memories of his dead wife and mother, and in order to overcome mortality, ‘to dodge annihilation’ (6). His father’s identity is unknown, hence his self-appellation ‘No-man’. In his first few days in Dorchester, Dud pays for Wizzie’s liberation from the circus and makes the acquaintance of the members of two neighbouring families living at the semi-detached ‘Glymes’, Teucer Wye and his daughter Thuella, and the Quirms, Nancy and Enoch. Maiden Castle is set over the course of a year as Dud attempts to make a life together with Wizzie and discovers that the ‘Maiden Castle man’ Enoch Quirm is in fact his father. It is mainly through the towering patriarch Enoch Quirm that Powys initially expresses his view of Wales as a place of mythological significance, a country whose literature and history, albeit presented in vague and proximate terms, contain the ‘secret’ to the author’s complex vision. Quirm, self-styled ‘Urien’ after the sixth-century northern King Urien Rheged, believes himself to be the reincarnation of an obscure deity from Welsh mythology, an avatar of various figures from Llyfr Taliesin (Book of Taliesin) and other mythological sources.23 Quirm justifies his wild claim by referring solely to the theories he has read in Rhŷs’s Studies in the Arthurian Legend, and to those texts such as Llyfr Taliesin that Rhŷs references. ‘If John Rhys [sic] were alive’, Quirm cries to his daughter, ‘I’d have left you all, years ago, and gone to tell him the whole thing. He’d have understood, for he put me on the track of it. He knew how all Taliessin’s prophecies were about me … He knew the mysterious secret of my race, of his race’ (459–60). Part of this ‘secret’ relates to certain mythological 20 ‘The T. T. [Phyllis] says the “aura” of Durnovaria encourages the sale of ladies!’ (emphasis in the original), John Cowper Powys, Petrushka and the Dancer: The Diaries of John Cowper Powys 1929–1939 (Manchester, 1995), 182 (27 March 1935). 21 Powys, Petrushka, 181 (22 March 1935). 22 John Cowper Powys, Maiden Castle (Woodstock, NY, 2001), 5. Hereafter cited in-line in the text. 23 Llyfr Taliesin is a Middle Welsh manuscript dating from the early fourteenth century, containing over sixty poems attributed to Taliesin – although only twelve are considered authentic – including Cad Goddeu (The Battle of the Trees) and Preidei Annwfyn (The Spoils of Annwn). For modern scholarship and translation, see Marged Haycock, Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin (Aberystwyth, 2007).

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figures that Rhŷs identified in Welsh sources, including Uthr Pendragon, Bran the Blessed, Gwyn ap Nudd, Ysbaddaden (the giant father of Olwen in Culhwch ac Olwen), and Urien himself, whose disregard for the boundaries of life and death suggested to Rhŷs that they were the many faces of the same ‘dark divinity’, and that these multiple identities ‘[serve] to express overlapping aggregates of attributes’.24 Uthr Ben, for example, sings his own elegy in the poem Marwnat Uthyr Pen and describes himself as gorlassar, denoting a corpse-like ‘dark blue or livid colour’.25 Similarly, the head of Bran the Blessed, when cut off after his death in the second branch of the Mabinogi, Branwen ferch Llŷr, continues to speak for over eighty years. This deity, writes Rhŷs, is the god ‘both of beginning and ending, of life and death: as the former he is the god of plenty, and as the latter he is the god of the departed’.26 It is with this dark divinity of ‘[c]arnage and slaughter’ that Quirm fanatically aligns himself, confirmed by a birthmark on his chest in the shape of a crow, the mark of Bran the Blessed, which Quirm calls ‘the seal of Urien’ (245).27 Through a mysticism derived from Rhŷs’s theories, Quirm exemplifies the ‘magical view of life’ in Powys’s philosophy. As the reincarnated dark divinity, he claims to experience a kind of mental pain that ‘beats … against the wall of the world’ (242) and will eventually ‘break out’ into a mysterious exterior. ‘It is the old magic of the mind’, Quirm explains to Dud, when, driven to bay by the dogs of reality, it turns upon the mathematical law of life and tears it to bits. It’s the old magic of the mind, the secret of which has been so often lost, till the Welsh, alone among the races, hid it instead of squandering it [Powys’s italics]. (243)

The ‘old magic of the mind’ appears to be identical with Powys’s ‘magical view of life’, the non-rational, non-scientific way of thinking, a characteristic that Quirm identifies in Rhŷs’s death gods due to their dual state of ‘death-in-life’. In this way, his theories about reincarnation and immortality contradict, for Dud, ‘the very rudiments of intellectual reason’ (227): they ‘[move] from the impossible to the impossible … [abolishing] cause and effect’ (460). Quirm resembles certain aspects of this figure in his appearance as ‘a half-vitalized corpse … a being that “but usurped life”, a semi-mortuus, an entity only half there’ (33). Indeed ‘rex semi-mortuus’ is a phrase Dud remembers once coming across ‘in some work on the religion of the ancient Celts’ (153), implying that ‘Urien’ is a product of Quirm’s – and indeed Powys’s – selective scholarship. His clothes are ‘ancient’ and frayed, and he emits a sickly odour resembling, again, ‘the smell of a corpse’ (34). His past is a combination of rumour and reluctant hints, such that, writes Margaret Moran, ‘he seems to have sprung ex nihilo … into the present’.28 Nancy relates the story to Dud of how Quirm’s adoptive Rhŷs, Arthurian Literature, 259–60; the name Urien, according to Quirm, is far older than the Celtic languages but belonged to the group of tribes known as the Durotriges who inhabited what is now Somerset and western Dorset (Rhŷs, Arthurian Literature, 242). 25 Rhŷs, Arthurian Literature, 256. 26 Ibid., 260. 27 Ibid.; the Welsh brân is usually translated as ‘crow’. 28 Margaret Moran, ‘Animating Fictions in “Maiden Castle”’, in In the Spirit of Powys, ed. Denis Lane (Lewisburg, 1990), 184. 24

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father had ‘taken him from a Welsh tramp’ and given him his name (147), thereby extending Dud’s unknown parentage so as to include an unconfirmed Welsh ancestry. Quirm’s identity as the reincarnated Urien relies on this connection to Wales, just as Powys’s view of Wales as a ‘refuge’ from modern society is supported by his own perceived relation to the Princes of ‘Powysland’. Moran’s observation that Quirm seems to have appeared ex nihilo from a previous era characterizes him as someone more attuned to Powys’s idea of primitive thought, and therefore a figure better equipped to confront what Powys saw as a modern age of rationality and dehumanization. The ‘ichthyosaurus-ego’, Powys’s invented psychological term, represents the author’s desire to step sideways ‘out of the human-consciousness groove into the backward-consciousness of animal-vegetable life, and into the forward consciousness of unrealized godlike life’.29 The ‘animal-vegetable’ is a primordial, collective memory, and the Welsh, to Powys’s mind, possess greater access to the world behind due to their age and their natural inclination to revert into themselves. Quirm’s physical appearance throughout the novel, not just as the half-dead ‘rex mortuus’, contributes to his image as something not entirely human, closer perhaps to the primal state of the introverted ichthyosaurus-ego: his black hair is ‘some kind of moss’ (150), his head is as if formed of ‘some massed weight of cloudy mist’ (154), and his body is like an ‘old grasshopper’ (229) in its ritual stance. His physicality further suggests an internal withdrawal from modern life, an antipathy towards the scientific way of thinking to which Powys himself was similarly averse: talking to his neighbour, the communist Claudius Crask, about the proposed excavations on Maiden Castle, Dud speculates from Quirm’s expression that he is using a mere ‘tenth of his real consciousness, while the rest of it hangs suspended in some colossal instrument of torture’ (156). Quirm exists on the boundary between destruction and creation, simultaneously reaching back into the mythological past, and forward towards resurrection and a mystical ‘breaking through’ of the material world. A key site of spiritual significance in the novel is the eponymous hillfort that presides over Dorchester as a symbol for Quirm of the ‘old gods’. Maiden Castle acts a conduit for the mythic past that Quirm has read about in Rhŷs, and in his mind its connection to the Durotriges, a pre-Roman Celtic tribe whose territory included modern Dorset, provides him with a cultural link with Wales.30 Prehistoric hill-sites such as Maiden Castle had previously served as psychological symbols in Powys’s work and establish a link between the contemporary settings and an ancient, collective past. Quirm’s philosophy is inseparable from the Iron Age settlement, which appears to channel his very life force. He also reveals to his son a further aspect of his Welsh hypothesis, one that Powys would expand upon in his later historical novels, that the ancient Welsh people were a civilization existing in Britain before Powys, In Defence of Sensuality, 131. The earliest phase of Maiden Castle’s construction is thought to have been carried out around 3,500 BC, followed by a later expansion in 600–500 BC. It is the largest Iron Age hillfort in Britain and lies three miles outside of Dorchester. See John Collis, ‘Maiden Castle’, in The Oxford Companion to British History, ed. Robert Crowcroft and John Cannon, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2015), https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/ acref/9780199677832.001.0001/acref-9780199677832-e-2733 [accessed 4 January 2022]. 29

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the Celtic invasions – people who were not ‘Aryan’, but rather ‘possessed of secrets of life that Aryan science had [since] destroyed’ (245). This theory, whose intellectual roots can be traced back to nineteenth-century antiquarianism and Indo-European scholarship, would become the basis for many of Powys’s views of Wales and Welsh literature; here in Maiden Castle it establishes a connection between the ‘aboriginal’ Welsh from whom Quirm claims to be descended, and the ‘magical view of life’. Whatever prehistoric secrets of life had been supressed by ‘Aryan’ science are now reinstated for Quirm by the old gods of Maiden Castle and his ability to ‘reach the life behind life’ (241). The association of Maiden Castle with prehistoric cultures also provides Powys with a stage on which his characters can enact the concept of the ‘ichthyosaurus-ego’. Dud shares with Wolf Solent the inclination to ‘sink into [his] soul’ and claims to have inherited from his Welsh mother the ‘formidable tendency’ (94) to live entirely within his own imagination, a trait that Powys claims to identify in the Welsh people. On the hill, Dud finds himself confronted with a hatred for his father coupled with an unavoidable identification with this mythic figure. Although he is initially contemptuous of his father’s Welsh theories, Quirm’s perceived Welsh ancestry and the ‘power’ of Maiden Castle provokes a primitive connection between the two men. Dud variously experiences something ‘atavistic’ stirring ‘the depths’ of his nature (248) while listening to the wind, and ‘like an antediluvian creature confronting its progenitor’, he perceives that Dud and Quirm are somehow destined to exist ‘isolated from all other living creatures’ (236). He acknowledges the hill’s ‘sacred isolation’ and feels his own voice joining with the wind, ‘catching [with] the very rhythm of his father’s tone’ (239). Quirm mutters ‘Old Welsh’ incantations to himself that to Dud’s ears begin to harmonize with the wind that is ‘felt nowhere else’, and whose rhythms are ‘identical with the orchestration of the planet’ (248). Quirm’s Old Welsh, which for the most part Powys leaves unquoted, produces an affinity in Dud’s mind with something far older than any other language, echoing early Celtic theorists’ romanticized descriptions of contemporary and medieval Welsh (which were then misguidedly used to infer racial characteristics).31 After experiencing the wind on Maiden Castle, Dud comes to the conclusion that his own self-absorption is not a negative pursuit, because he does not live for ‘himself ’ alone but rather ‘himself in a certain relation to the cosmos’ (Powys’s italics) (250). The construction of Quirm’s mysticism further characterizes Powys’s wider use of Welsh mythology throughout his fiction and autobiographical writing. Moran notes that due to the ‘enigmatic nature of the tradition’ of Celtic literature, it is impossible to apply any kind of systematization to its narratives, themes, and characters, a point that echoes scholars such as K.H. Jackson, who have noted that because of this very enigmatic nature it has often been the fashion to think of the ‘Celtic mind’ as ‘something mysterious, magical, filled with dark broodings over a mighty past’.32 In the character of Quirm, Powys is guilty of this romanticization of the Welsh people and their connection to the ancient secrets of life; Maiden Castle displays an attitude of Rachel Bromwich, Matthew Arnold and Celtic Literature (London, 1965), 5. Moran, ‘Animating Fictions in Maiden Castle’, 185; K.H. Jackson, A Celtic Miscellany: A Selection of Classic Celtic Literature (London, 1971), 19. 31

32

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imprecision and a tendency to portray Welsh material using an abstract Celtic mysticism. Quirm’s interpretation of Rhŷs’s theories, as represented, too, through Dud’s mediation of events, removes Powys’s mythology from any claim to authenticity – and on several occasions in Arthurian Literature Rhŷs himself laments the obscurity of the language of the medieval Welsh source.33 This lack of precision speaks to Powys’s initial obsession with the ‘idea of Wales and the idea of Welsh mythology’, alongside his image of himself as an ‘imaginative charlatan’ rather than the attentive scholar. In Maiden Castle, a creative approach to a Welsh ‘magical view of life’ is far more important to Powys than any rational, literary, or historical analysis of its mythology. Quirm has read the contemporary scholarship and has corresponded ‘with some Celtic professor at Aberystwyth’ (148) prior to calling himself Urien, yet his single literary source is Rhŷs, who, while an eminent and celebrated academic in his day, had had many of his ideas discredited by the 1930s.34 Quirm’s self-constructed identity is less aligned with what Matthew Arnold characterized as the ‘imperfect salvaging’ of older material, but rather Quirm professes to have inherited and to comprehend perfectly the secret wisdom of the ancient Welsh people.35 The Three-Horned Bull: Beast Symbolism and the Totality of Experience The Dorchester of Maiden Castle is compressed by ‘layers upon layers of human memories, semi-historic and pre-historic’ (91), from the hillfort’s Iron Age and Roman remains to the Neolithic site of Maumbury Rings. Powys’s final Wessex novel describes a state of totality comprising the limits of human experience and further expresses Powys’s view of the Mabinogi, that it represents a blend ‘of life and death and death with life’. Through Quirm’s philosophy of reincarnation, Powys develops his understanding of a Welsh mysticism made up of ‘desperate and violent extremes’, while also offering a critique of the modern scientific thought that he looked to overcome. The various mythological images of beasts throughout the narrative express the suffering that Powys viewed as inherent in human nature and necessary to achieving his personal vision. Ultimately, however, this way of life expressed through Welsh mythology proves incompatible with the strictures of modern society. One of the central debates that surrounds the hillfort in Maiden Castle, and that serves to foreground the anti-materialism in Powys’s magical philosophy, is the practical purpose behind the Wheeler excavations. Claudius Crask, the voice of social progress in the novel, views the digs as a positive attempt ‘to overcome Nature by science’ (153) and considers any evidence of past civilizations made at the site of interest only as a tool with which we might better ourselves, in ‘getting rid of all the old romantic nonsense, and studying the way our ancestors obtained their food supply and their water supply’ (151). Crask’s scientific view of history stems from a critique of Romantic values, in which he includes the ‘English mania for Nature’ of Rhŷs, Arthurian Literature, 156, n. 1, for example. See Juliette Wood, ‘Folk Narrative Research in Wales at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: The Influence of John Rhŷs (1840–1916)’, Folklore, 116/3 (2005), 325–41. 35 Bromwich, Matthew Arnold and Celtic Literature, 4. 33 34

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preserving parks and primroses: humankind must not dwell poetically on the past, Crask declares, but rather strive toward evolution – ‘the will of the only god we shall ever know’ (author’s italics) (84). Quirm dismisses the excavations as mere ‘scratchings’ and contends that an imaginative view of history contains the ‘truth of life’; his version of evolution is a process of creation and destruction in the mind. ‘All’s vision’, he tells Dud, and ‘[certain] masks of life ought to be destroyed … to make room … for those that have lain beneath them for ten thousand years’ (241). This, according to Powys, is a trait fundamental to the Welsh sensibility and indeed the most ancient of human wisdom, ‘namely that it is within the power of the will and the imagination’, he writes in his Autobiography, ‘to destroy and recreate the world’.36 This view of history reflects Powys’s own ‘imaginative charlatanism’, that the past in this instance is best used as a way into mythology and to a creative, but ultimately truthful, interpretation of what has gone before. Dud often finds himself between the world views espoused by Crask and his father, which, when considered together, embody two opposing cosmologies: modern, progressive thought on the one hand, and Powys’s ‘magical thinking’ on the other – the pursuit and recovery of a lost Golden Age. Dud’s own philosophy leans towards his father’s in this regard, that history is ‘at one remove’ (author’s italics) from reality, held at arm’s length through the prism of subjectivity (185). Through history, life is ‘seen under a certain light’, and this, for Dud, means seeking patterns in the world’s ‘magical overtones and undertones’ (185). His quest to discover the ‘ultimate meaning’ of death at the outset of the novel is triggered by an animal’s head carved into a bedpost that once belonged to his Welsh mother, its twin presumed lost (although, it transpires, kept by Quirm): The Woman from Wales … must have found in this mysterious head some token, some symbol of her concealed past; and the head itself, whatever it carried of old, dark, heraldic, or even mythological significance, had been the object round which, more than round anything else, the brooding imagination of his childhood, playing with the notions of both good and evil, had constantly hovered. (3)

Dud’s magical view of history leads him to associate this ‘demonic’ bedpost carving with the Questing Beast of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, a chimera-like creature with the head of a serpent, the body of a leopard, the buttocks of a lion, and the feet of a hart, and the questing knights Palomides and Pellinore, who, Dud considers, ‘might have been father and son’ (93). Dud also struggles to recall a theory he had once read in John Rhŷs (again, Studies in the Arthurian Legend, which most of Powys’s characters connected to Wales seem to have read), which links, through a ‘gnomic allusion of Taliesin’s’ (93), the Questing Beast with the word ‘Dormarth’. Rhŷs translates this as ‘Marth [death] at the door of Annwn or Hades, or … the Marth which was the door of Annwn.’37 Rhŷs thus identifies the motif with the dog of Gwyn ap Nud, Powys, Autobiography, 26. Rhŷs, Arthurian Literature, 157; ‘Dormarth’, according to Rhŷs, is a compound of the Welsh dôr, meaning ‘door’, and marth, ‘death’, a word that appears in a ‘curious passage’ from Llyfr Taliesin (Arthurian Literature, 156–57); in Haycock’s translation (2007), however, marth is not ‘death’, but rather ‘sorrow’ or ‘shame’, suggesting a mistranslation on Rhŷs’s part: 36 37

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‘king of the other world, hunting with his fierce hound’, who, according to a line in Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin, is named Dormarth.38 For Dud, the bedpost is representative of the entrance to the other world, and perhaps more specifically, to the Welsh Annwn. Jeremy Hooker interprets the beast symbols in the novel as representations of the totality of experience.39 For Dud, its significance, wrapped up in questions of his unknown parentage, is existential, and in his contemplation of the possibility of life after death he comes to the ‘raw, and entirely unmystical’ conclusion that other dimensions exist, and that if anything survives death then the Dormarth ‘of his mind’ was open to that survival (103). When its twin is finally presented to Dud as proof of his true paternity, the revelation produces a change in Dud’s mind ‘like some vast dim slippery beast out of the lake of his soul’ (158). Among the votive offerings unearthed at the Maiden Castle excavations is a threehorned bull, alongside a headless torso and the bust of a woman thought by many to depict the Roman goddess Minerva. A body is impaled on each of the bull’s horns and a third is ‘transfixed on its up-curving tail’ (154). The bull means little to Crask, but to Quirm the emergence of the animal stands for the dormant power of imaginative reincarnation, a symbol with access to the depths of human suffering that goes ‘deeper into life than anything in … Plato’ (154), referring to the volumes of Phaedrus and Timaeus that the family friend Teucer Wye keeps in the pockets of his coat. Alongside Dud’s ‘Dormath’, this second beast of Maiden Castle represents the necessary acceptance of the whole of human nature, its bestial side ‘no less than its god-like attributes’.40 In order to access the ultimate reality of magical thought, Powys writes in The Complex Vision, the soul must engage in a ‘desperate and savage struggle with itself ’; only when the imagination has accepted both the ‘highest’ and the ‘lowest’ will Quirm’s ‘old magic of the mind’ be able to disclose that there is nothing separating us from the ‘real reality’ (author’s italics).41 The wooden carving of Dormarth on ‘the Welsh woman[’s]’ bedpost and the three-horned bull are both emblems of the ‘lowest’ side of human experience, which comprises one of the extremes in the mystical union at the centre of Powys’s life-philosophy. Dormarth, in its role in Dud’s mind as the Arthurian ‘Questing Beast’, but in Rhŷs as the hound of Gwyn ap Nudd, is a representation of the ‘magical mixings up’ at the heart of Welsh mythology, and the bull, though never specifically identified, is an emblem of an older era, a chthonic figure that serves to demonstrate the limits of human suffering. Quirm describes to Dud what he calls a ‘hurt of the soul’ that he believes from a very young age he was born to endure: ‘All extreme emotions reach a point where you can’t distinguish between pain and pleasure’ (239) and through a ‘terrible’ suffering both love and hate become one, and the magician is able to break through. ‘The suffering is intense; but something in you rushes towards the suffering, opens its arms to the suffering’ (239). The emotion of love, Powys continues in The Complex Vision, ‘craves for the real existence of … “invisible companions”’, by which he Haycock, 317; 326. 38 Ibid., 155. 39 Jeremy Hooker, Writers of Wales: John Cowper Powys (Cardiff, 1973), 72. 40 Ibid. 41 Powys, The Complex Vision, 134; Hooker, John Cowper Powys, 73.

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means ‘actual living gods’, and the emotion of malice resists this.42 The struggle to achieve the eternal vision is in part the fusion of these two emotions, or energies.43 The kind of mental anguish experienced by Quirm ‘that loses itself in death-in-life’ is an essential aspect of Welsh mythology in Powys’s view and ‘the key to Urien’s country’ (243): this ‘country’ is ‘the land of Mureif and Rheged and Catraeth and “yr Echwydd”’ (243).44 Quirm’s struggle is in line with Powys’s conception of the Welsh; his attempt to ‘break through’ is a death in itself and confirms his role as corpse god in the narrative. Quirm is also the prime example in Powys’s fiction in this period of the impossibility of the re-alignment of the cosmic – that is, his perceived ability to ‘break through’ into a reality beyond through intense mental suffering – within the constrictions of modern society.45 Throughout Maiden Castle, Quirm and his wife Nancy live on the edge of poverty, and by the end Quirm must resort to writing articles for local newspapers in order to support himself; the articles, about the discoveries from the archaeological digs, expose his mythological identity of Urien, along with his theories, to public scrutiny. By presenting this aspect of himself through the medium of scientific journalism, he ‘[shakes] his own faith’ (429) and becomes ‘more vulnerable and human’ (393): Quirm’s personal brand of Welsh mysticism cannot maintain itself in the face of material poverty. Holed up in Glymes and on the verge of death, Quirm confides his situation to Wizzie: I thought … that I’d only tell them [the public] clearly what I was – the new medium, after all these years, of that great power of the abyss that the bards and prophets of my race have groped for – for them – I won’t say to accept – but to – to hear – to respect – not to turn what is my life into the – into the joke – oh, the devil’s joke! – of what they call ‘scientific research’. (443, author’s italics)

The rationalist and communist Crask prophesies this eventual decline, declaring the end of the age ‘of superior poetical persons, the age of Nature-worship, the age of the gods’ (403). Quirm begins to doubt his own way of being in the world and considers that perhaps his theories of reincarnation and imaginative destruction Powys, The Complex Vision, 134. Krissdóttir, John Cowper Powys and the Magical Quest, 15. 44 ‘Yr Echwyd’ is frequently used by Powys to mean Annwn or the Celtic otherworld. In his discussion of Urien in Arthurian Legend, Rhŷs mentions ‘Urien of the Echwyđ’ or, his own translation, ‘Urien Lord of the Evening’, as one of Urien’s titles (248–49). Similarly, Rhŷs’s translated lines ‘On the Echwyđ [yr echwyđ] evil has fallen’ from Llyfr Coch Hergest, suggests Echwyd to be the realm of Urien, ‘the twilight’, writes Rhŷs, ‘which is essential to the illusion and glamour on which this whole cosmos of unreality is founded’ (257, 259). This is, however, a curious view to take now that Yr Echwydd is understood by modern Celtic specialists to have simply been a place name in the Old North. Powys’s use of the name to mean Annwn would therefore appear nonsensical to current scholarship. See Paul Russell, ‘Three Notes on Canu Urien’, North American Journal of Celtic Studies, 4/1 (2020), 48–78. 45 Hooker makes a similar point: ‘[For Powys] there was no way of relating cosmic forces to ordinary human interests that did not involve both a socially unrealistic forcing together of these now disparate elements and an act of imaginative archaeology, whereby he sought to uncover and recreate a mythology consonant with his own mythological awareness’ (John Cowper Powys, 64). 42 43

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really are just ‘tommy-rot’ (author’s italics) (443). Publishing his beliefs to the scientific community as a way to earn a meagre living leaves Quirm open to the kind of scrutiny that his previous introspection and solitary life would never have admitted. At the excavation site, Wizzie watches Quirm’s face sink, as if he were ‘burying’ his intellect, his pride, and ‘his very soul at the bottom of an interior pit’ (366). He regrets telling even those closest to him, his wife, his son, Wizzie, and Thuella, of his identity as a reincarnated ‘dark divinity’, for none of them understands that the power of the other world is the power of the ‘Golden Age’; his talk of death and Dud’s impression of him as the ‘rex mortuus’ has been misunderstood, he says, and have ‘[turned] the dew of darkness into evil, and Brân the Blessed into a demon’ (460). ‘[Now] it has once appeared’, the power of the desire Quirm calls ‘hiraeth’, the untranslatable Welsh word for longing for one’s homeland, cannot be destroyed, but, Quirm concludes, he will never feel it again (460). His attempts to leave the house become a pitiable version of the previous beast-symbols of the novel, groping for the door handle ‘as a beast might do who was standing on his hind legs’ in slippers with the backs trodden down, and Thuella follows to find him moving slowly towards the kitchen on all fours. The animal nature of humankind has been reduced to impotency through misinterpretation and exploitation. Just before he dies, Quirm renounces the name Urien, ordering his wife to call him Enoch, and his final words ‘I am … what I am. So it’s alright. It doesn’t matter’ (473, author’s italics) convey his acceptance that this fundamentally ancient force is unable to exist in a modern era in which a scientific view of history operates. Conclusion: Towards Wales and ‘the Source of the Dream’ Whereas previous critical studies of Powys’s novels, such as G. Wilson Knight’s and Morine Krissdóttir’s,46 have traced Powys’s attempt to achieve in his fiction, through various mythological and occult systems, a spiritual Golden Age, this chapter has sought a clearer line of development in Powys’s thinking, particularly with regard to Wales and its mythology. Maiden Castle charts an increasingly greater engagement with Wales as it began to provide Powys with a literature and a world view (albeit invented) that offered the potential for a unified conception of the universe. The novel represents an exploration of what it might mean in Powys’s view to embody a particular aspect of Welsh mythology; although Enoch Quirm is well read in Welsh material and its criticism, it is the mythology’s imaginative and spiritual elements that speak to him and go some way to capturing the essence of Powys’s complex vision. The struggle for a unified, mystical conception of the universe entails profound introspection in order to access a pre-individuated, ‘primitive’, and therefore more magical way of thinking. Powys’s method of ‘imaginative archaeology’, what he calls his ‘charlatanism’, is present throughout his Wessex novels, in Maiden Castle in particular, as the author began to shape his understanding of Welsh mythology into an expression of his

G. Wilson Knight, The Saturnian Quest (see note 19 above); Morine Krissdόttir, John Cowper Powys and the Magical Quest (see note 6 above). 46

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own philosophy.47 His attempt to reconstruct separate mythological sources using Rhŷs’s scholarship demonstrates that, like Quirm’s interpretation of his Celtic roots, Powys’s idiosyncratic blend of medievalism was as selective as it was primarily an undertaking of the creative imagination. He had expressed an early devotion to the ‘idea’ of Wales and its literature twenty years prior to writing The Complex Vision, although this devotion only influenced his novels incrementally. For Dud No-man and Enoch Quirm, Welsh ancestry becomes fundamental, not simply to their relationship as father and son, but to experiencing the ‘old magic of the mind’ through their very idiosyncratic interpretation of Welsh mythology. Hooker summarizes Powys’s evolution in this period as ‘always recessive, towards the source of the dream’, a comment that gains even greater significance when considered alongside Powys’s final major novels.48 Maiden Castle was finished in Corwen, North Wales, where Powys would live for the next two decades of his life (1935–1955), and it represents a final attempt to access his vision in his childhood landscapes of Wessex. His next three novels – Morwyn, or the Vengeance of God (1937), Owen Glendower (1940), and Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages (1951) – which are set in Wales itself, demonstrate a more complete engagement with the history and mythology of Wales, and suggest that, like the author’s conception of its introverted people, it is a country more suited to Powys’s version of reality.

47 48

Hooker, John Cowper Powys, 64. Ibid., 66.

III

Activist Medievalism

9 ‘Green Growing Pains’: The ‘Green Children of Woolpit’ and Child Refugees Carolyne Larrington

A

t the end of a long summer’s day after a day of toil, workers are heading home. Suddenly, they come across two children, crying pitiably. When they ask what is wrong, there is no response. The children are taken to the authorities and questioned, but no answers are forthcoming; the youngsters do not seem to know any English. Nor will they accept any of the food they are offered, and they continue to cry miserably until – quite by chance – someone brings in some food they do recognize and they are willing to eat. This seems to function as a kind of turning point, for the girl at least. She becomes accepted within the local culture, acquires the language, and thrives in certain respects, though some of the community question her sexual morals. The boy, however, cannot follow his sister in making a new life, and he gives up, wasting away and finally dying. There is one other noteworthy detail: the children had a skin-colour quite different from what was typical in their host community. They were both bright green. The Green Children Such, in outline, is the story of the ‘Green Children of Woolpit’, recorded by two independent chroniclers, Abbot Ralph of Coggeshall, a religious house not far from Woolpit, and William of Newburgh in distant Yorkshire, in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.1 The two chroniclers’ accounts roughly concur, both with Ralph of Coggeshall, Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Joseph Stephenson, Rolls Series 66 (London, 1875), 118–20; William of Newburgh, The History of English Affairs, Book I (Historia Rerum Anglicarum), ed. and trans. P.G. Walsh and M.J. Kennedy (Warminster, 1988), 115–17. My citations and translation from John Clark’s study, ‘The Green Children of Woolpit’, Academia.edu, 2018, https://www.academia.edu/10089626/ The_Green_Children_of_Woolpit?auto=download [accessed 15 December 2021]. 1

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regard to what happened to these lost children and the children’s later account of their original homeland. As just related, the distraught children cannot communicate, cannot eat the unfamiliar food they are offered – until by chance they consume the beans – and the boy dies. The girl, however, thrives and is baptized, according to Ralph. Both indeed are baptized in William’s version, but this does not help the boy. The girl learns English and loses her distinctive feature of green-skinnedness. In Ralph of Coggeshall, she goes to the bad: ‘[N]imium lasciva et petulans exstitit’ [Becomes rather wanton and impudent]; in William of Newburgh’s account, she marries at some distance away in (King’s) Lynn. Once she (or they) acquire English, the children are able to explain some details about their homeland. They purport to come from a hidden underground land. The description of this country shares some of the features linked to the medieval fairy-world, in the association of its inhabitants with greenness (though it is generally fairy clothing, not skin, that is green), the lack of natural light, and the strong emotional reaction to the sound of the church-bells that draws the children to the human world.2 What we are to make of William’s account of the land as being Christian, having churches, and being known as St Martin’s land is debateable.3 What seems clear though is that something unusual happened in Woolpit in the mid-twelfth century (in the reign of King Stephen, according to William), and the two chroniclers heard about it. Different explanations have been offered for the children’s appearance and difference: that they were anaemic or suffering from some kind of malnutrition, or that they were refugees from Flanders, fleeing hardship and violence in their homelands.4 That they are in some way the ‘original’ of the tale of the Babes in the Wood has also been mooted; their parents who could not feed them had left them in the woods to die, but they somehow made their way back to safety.5 It is striking, however, that the story does not have the shape or structure of a traditional folktale, a changeling story, or the type of tale in which a fairy child is nurtured in the human realm for a period; rather its inexplicability and the variability in transmission suggest an actual happening. The mysterious children puzzled and fascinated William of Newburgh, who could not account logically for their apparently having emerged out of the earth: Dicat quisque quod voluerit, et ratiocinetur de his ut poterit; me autem prodigiosum mirabilemque eventum exposuisse non piget.

See Katharine Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural Figures (London, 1976), 200–01 and Diane Purkiss, Troublesome Things: A History of Fairies and Fairy-Stories (London, 2000), 62–63. 3 See the discussions of Martin W. Walsh, ‘Medieval English Martinmesse: The Archaeology of a Forgotten Festival’, Folklore, 111 (2000), 247–48, and John Clark, ‘Martin and the Green Children’, Folklore, 117 (2006), 207–14. 4 Clark, ‘The Green Children’, 27–28 rightly rejects the arguments of Paul Harris, ‘The Green Children of Woolpit: A 12th-Century Mystery and Its Possible Solution’, Fortean Times, 4 (1998), 81–95, that the children might have been Flemish. 5 Jennifer Westwood, Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain (London, 1985), 170–71. See also Randolph Stow’s discussion of the story in Anthony J. Hassall, ‘Interview with Randolph Stow’, Australian Literary Studies, 10/3 (1982), 320–21. 2

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[Let anyone say what he likes and make what he can of this affair; but I am not ashamed to have related this wonderful and marvellous happening.] (Chapter 27) Porro puerorum illorum viridium, qui de terra emersisse dicuntur, abstrusior ratio est, quam utique nostri sensus tenuitas non sufficit indagare. [But the explanation of those green children who are said to have emerged from the ground is more puzzling, certainly our meagre intelligence is insufficient to solve the problem.] (Chapter 28)6

Many other writers have indeed said what they liked and made what they could of this ‘wonderful and marvellous happening’. Its modern reception takes off from the nineteenth-century tale-collector Thomas Keightley, whose version was highly influential upon twentieth-century retellings; other writers and singers considered below have retold and reinterpreted the story with direct reference to the Latin sources, while also drawing upon popular and often speculative explanations of the tale’s events.7 Both accounts place the tale firmly in the environs of the Suffolk village of Woolpit, close to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds (and providing a possible conduit of transmission from the village via the Abbey to the two chroniclers), and, according to William, the surviving child’s later marriage took place further afield in East Anglia, in Lynn. Yet the story now invites consideration within the terms of international medievalism, as defined by Louise D’Arcens and Andrew Lynch: a medievalism in which ‘geographical, cultural, and temporal demarcations are brought into question … in which epochs are co-present and national cultures are problematized sometimes even as they are invoked’.8 Despite its inherent regionality, its textual locatedness within chronicle accounts of an England coming to terms with its own (re-)construction under a Norman hegemony that sought, as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen has argued, to elide pre-existing racial differences in the British archipelago, the story’s engagement with themes of alienation and assimilation, of resistance to displacement, of memory, loss and longing, demands that the tale now be read in terms of what D’Arcens and Lynch identify as ‘global … postcolonial iterations of medievalism’.9 Thus, the suggestions in both chronicle versions that the children came from a mysterious elsewhere, an origin that accounts for their unusual skin-colour and their pronounced cultural differences in diet, language, and customs, opens up the possibility of re-mediating the story to reflect on more contemporary attitudes to migrant or refugee children arriving All Latin texts and translations from Clark, ‘The Green Children’, here 123. Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries … A New Edition, Revised and Greatly Enlarged (London, 1850), 281–83; see also Clark, ‘The Green Children’, 14–24 for a survey of the transmissions and notable retellings of the story. 8 Louise D’Arcens and Andrew Lynch, ‘Introduction: The Medieval, the International, the Popular’, in International Medievalism and Popular Culture, ed. Louise D’Arcens and Andrew Lynch (Amherst, 2014), xi. 9 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Green Children from Another World; Or, the Archipelago in England’, in Cultural Diversity in Medieval Britain: Archipelago, Island, England, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York, 2008), 75–94; D’Arcens and Lynch, ‘Introduction’, xv. 6 7

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in a new community, how they are treated and regarded, and, crucially – once they have gained the capacity to use the language of the new social group – the words they choose to speak of their earlier selves and their irrecoverable homelands. In this essay, I consider the ways in which two twentieth-century writers developed the tale’s themes of alienation and assimilation, before turning to some very recent responses to the tale that engage with and evade or refuse those themes. Finally, I re-read the medieval tale against the reflections of a contemporary child refugee on her own migrant experience. Sylvia Townsend Warner’s ‘Elphenor and Weasel’ The green girl appears in a story by Sylvia Townsend Warner, published in 1974, part of a wonderfully wry series of stories about fairies, the different fairy courts in which they live, and their varying interactions with humans.10 Townsend Warner draws on some details of the Green Children story and touches on the speculation that surrounds it. Here, Weasel, the green girl, manifests herself to Elphenor, a fairy from the Flemish fairy court at Zuy, himself a shipwrecked refugee in Suffolk who has apprenticed himself to an exploitative necromancer. Out gathering henbane for his master one day, he is charged by a ewe, defending her lamb: He was still flat on his back when a girl appeared from nowhere, stooped over him, and slapped his face, hard and accurately. To assert his manly dignity he pulled her down on top of him – and saw that she was green. She was a very pretty shade of green – a pure delicate tint, such as might have been cast on a white eggshell by the sun shining through the young foliage of a beech tree. Her hair, brows, and lashes were a darker shade; her lashes lay on her green cheek like a miniature fern frond … The smell, of course, was the smell of elderflowers. (‘Elphenor and Weasel’ (hereafter ‘EaW’, loc. 1022))

Weasel is not a refugee, for she and her green kind live nearby, ‘under the hill’ (EaW, loc. 1046), but she cannot take Elphenor there: ‘Green folk don’t draw green blood. But they’d tear you to pieces’ (EaW, loc. 1068), she tells him. If Weasel’s community is fiercely exclusionary, Elphenor’s is ostensibly more civilized, but he too admits that he could never bring Weasel home to Zuy, for ‘they’d never forgive you for being green’ (EaW, loc. 1068). For a while, the two lovers find security with Elphenor’s employer. But Master Blackbone is plotting to sell the fairies to a London entrepreneur to be exploited as caged, performing spectacles. ‘Weasel’s relations would murder him because he was not green, Master Blackbone designed to sell them because they were fairies’ (EaW, loc. 1092), Elphenor realizes. The lovers take to the road, and the story settles into the picaresque for a few pages. Weasel’s all-too-visible greenness makes working for a living difficult: ‘In these rustic places which had never seen a circus or an Indian peddler, her lovely 10 Sylvia Townsend Warner, ‘Elphenor and Weasel’, in Kingdoms of Elfin (London, 1977; repr. London, 2018). First published in The New Yorker, 16 December 1974. Cited here from Kindle electronic edition.

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green face would have brought stones rattling on their heels’ (EaW, loc. 1117). Although they manage a precarious existence through Elphenor’s readiness to take a number of poorly paid menial jobs, and with a little thieving (for both fairies can become invisible at will), come winter they take refuge in a church, where they feast on the communion wafers and wine. This riskily Christian fare has no ill-effect on the couple, and they cheerfully plan a future together, living cosily in the bell-tower. But when the village bell-ringers come to practise in preparation for Christmas, the hideous din of the bells kills Weasel outright and Elphenor perishes beside her. ‘They were buried in the same grave. Because of their small stature and light bones they were entered into the Register of Burials as Two Stranger Children’ (EaW, loc. 1204). As Ingrid Hotz-Davies notes, Townsend Warner knew a good deal about European fairy-lore. In Kingdoms of Elfin, she imagines a series of different fairy societies located in traditional fairy haunts across Europe, employing a style that ‘can be described as ethnographic: a rich description of the local customs of Elfin and human worlds from the perspective of an observer who has access to people’s minds, but who tries to be dispassionate and, above all, neutral about what is being observed’.11 Fairy culture mirrors some of the more unattractive features of historical and contemporary human societies, and it also shines a strangely oblique light on what it means to be human: ‘[T]hey are not us, unless they are – at times – the wrong side of our weaving’, says Greer Gilman.12 Loneliness, exile, in particular the misery of exclusion from one’s home-court, are constant themes in the stories, along with the exploration of different stratagems for adaptation, as practised both by humans and fairies. These themes, so Kate McDonald suggests, partly arise from Warner’s loss of her life-companion, Valentine Ackland (d. 1969), not long before she turned back to the fantasy mode that had launched her career as a novelist with Lolly Willowes (1926).13 ‘Elphenor and Weasel’ makes knowing use of some details from the medieval account of the ‘Green Children’. Weasel’s green skin and her unusual diet – flagged up by her preference for eating her food raw – marks her as Other, both among civilized fairy-kind, the inhabitants of Elphenor’s home in Zuy, and in the human world alongside which the green community from ‘under the hill’ normally lives. Where the green girl gradually loses her colour (perhaps through the efficacy of baptism), Weasel’s greenness cannot be disguised or elided; she is indeed inclined to flaunt it when the couple are in Yarmouth, and the more cautious Elphenor has to restrain her reckless behaviour. Townsend Warner develops in this, the third story in the collection, the themes of loss and estrangement that permeate Kingdoms of Elfin, drawing out the suggestions in ‘The Green Children’ that the children are unwilling migrants, forced by inexplicable circumstances into a permanent exclusion from their homelands through no fault of their own. The migrant in this story is not 11 Ingrid Hotz-Davies, ‘Introduction’, in Kingdoms of Elfin (see n. 10 above), loc. 237. Hotz-Davies notes Warner’s reliance on Robert Kirk’s The Secret Commonwealth (composed between 1691 and 1692 and published in 1815). 12 Greer Gilman, ‘Foreword’, in Kingdoms of Elfin (see n. 10 above). Online, loc. 62. 13 Kate McDonald, ‘The Scottish Kingdoms of Elfin’, The Bottle Imp, 24 (2018), https:// www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2018/12/the-scottish-kingdoms-of-elfin [accessed 22 December 2021].

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Weasel, but the shipwrecked Elphenor, ‘penniless, purposeless, breakfastless, and the wind had blown his shoes off ’ (EaW, loc. 974) when he meets Master Blackbone. It is Weasel’s reckless romantic commitment to Elphenor that estranges her from her own folk ‘under the hill’. While Elphenor loves and cherishes Weasel’s difference, he is clear-sighted about the discrimination they face both in East Anglia’s human communities and among their own kind. Their differences make them ripe for exploitation and mistreatment by humans; they have to thieve and dodge to survive in a series of precarious environments. Although Elphenor works as and when he can, Weasel’s greenness excludes her even from this. There is no place, neither in the human nor fairy world, where the two lovers can be together, and their epitaph, ‘Two Stranger Children’, is oddly fitting. Randolph Stow’s The Girl Green as Elderflower The Australian author Randolph Stow wrote The Girl Green as Elderflower in 1980, but the story is set in the early ’60s.14 It also deals in complex ways with questions of deracination, of belonging, arrival and return, as summed up by Melanie Duckworth: ‘[A]ntipodean traumas of displacement are explored in the context of finely crafted Australian medievalism.’15 The novel is about a young expatriate, Crispin Clare (‘an antipodean child of modernity’, as Kerryn Goldsworthy calls him), who has contracted cerebral malaria in colonial service in Papua New Guinea and has come ‘home’ to a little cottage in Suffolk to convalesce, with the support of some distant cousins and a group of friends that he acquires during the year of his recovery.16 ‘[F]or so many postcolonials who have made the atavistic journey to ancestral lands, this place feels paradoxically like home’, notes Goldsworthy: a nostalgic and idealized relationship to England maintained even when several generations have passed since emigration.17 Instinctively feeling his way through physical and mental convalescence, Clare begins to immerse himself in local folklore and legend, including the various iterations of the tale of the Green Children – ‘medieval tales of abandonment and dislocation with lost, alien figures’, as Andrew Lynch terms them.18 As he begins to heal through reading and writing, Clare reshapes the experiences of his social circle – family, old and freshly made friends – into new, time-slipping versions of the old tales. The tale of the Green Children is the last of the three main stories Clare refashions, but the always elusive green girl appears very early in the novel. She is first encountered leaving the village pub as Clare and his cousin, the nineteen-year-old 14 Randolph Stow, The Girl Green as Elderflower (London, 1980; repr. Melbourne, 2015). I owe thanks to Andrew Lynch who repeatedly urged me to read Stow’s novel, and at last I did. 15 Melanie Duckworth, ‘Grievous Music: Randolph Stow’s Middle Ages’, Australian Literary Studies, 26/3–4 (2011), 103. 16 Kerryn Goldsworthy, ‘Introduction: Time and Time Again’, in The Girl Green as Elderflower (Melbourne, 2015). All citations are from the Kindle electronic edition. Quote from loc. 78. Stow had himself contracted malaria (not cerebral malaria) in Papua New Guinea in 1959; see Hassall, ‘Interview’, 317. 17 Goldsworthy, ‘Introduction’, loc. 97. 18 Andrew Lynch, ‘“I have so many truths to tell”: Randolph Stow’s Visitants and The Girl Green as Elderflower’, Australian Literary Studies, 26/1 (2011), 29.

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student Mark, are entering it, ‘a slight girl whose hair, lit from behind, shone very fair … The girl’s eyes, as well as Clare could see, were green or blue’ (The Girl Green as Elderflower, hereafter GG, loc. 506). The girl ignores Mark’s greeting: ‘“Foreign bitch”, Mark muttered’ (GG, loc. 525). ‘“She’s one of Lady Munby’s au pairs. They come and go. From Scandinavia and thereabouts”’ (GG, loc. 525). Varying origin stories are ascribed to the girl in the ‘real world’ of the novel; Mark’s belief that she is Scandinavian chimes with the contemporary view of Scandinavian women as sexually adventurous in comparison with pre-sexual revolution Britain. Jim, a Canadian ex-Jesuit, who brought her into the pub, takes her, on the other hand, ‘for a local girl’ (GG, loc. 607). The mysterious young woman flits through the book, yet Clare never gets to speak to her. She is often spotted in or near the church, drawn perhaps by the sound of its bells. Towards the end of the novel, Robin the carpenter talks of being seduced by her: ‘“My experience warnt a rare one, by all accounts. They says there’s only three things she’s interested in and two are round.”’ ‘“She’s a stranger of some kind”’, he adds, ‘“I’d say Welsh”’ (GG, loc. 1710). The girl vanishes from the present-day story, but the erotic and romantic promise of her green eyes lingers with Clare. The motif is resolved in the book’s closing moments, when, looking at his recently widowed cousin Alicia, he notices ‘in her eyes, the colour of fine dry sherry, a few flecks of green’ (GG, loc. 2101). In Clare’s reworking of the story of the Green Children, the boy dies not long after he is baptized; he ‘began to dwindle and pine’. In his dying moments, he speaks in his own language: ‘The boy murmured again, and the girl said, her face thin with dread, “He says ‘Green’. He says ‘Home’. He says ‘Green home’”’ (GG, loc. 1875). After her brother’s death, the girl, now christened Mirabel, is regarded by all the men who encounter her as mysterious and other-worldly, embodying, as Lynch perceptively observes, ‘the erotic aspects of fabulation and interpretation’.19 Mirabel tells each of her different lovers (for she is indeed, as Ralph claimed, ‘nimia lascivia et petulans’, very lascivious and wanton) a series of different origin stories. She and her brother are ancient, indigenous beings: Stone Age workers, who have come from the flintmines of Grime’s Graves (GG, loc. 1912), she claims; or they hail from the time of Merddin (Merlin), later identified as St Martin, who gave his name to their land (GG, loc. 1976). Or perhaps the siblings found their way upwards from the other side of the earth, from the Antipodes or were trafficked from Tartary and sold as slaves (GG, locs 1932; 2031).20 What is the truth? ‘“Does it matter?” asked the girl with a shy laugh, “I have so many truths to tell”’ (GG, loc. 2037). The immateriality of whether she is from here or elsewhere, whether she ends up wed to a persecuted Jew from Lynn, retreating into lifelong hiding with him, or whether she stays in the manor, taking multiple lovers and bringing joy to the men of the community – each of the green girl’s fabulations holds out to Clare a promise of healing, sketching ‘the potential conditions of a new beginning’, says Lynch.21 Though the new friends that Clare makes in Suffolk – Jim-Jacques the French-Canadian priest, a Jewish schoolfriend from Australia – scatter around the world in search of their destinies, he and 19 20 21

Ibid., 28. ‘[I]ndefinably local, yet strange’, Lynch, ‘I have so many truths’, 31. Ibid., 31.

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his cousins remain in Suffolk: the centre of those stories that have rooted him in East Anglia. Returning home, wherever that may be, is not an option for the green girl, nor, it seems, for Clare, whose peripatetic youth, taking him from South Africa to New Zealand, Malaya, Australia, and Papua New Guinea, has left him with no place to be: ‘The end of the Empire was pretty confusing to families like mine’, he tells Jim (GG, loc. 637) on first meeting him. By the end of the novel, he is settling into his new life as an academic, finding contentment; there is an intimation too of sexual fulfilment in his final realization of Alicia’s kinship to the green girl. The Girl Green as Elderflower complicates and destabilizes themes of home, colonial estrangement, and assimilation in interesting ways by Clare’s own deracination and his return as a highly damaged man to his family’s long-abandoned home county and by the sense that the modern characters are destined to play out archetypal patterns. Stow’s novel argues that it is possible for Clare and his friends to find ways of being in the world that – critically – do not depend on assimilation and the abandonment of individual identity in order to flourish. Modern Fairies From 2017 to 2020, I was involved in two separate projects of medievalist-folkloric remediation. The first was the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council-sponsored research study ‘Modern Fairies and Loathly Ladies’.22 For this project, my role was to identify around fifty traditional stories about fairies and loathly ladies and to present them to a band of twelve (ultimately thirteen) artists – musicians, poets, animators, painters, writers – to see how they might create new art out of old tales: making these fairies modern. The ‘Green Children’ story was one selected, and the singer Marry Waterson took up the material in two different songs, drawing on her own research into popular theories about the Green Children, and the connections she made to contemporary analogues to their situation. Waterson commented in an interview for the project: The other [inaudible] I’ve used in a way of looking at it from a refugee point of view, which is the modern angle of the story for me in that these people were different from their community, and they have a different language. They look different and it’s an assimilation to the community. Displacement is a real topic of concern, sadly.23

In the first of her songs, ‘Green in My Growing Pains’ (at present unrecorded), migrant birds carry the children from their violent and war-torn home, ‘from the hands of war, from the hounds of war’, to a place where their childhood songs can only be sung in ‘borrowed tongues’. The speaker is the girl survivor; ‘my brother died along the byway’, she relates. Waterson added a second set of lyrics about the ‘Babes in the Wood’, taking her cue from the popular connection between the Green AHRC Grant Ref.: AH/P013724/1. I gratefully acknowledge the AHRC for their support. For a full account of this project, see Carolyne Larrington and Fay Hield, ‘Making “Modern Fairies”: Making Fairies Modern’, Folklore, 132/1 (2021), 72–96. 23 Marry Waterson, ‘Modern Fairies’ artists’ interview transcript, 2019. 22

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Children and the folk-tale. The Babes are also interpreted as refugee children – though they are not green. Both children die in the strange place, and the birds cover their bodies with leaves. When the story and Waterson’s responses to it were discussed in an audience focus group at the Sage Gateshead in 2019, one participant immediately noted that the tale ‘should have been for Libya’.25 Waterson composed a second song, based on the poem ‘The Green Children’ by the American writer Jane Yolen.26 This is an allusive retelling of the story, emphasizing the greenness of the children as ‘the green of the early breaking leaf ’. As ever, the boy dies, but the girl survives and ‘forgot her green song’. Finally, she marries ‘all in white’, ‘the white of the old moon that shines o’er the hall’. Time erases the old language, and the elision of difference is completed by being ‘christened and named’. From the perspective of the community that finds her and her brother, the girl is now thoroughly integrated.27 There was some debate within the ‘Modern Fairies’ project among the artists as to what constituted ‘making modern’. Waterson chose to develop and perform her more traditional retelling, designing an animation in which the children wear contemporary clothes in preference to her ‘Growing Pains’ song; in ‘Green Children’, the contemporary relevance of the migration theme was not directly addressed. Waterson was not the only artist in the project to engage with the ‘Green Children’ story. American-born Terri Windling explored the suggestion that the girl did indeed marry and had descendants still living in East Anglia.28 Windling’s imagined interview, recorded for the Modern Fairies’ performance at the Sage Gateshead by Martin Carthy, is framed as a grandson’s reminiscence about his green girl grandmother, recalling the stories she had told him. Time is telescoped in this treatment; the first part of the recording was made on a wax cylinder, suggestive of the tradition’s great age, while the substance of Windling’s monologue could be as easily ascribed to a thirteenth-century Suffolk man as to a contemporary voice.29 The speaker gives voice to the children’s terror on emerging from the cave into the brilliant light of the English day: 24

See above, n. 5 and Clark, ‘The Green Children’, 16. ‘Modern Fairies’ focus group interview transcript, April 2019. 26 Jane Yolen, ‘The Green Children’, The Journal of Mythic Arts, n.d., https://endicottstudio. typepad.com/poetrylist/green-children-by-jane-yolen.html [accessed 22 December 2021]. Originally published 1993. 27 Waterson’s song can be heard in the Modern Fairies podcast series 2, episode 3: ‘Fairies and Children’, University of Oxford Podcasts, 2020, https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series-twoepisode-three-fairies-and-children [accessed 22 December 2021]. A live performance of the song and an accompanying animation (with Natalie Rae Reid) is available at ‘Modern Fairies Gatherings at the Sage, Gateshead’, Modern Fairies, 2020, http://modernfairies.co.uk/blog/ modern-fairies-gatherings-at-the-sage-gateshead [accessed 22 December 2021] at 17.00. 28 Clark, ‘The Green Children’, 83–84, considering the arguments of Duncan Lunan, made in Children from the Sky: A Speculative Treatment of a Medieval Mystery; The Green Children of Woolpit (London, 2012). Windling has also written her own version of the story, ‘The Green Children’, in the anthology The Armless Maiden and Other Tales of Childhood’s Survivors (New York, 1995), 269–74. 29 Available in the ‘Modern Fairies’ podcast series 2, episode 3. It can be heard in the performance film: ‘Modern Fairies Gatherings at the Sage, Gateshead’ at 11.30 (see n. 27). 24 25

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They knew, at once, this was not their world, so they turned to go back home again … but the cave was gone. They searched and they searched for it, but it had disappeared. And then they sat in the cold, strange grass, holding each other and shivering, until the men coming home from the fields crossed over the hill and found them.

He ends his reminiscence with his grandmother’s integration – and the resistance to it that is figured by acts of memory and of re-telling: ‘She was christened on a warm summer’s day. They called her Mary. They taught her not to speak of the child that she’d once been. They thought that she’d forget. She never forgot. And neither will I.’ Petulans (impudent) indeed. Hag The second remediation project that I was involved with was initiated by Audible Books. They commissioned a podcast series, comprising a new collection of short stories written by authors with a strong regional identification. My brief was to find traditional tales from particular localities (originally eight in all, later ten), and the authors were to respond to them, rewrite them, or take them as inspiration.30 For East Anglia, I selected ‘The Green Children’ in order to see what another artist might make of it. Daisy Johnson, who has strong roots in East Anglia, was commissioned to write the new story; her take on the Green Children is striking and original. I had hoped that she might take up the migrant theme directly, but although her story engages with identity, family, and belonging and also offers a metafictional and self-reflexive response to the task of re-writing, the migration issue is only briefly raised – and rejected.31 Johnson addresses the situation of a writer commissioned to rewrite the ‘Green Children’ story, who finds herself blocked. She seeks to catalyse her imagination by going with her family around Christmastime to Woolpit, where of course there is nothing to see bar the village-sign. They do find the ‘Ladies’ Well’, a dirty, disappointing spring with an old healing tradition. Splashing water from the spring into her eyes sets off for the writer a train of strange events. On the way to Woolpit, she and the family are discussing the story, and her sister’s boyfriend, a trainee GP, asserts that the children’s greenness must have been caused by anaemia. After the visit, they are still chewing over the tale: Everyone in the family has an opinion about the story and I wonder if I’ve somehow ruined it by getting them involved, somehow broken the retelling so that it won’t spin out right on the page. My sister thinks I should put a refugee slant on it, a story for our modern times, an allegory.32

But this is not how the protagonist develops the story. The writer returns to London, still struggling with the tale, until a strange figure, an old woman – conceivably a version of the green girl herself – arrives at the flat, invited in by the ‘Hag’ podcast series (Audible books, 2019). The stories, along with the original tales and two newly commissioned stories, were published by Virago Press: Hag (London, 2020). 31 Daisy Johnson, ‘A Retelling’, in Hag, 17–36. 32 Ibid., 21. 30

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increasingly disturbed narrator. She does not speak, only eats beans (of the baked variety) and brings with her dampness and fen-like stagnation. This eerie visitor chimes with the narrator’s sense that she has never quite belonged in her own family or perhaps even among humans. Could she herself be a lost green child? The tale begins and ends with a return to Woolpit, to a kind of cyclical death and birth that suggests that the green children recur and return – or that the narrator has lost herself in an obsessive madness. Johnson’s story glances at and then comprehensively rejects the idea of the children as a real lost boy and girl, the ‘refugee slant’. Rather, she prefers to focus on alienation from and failure to assimilate within the norms of family life and modern middle-class aspirations. In an interview included in the podcast, Johnson discusses the uncertainty around the original girl’s fate: whether she did marry or became ‘a bit wild. “Slut,” my sister said’, as the story has it.33 Transformed into an old woman, ‘something maybe more mythic’ and still not assimilated to contemporary society – aligned rather with a sinisterly clammy and engulfing nature and taking on many of her brother’s qualities of refusal and resistance – this version of the green girl is, somehow, still threateningly among us. Migrant Children and Dina Nayeri’s The Ungrateful Refugee The medieval tale of the Green Children resonates with the contemporary experience of migrant children, whether or not unwilling migration is intuited as underlying the original chronicle entries.34 Their misery and fear when they discover that the cavern from which they emerged has vanished and that there is no way back speaks to the twin revelations that not only is home irrevocably lost but also, for the unaccompanied youngster in particular, dislocation often is not freely chosen. The problems of language and diet, the apprehension of differences in religion – in short, all the processes of assimilation into the new culture – affect the boy and the girl differently. For the boy, whether baptized or not, assimilation proves impossible: he cannot or will not adjust to his new surroundings, and he turns his face to the wall. ‘He nonetheless carries an otherness within him that seems incapable of transformation. A foreigner who retains his queerness, the little boy dies “prematurely” [immatura morte], yielding his life in order to remain unchanged, in order to prevent his own fading into ordinariness’, argues Cohen, who reads the boy as figuring an ‘indigenous’ – indeed British, rather than English – resistance to integration within the new Norman political order and an imagined longer-term, British refusal of ‘Englishness’: he remains ‘an adamantly alien interloper who refuses assimilation, adulthood, history, Englishness, modernity’.35 The girl, however, succeeds in blending in, learning the language, eating human food, becoming acculturated to the Ibid., 19. Clark (‘The Green Children’) considers whether the lost children might have belonged among the international pilgrims who came to East Anglia to visit Walsingham and even to Woolpit itself where there was a famous statue of the Virgin Mary (52), though he identifies as a more likely hypothesis that they might have come to England with foreign merchants visiting the great wool fairs that took place four times a year (74–75). 35 Cohen, ‘The Green Children’, 90, 91. 33

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extent of successfully marrying and possibly having descendants in the East Anglia community – or failing to conform with local sexual mores and choosing a more active and sexual identity. Quite possibly, reading across from modern experiences of migrancy and trafficking, she may have become a sex-worker; alongside domestic service (ministerio) in Richard de Calne’s household, this is one of the limited ways open to a young woman with no family to earn a living. Striking too are the differences and modern parallels in the community’s treatment of the new arrivals. In Ralph of Coggeshall’s account, they are treated quite kindly: the concerned harvesters bring them to Richard de Calne’s house, where they are offered various kinds of sustenance. When at last the beanstalks are brought in, and the children weep bitterly when they cannot find the beans, the bystanders are quick to show how to get at them. William, on the other hand, suggests that they are kept ‘for several days without food’. Only later – when they seem on the verge of dying of starvation – are they offered various things to eat that they will not accept; it is now the chance discovery of the beans occurs. So too, the experience of unaccompanied child migrants in today’s Britain might vary from well-intentioned kindness and encouragement to thrive to subjection to constraint and cruelty, and confinement in a detention centre. The green girl successfully assimilates into the community (more so in William than in Ralph). Through changing her diet, acquiring a new language, and accepting the ritual of baptism, she loses her greenness. Baptism can only be offered when this marker of Otherness has been erased. In Ralph’s account, the boy dies before the sacrament is offered, and the girl is already ‘ruddy’ (sanguineam) before she is ‘regenerated’ (regenerata) by baptism. William extends the loss of colour and the acquisition of language to both children; only when this process is advanced does it seem right to ‘prudent persons’ (prudentibus) that they should be baptized. The boy dies shortly afterwards; how this is connected to the rite is unclear. Cohen’s reading of the story attributes the boy’s failure to assimilate to resistance rather than a lack of resilience, implying that the girl’s successful assimilation is somehow less difficult: The girl, proving a rapid learner of native customs and speech, eventually differs ‘not even in the slightest way from the women of our own race’ [nec in modico a nostri generis feminis discrepante] (1.27). Although she carries with her the memory of a life once enjoyed in a dim and distant land, after her transformation into quiet domesticity she never voices sorrow at her loss.36

This is perhaps to undervalue the emotional effort required for successful assimilation. In a newspaper piece, the Iranian-American writer Dina Nayeri interrogates easy assumptions about belonging: ‘There are people who never question their place in the world. They feel part of their homeland, while newcomers struggle to remake themselves, putting on a mask until they learn.’37 So too the people of Woolpit Ibid., 88. Dina Nayeri, ‘“I wouldn’t be the refugee, I’d be the girl who kicked ass”: How Taekwondo Made Me’, The Guardian, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/ may/31/i-wouldnt-be-the-refugee-id-be-the-girl-who-kicked-ass-how-taekwondomade-me [accessed 22 December 2021]; see also Dina Nayeri, The Ungrateful Refugee: What 36 37

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thought that they knew what the world was like until they were suddenly confronted with the Green Children. Resonating with William’s assurance that the girl married and was living until a few years ago, Nayeri comments: ‘And, in the end, we did assimilate (if that’s what you want to call it) – mostly by accident, and because of the people who loved us.’ So too, through her husband – or perhaps her lovers – the green girl finds her place. In an earlier Guardian piece, Nayeri comments more directly on the ways in which identity must be erased, retooled to fit into the new situation: We assimilated. No longer dark strangers from war-torn lands, at some point we stopped frightening them. We went to work, to school, to church. We grew familiar, safe, no longer the outsiders. – I don’t believe in that explanation. What actually happened was that we learned what they wanted, the hidden switch to make them stop simmering.38

Just so, the green children ‘learned what they wanted’, accepted their food and clothing, began to speak a new language. ‘As refugees, we owed them our previous identity. We had to lay it at their door like an offering, and gleefully deny it to earn our place in this new country. There would be no straddling. No third culture here.’39 And so too in medieval Woolpit the green faded, and perhaps too the memory of another place and a previous identity: one that could not be grasped or imagined by those who had never glimpsed St Martin’s Land, with its broad river and its quiet light: the place the girl had called home. Re-reading the two accounts of the Green Children from an international medievalism perspective allows us to see how the medieval past offers an ‘uncanny and persistent haunting of the present’.40 To read from William to Ralph and back again, and onwards through the re-mediations discussed in this chapter, is to become acutely aware of how iterative narratives of the migrant experience are when brought into a fruitful contiguity across the epochs. The medieval chronicles reflect the viewpoints of a puzzled and eventually well-meaning community, working to take care of, assimilate, and finally to erase the identities of the migrants who chance among them, and relay at second hand the ways in which the host community tried to make sense of what the migrants told them about their lost homeland, explaining the radically alien and exotic in familiar and comfortable ways, garbling some details and exaggerating and exoticizing others. Those twelfth-century attempts at ethnography echo the insistence in contemporary migrant writing that the refugee carries within them a terrible and insurmountable loss – of language, of way of living, of homeliness: for Nayeri, these are symbolized by yellow spray roses, the wrinkled face of her nanny, her grandmother’s fruit leather, sour cherries – and Immigrants Never Tell You (Edinburgh, 2019). 38 Dina Nayeri, ‘The Ungrateful Refugee: “We have no debt to repay”’, The Guardian, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/dina-nayeri-ungrateful-refugee [accessed 22 December 2021]. 39 Ibid. 40 D’Arcens and Lynch, ‘Introduction’, xiv.

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the shocking transformation of her brother Khosrou into the American ‘Daniel’.41 The green children lost their families, their brand of religion, diet, and livelihoods, all from following the sound of bells. So too Nayeri shows how assimilation entails not only the loss of identity, but also the difficulty – impossibility even – of mediating the colours, sounds, and smells of the lost homeland to the people who can unquestioningly claim the new culture as home. The green children remain always children, even when the girl grows up and marries, never accepted as autonomous subjects; so too the migrant risks becoming embedded within an infantilizing discourse in which the host country figures as a father who knows best, exercising a patriarchal authority over the incomers and refusing them full adult agency. The medieval texts register that integration is not always possible, that it may indeed be refused, but they also assert that becoming ‘just like us’ must be desirable. Yet, through their insistence on wonder, William and Ralph resist the urge to moralize, to assume that Woolpit must be superior to St Martin’s Land or that the children have ‘come here for a better life’ as Nayeri puts it – for there is an irreducible sense that the green boy and girl would rather, still, be back at home.42 This wonder-tale demands an imaginative and empathetic response, not only to those long-dead green children, whose descendants still dwell among us, also to their millions of relatives across the world, behind whom the cavern has vanished and who can never go home again.

41 42

Nayeri, The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You, 13–14; 70. Ibid., 13.

10 Medievalisms of Welcome: Medieval Englishness and the Nation’s Migrant Other in Refugee Tales1 Matthias D. Berger

I

n recent years, the Middle Ages have increasingly served as a projection surface for expressions of national identity in Western societies. In medievalizing conceptions of national belonging, the place of immigrants and ethnolinguistic and racial minorities is precarious. The supposed uprootedness of immigrants – who are literally foreign bodies – makes them particularly suspect in a national(ist) framework, which, in theory, divides the whole of humanity into contiguous nationalities.2 While not all variant nationalist interpretations of the deep past subscribe to ideas of national identities as wholly unchanging over time, nationalism consistently presents itself as timeless and organic.3 Thinking of nationhood in terms of a shared history reaching back to the Middle Ages rarely aims at including newcomers. In fact, when conceived as a fantasy of non-migration and of cultural and racial homogeneity,4 the ‘national Middle Ages’ of A shorter version of this discussion of Refugee Tales is included in my ‘Unique Continuities: The Nation and the Middle Ages in Twenty-First-Century Switzerland and Britain’ (doctoral thesis, University of Bern, 2020). This chapter was completed before the UK instituted the – in this author’s and editor’s view – deeply disturbing policy of deporting refugees for ‘resettlement’ in Rwanda. 2 Frans Schrijver, Regionalism after Regionalisation: Spain, France and the United Kingdom (Amsterdam, 2006), 37. 3 Christian Geulen, ‘Identity as Progress: The Longevity of Nationalism’, in Identities: Time, Difference, and Boundaries, ed. Heidrun Friese (New York, 2002), 228–32. 4 Amy Kaufman and Paul Sturtevant sum up this tenacious fantasy as the ‘outdated perception of medieval Europe as a place that did not change, had no contact with the outside world, and whose people were homogenous’. Amy S. Kaufman and Paul B. Sturtevant, The Devil’s Historians: How Modern Extremists Abuse the Medieval Past (Toronto, 2020), 26. See also Cord J. Whitaker, ‘The Problem of Alt-Right Medievalist White Supremacy’, in Far-Right Revisionism and the End of History: Alt/Histories, ed. Louie Dean Valencia-García (Abingdon, 2020), 159–61. 1

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cultural memory provide an effective discriminatory bulwark against racial and ethnic inclusivity today.5 The connotations of ethno-racial homogeneity some have claimed, erroneously, on behalf of the Middle Ages have led many progressives to abandon the period as a reference point for positive identification altogether. Instead, if the medieval past features in progressive thought at all, it does so mostly in the guise of a negative caricature that illustrates the necessity of continuingly bettering the lot of humanity in the face of ignorance, obscurantism, and injustice.6 For most progressives today, the relationship between the Middle Ages and modernity is one of happy historic rupture. As this volume’s third part on activist medievalism shows, however, there are contemporary – and earlier – exceptions to this that directly counter the idea that a sense of connection to, and inspiration drawn from, the deep past needs to conflict with hybrid identities and progressive politics. The poetico-political project I explore in this essay foregrounds the binding nature of native tradition but does so in the service of inclusion rather than exclusion. A consciously left-wing and activist example of medievalism, Refugee Tales invokes a series of medievalist signifiers of England and Englishness, most prominently Geoffrey Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales, to protest an inhumane British immigration policy that criminalizes refugees, and to imagine a more inclusive national community in contemporary Britain. In a striking irony, Refugee Tales harnesses meanings of long national continuity and rootedness to make its case for accommodating the experiences of discontinuity and deracination of migrants. National Medievalism, Geography, Migration Numerous studies over the past decade have commented on the disturbing international intersection between medievalist proclivities and far-right, racist, xenophobic, and anti-immigration politics and acts of violence.7 The phenomenon was propelled into wider consciousness especially by the highly visible medievalism of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, when white supremacists descended on the city sporting medievalist insignias and chanting racist and antisemitic slogans, and one of them murdered a young woman who was

In what follows, I refer interchangeably to the ‘national Middle Ages’ and ‘national medievalism’: these terms should be understood as a shorthand for the tendencies of cultural, and specifically national, memory that draw on a medievalist framework. 6 On the generally negative ‘progressive’ view of the Middle Ages, see, for example, Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, The Militant Middle Ages: Contemporary Politics between New Barbarians and Modern Crusaders, trans. Andrew M. Hiltzik (Leiden, 2020), 6. However, Carpegna Falconieri also points out the last major exception to this rule: ‘From the mid[Nineteen-]Sixties to the end of the next decade, many left-leaning intellectuals and artists made use of the Middle Ages, attributing positive connotations to it’ (89). 7 For example, Andrew B.R. Elliott, Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, 2017); Elliott, ‘A Vile Love Affair: Right Wing Nationalism and the Middle Ages’, The Public Medievalist, 2017, https://www. publicmedievalist.com/vile-love-affair [accessed 5 June 2017]; Daniel C. Wollenberg, Medieval Imagery in Today’s Politics (Leeds, 2018). 5

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part of a crowd of counter-protestors. Mainstream media has since linked Charlottesville to earlier and later acts of far-right and white supremacist violence whose perpetrators revelled in Nordic and crusader medievalism, such as Anders Breivik’s 2011 and Brenton Tarrant’s 2019 terrorist attacks.9 Scholars of medievalism, not to mention medievalists of colour, have been aware of the connection for some time.10 These extremist uses are part of a wider revival of identitarian medievalism – identitarian in the general sense of encoding and supporting sentiments of group identity. Specifically, racist medievalism often piggybacks on the idea of ancient national heritage. A brief discussion of the current popularity of medievalism in negotiations of national identity – and of the assumptions that underlie it – can demonstrate why Refugee Tales’ refusal to equate old national identity with biological descent and non-migration is so notable. What we can observe is, ironically, a strong trend towards the re-nationalization of medievalism that is complementary to the ongoing process of internationalization that was noted by Louise D’Arcens and Andrew Lynch in 2014 and that is, in one form or another, the subject of all the essays gathered in this volume. Even before the turn of the twenty-first century, but more markedly since, there has been a return, in Western countries, to notions indebted to what D’Arcens and Lynch have referred to as the ‘conceptually local’ Middle Ages.11 Moulded in nineteenth-century Romanticism and conceived in contradistinction to the supposedly universal, elite, and remote cultural model of classicism, these local Middle Ages involved the recasting of a previously disdained period in a positive light to support narratives of national distinctiveness. It is in this function that medievalism came to play a key role in that century’s swell of nation-building. So effective was it in that function that notions of nationhood have arguably become more closely associated with the Middle Ages than any era before or since.12 Unsurprisingly, narratives of the early origins of national identity are dominated by the trope of cultural continuity. Like all identities, national identity is an efficacious fiction of continuity,13 and nationalism is generally at pains to present the 8

Eileen A. Joy, ‘About the Cover’, postmedieval, 8 (2017), 394. Wollenberg, Medieval Imagery, 23–25. 10 Joy, ‘About the Cover’, 393. 11 Louise D’Arcens and Andrew Lynch, ‘Introduction: The Medieval, the International, the Popular’, in International Medievalism and Popular Culture, ed. Louise D’Arcens and Andrew Lynch (Amherst, NY, 2014), xi–xxvi, xii. 12 Michael Evans, ‘You Wouldn’t Want to Be Historically Inaccurate: Online Responses to Race in Medievalist Television’, Studies in Medievalism, 28 (2019), 14; Stefan Berger with Christoph Conrad, The Past as History: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Modern Europe (Basingstoke, 2015), 362. There are exceptions to this general preference for medieval rather than ancient ‘ancestry’ in European national histories, most prominently in Greece and several other states in the south-eastern periphery of Europe: see Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis, ‘To Whom Does Byzantium Belong? Greeks, Turks and the Present of the Medieval Balkans’, in The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States: History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins, ed. R.J.W. Evans and Guy P. Marchal (Basingstoke, 2011), 139–51. 13 Richard Ned Lebow, The Politics and Ethics of Identity: In Search of Ourselves (Cambridge, 2012), 9 and passim. 8

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nation as a timeless, organic formation.14 Accordingly, as Anthony D. Smith puts it, ‘nationalists often operate with received conceptual traditions’.15 What Valentin Groebner calls ‘vertical’ narratives of the Middle Ages encourages thinking in terms of historical growth and genealogy by promoting vague historical analogies.16 To varying degrees, such narratives downplay outside influences and gloss over ruptures and false starts to claim essential national oneness through unbroken lineage, all the way back to the modern nation’s medieval precursor. In the pursuit of such oneness, certain social groups necessarily fall by the wayside. By definition, identity is exclusive and reciprocally related to non-identity. As Chris Lorenz puts it, ‘without identity there is no difference, and without difference there is no identity’.17 Cultural memory is a powerful means of ensuring there is enough difference to go around. To exactly that end, recent medievalisms by conservative and reactionary political and cultural actors across the Western world have invoked a harmonious and homogeneous medieval society built on clear-cut hierarchies. The Middle Ages thus become a time of longing to those who face with dismay a West increasingly characterized by shifting gender relations, queer liberation – and the cultural and racial diversification brought on by the mass movement of people.18 What is at stake here is the notion that only self-defined ‘autochthonous’ culture is ‘authentic’ national culture. Under nationalisms that tend towards the ethnolinguistic-cultural pole,19 the difference between who gets to belong and who does not is often made by an instance of migration. André Holenstein, Patrick Kury, and Kristina Schulz broadly define migration as ‘the longer-term spatial shift of the centre of people’s lives’.20 The proposition that an absence of such migration in one’s family tree since the Middle Ages should determine whether one qualifies as a Geulen, ‘Identity as Progress’, 228–32. Anthony D. Smith, ‘History and National Destiny: Responses and Clarifications’, in History and National Destiny: Ethnosymbolism and Its Critics, ed. Montserrat Guibernau and John Hutchinson (Oxford, 2004), 201. 16 Valentin Groebner, Das Mittelalter hört nicht auf: Über historisches Erzählen (Munich, 2008), 124. 17 Chris Lorenz, ‘Representations of Identity: Ethnicity, Race, Class, Gender and Religion; An Introduction to Conceptual History’, in The Contested Nation, ed. Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (Basingstoke, 2008), 25. 18 For contemporary medievalism explored through the lens of critical race studies and gender studies, see for example the article series ‘Race, Racism and the Middle Ages’ (2017–), https://www.publicmedievalist.com/race-racism-middle-ages-toc [accessed 15 December 2021] and ‘Gender, Sexism, and the Middle Ages’ (2018–), https://www.publicmedievalist. com/gsma-toc [accessed 15 December 2021] on The Public Medievalist. For essays on discriminatory postmedieval uses of the Middle Ages, see e.g. Studies in Medievalism, 28 (2019): Medievalism and Discrimination, ed. Karl Fugelso. For an overview of scholarship on race and the Middle Ages, including their pernicious ideological appropriation, see the crowdsourced bibliography compiled in Jonathan Hsy and Julie Orlemanski, ‘Race and Medieval Studies: A Partial Bibliography’, postmedieval, 8/4 (2017), 500–31. 19 See Maarten van Ginderachter, ‘How Useful Is the Concept of Ethnolinguistic Nationalism? On Imagined Communities, the Ethnic–Civic Dichotomy and Banal Nationalism’, in The Beloved Mothertongue: Ethnolinguistic Nationalism in Small Nations; Inventories and Reflections, ed. Petra Broomans et al. (Leuven, 2008), 1–13. 20 André Holenstein, Patrick Kury, and Kristina Schulz, Schweizer Migrationsgeschichte: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Baden, 2018), 13, my translation. 14 15

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full member of the national community is evidently linked to the idea that cultural memory is inscribed on place, as we shall see. Needless to say, the proposition is also deeply ironic. Narratives of migration referring to the Migration Period feature prominently in the kind of originary settlement myth whose rebirth in Europe has been described, among others, by Patrick Geary. Geary observes that a subset of contemporary nationalists increasingly resorts to supposed medieval ‘moment[s] of primary acquisition’ of territories and national identities by ‘their people’.21 As Helen Young notes, periodization is rooted in geography: ‘medieval’ is ‘always a marker of time and place’.22 Young makes her observation with reference to fantasy medievalism, but her point also sheds light on the nationalist preference for a static and hermetic national Middle Ages. Johannes Fabian has described how the influential theories of nineteenth-century social evolutionists conflated cultural Otherness with a supposed earlier stage in human history.23 What Fabian calls the ‘denial of coevalness’ is a ‘persistent and systematic tendency to place the referent(s) of anthropology in a Time other than the present of the producer of anthropological discourse’ (Fabian’s italics).24 This denial is a form of ‘spatiotemporal distancing’ because it rests on notions of spatialized time.25 The spatialization of time means that the past becomes an ‘elsewhere’;26 conversely, a geographically remote place becomes a ‘long ago’. Such notions of spatialized time are still widespread well beyond anthropology. Although usually unarticulated, they come with significant implications for the position of today’s nation regarding both the Middle Ages and the ethnically or racially marked immigrant. National medievalism tends to idealize a sedentary national community that remains stable through time; in addition, a common view effectively limits the Middle Ages to Europe, and north-western Europe in particular.27 The irruption of geography in the figure of the immigrant in the present thus represents an irruption also of a ‘past’ that cannot be reconciled with one’s own idealized past but rather threatens the integrity of a core national reference point. By extension, right-wing extremists simply weaponize mainstream ideas of a pre-race Middle Ages that Geraldine Heng and other critical race scholars rightly criticize.28 Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, 2002), 156. 22 Helen Young, ‘Place and Time: Medievalism and Making Race’, The Year’s Work in Medievalism, 28 (2013), 5. 23 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York, 1983), 12–18; see also Chris Jones, Fossil Poetry: Anglo-Saxon and Linguistic Nativism in Nineteenth-Century Poetry (Oxford, 2018), 15–16. 24 Fabian, Time and the Other, 31. 25 Ibid., 159, 12. 26 See also Carpegna Falconieri, Militant Middle Ages, 8. 27 See Marianne O’Doherty, ‘Where Were the Middle Ages?’, The Public Medievalist, 2017, https://www.publicmedievalist.com/where-middle-ages [accessed 10 May 2017]. A series of interviews conducted by Paul Sturtevant provide a particularly stark example of this, with some English respondents reporting that they instinctively felt the Middle Ages existed only in England, Britain, or (at a stretch) Western Europe: Paul B. Sturtevant, The Middle Ages in Popular Imagination: Memory, Film and Medievalism (London, 2018), 41–45. 28 Geraldine Heng, ‘The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages I: Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages’, Literature Compass, 8/5 (2011), 315–31. 21

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Refugee Tales turns the tables on such Othering-by-medievalism. Instead of locating authentic national culture in a medieval heritage one can only be born into, it finds in the national Middle Ages universal ideals that make normative demands of their own on the present: demands for greater accommodation of newcomers to Britain. Roads Not Taken: National Medievalism in Refugee Tales The Refugee Tales project was started in 2015 by the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group in collaboration with Kent Refugee Help. Its central demand was, and is, the abolition of the indefinite detention of those immigrants whose right of residence has been denied. The United Kingdom is currently the only European country with such a policy. An increasing number of critics have pointed out that its arbitrary nature conflicts with Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which the UK is a signatory: ‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.’29 British legislation remains unchanged despite protests by such institutions as the Bar Council and the British Medical Association; the fact that former detainees have been asked to speak in Parliament and to national broadcasters (RT III, 192); 30 and the gradual increase in public awareness of Refugee Tales and its demands. Refugee Tales has two core components. The first takes the form of an annual large-scale, multi-day protest walk, the first of which took place in the summer of 2015.31 The routes have been different each year, but as I show below, they usually foreground the project’s medievalist credentials. The walkers include refugees and ex-detainees as well as writers, poets, academics, and others. At every stop on the way, established British or British-based writers (including such names as Ali Smith, Patience Agbabi, Jackie Kay, and Abdulrazak Gurnah) give a public reading of tales relating the experiences of individual refugees and detainees. These tales are described as an act of collaboration between the writer and the person whose tale is being told (RT I, 133). In recent iterations, there have been tales told not by a third party but by refugees themselves. The rest of the time, the writers speak on their behalf either because trauma makes public self-exposure impossible for them or because they prefer to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals by the Home Office, the criminal organizations on whom they have informed, and so on (RT I, 141). In acknowledgement of the writers’ status as mouthpieces rather than authors proper, the tales are said to be ‘told to’ them rather than ‘told by’ them. The project’s other core component is four anthologies, from 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2021, in which close to sixty tales are collected.32 They tell of a wide range of 29 ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, United Nations, n.d., https://www.un.org/en/ about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights [accessed 6 August 2019]. 30 David Herd and Anna Pincus, eds, Refugee Tales, 4 vols (Manchester, 2016–2021). I refer to these volumes as RT I, II, III, and IV in this essay; due to their frequency, I include references to them in parentheses in the main text. 31 Walking is inherent to much protest. Chapter 12 explores another medievalisminspired protest movement with walking at its heart. 32 See n. 31 above. Recorded readings of twenty-seven of the tales and the Prologue to the first volume can be accessed online under the title 28 Tales for 28 Days, https://www.28for28. org [accessed 6 August 2021]. The title refers to the maximum detention duration demanded by the Refugee Tales initiative.

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experiences of those displaced by war, religious persecution, slavery, and government corruption, and who in Britain come up against an arcane and hostile immigration system. Other tales are concerned with the experiences of the lawyers, support workers, smugglers, and citizens who interact with refugees. These anthologies literally wear their medievalism on their sleeve. Besides the reference to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the title, the book covers feature ‘vines’ of barbed wire in a dark variation on floral illuminations familiar from medieval and pseudo-medieval manuscripts. A medievalesque initial contrasts strikingly with the blocky, angular modern serif typeface of the remaining letters of the title.33 However, despite this immediate prominence of medievalist signifiers, I argue that medievalism is actually more of a framing device than a consistent point of reference for the tales themselves. To be sure, some of the writers allude and respond to Chaucer’s poetry in the tales they relate. For example, at the opening of ‘The Interpreter’s Tale’, Carol Watts juxtaposes epigraphs taken from Chaucer and the Home Office. Each stresses the importance of not omitting anything in reproducing another person’s speech: Chaucer’s General Prologue: ‘He may nat spare, al thogh he were his brother; / He moot as wel seye o word as another.’ The Home Office’s Code of Conduct for Registered Interpreters: ‘Your duty is to interpret everything that is said.’ (quoted in RT I, 63)

These imperatives result in empathetic literary ventriloquism in one case and potentially life-changing real-world responsibility in the other. ‘The Interpreter’s Tale’ is representative of the collections in suggesting that a balance between these two functions must be struck also by the writers involved in Refugee Tales. One of few sustained engagements with Chaucer is that of the first volume’s ‘Migrant’s Tale’ (told to Dragan Todorovic). Opening with a line in the style of Chaucer, ‘Heere begynneth the Migrant his tale’ (RT I, 1), the tale subsequently switches between extracts from a prose translation of Chaucer’s ‘Man of Law’s Tale’ and an account of the odyssey of Aziz, a Syrian war refugee.34 The parallelization ends in stark contrast as the narrator observes that, unlike Custance’s story, Aziz’s – and those of so many other refugees – still awaits a resolution, let alone a happy one. However, as Helen Barr has also concluded, the more significant references to Chaucer that Refugee Tales makes are those that surround the tales.35 I argue that its several medievalisms – Chaucerian and other – collectively offer an enabling discourse for the tales while also complicating the project’s avowed post-national politics. These medievalisms have all had a history of being considered touchstones of English national identity. First and foremost, Refugee Tales channels Chaucer’s framing conceit of an unlikely group of pilgrims and taps into a specific discourse 33 See also Helen Barr, ‘Stories of the New Geography: “The Refugee Tales”’, Journal of Medieval Worlds, 1/1 (2019), 104. 34 As Barr notes, several tales in the first volume refer to ‘The Man of Law’s Tale’, which she attributes to the simple fact that it is itself ‘a version of a migrant’s tale’. Barr, ‘Stories’, 87. 35 Ibid., 80f.

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about Chaucer the author; secondly, the protest walkers interact with places coded as both medieval and nationally relevant; and, thirdly, the project invokes a radical strain of the Magna Carta tradition. Refugee Tales repurposes these national medievalisms to argue for a borderless nation. As the co-editor David Herd states, Refugee Tales draws ‘structurally’ on The Canterbury Tales (RT I, 133). Certainly, the general framing idea of people telling stories on the way to a common destination is powerfully brought to life in the walks. Furthermore, like Chaucer’s text, the collections of tales are unfinished. Unlike Chaucer’s, they are deliberately and inherently so: the definite article that editions of Chaucer’s work invariably include in the title is conspicuously absent in Refugee Tales. In choosing The Canterbury Tales as a model, the writers do more than simply copy Chaucer’s narrative organizing principle. Rather, they tap into a long-standing piece of Chaucerian discourse, in which Chaucer – a composite of the author and the pilgrim – is at the centre of a group of disparate people joined in community and engaged in exchange on a broadly equal footing.36 Stephanie Trigg has shown how Chaucer reception has returned again and again to the idea of a ‘Chaucerian community’: Chaucer is ‘a congenial member of the Canterbury pilgrimage’,37 but the convivial humanist also invites his later readers into his company. Trigg discusses William Caxton’s frontispiece of Chaucer’s ‘round table’, included in Caxton’s second edition of the Canterbury Tales, as inviting that double perspective of a synchronous and diachronous discursive community.38 Refugee Tales adopts the same view of an inclusive Chaucerian discursive community,39 even using the same frontispiece in its advertising for the second protest walk, and strives to enact that community in the real world.40 Adjoining this discourse of Chaucer as the benevolent facilitator of community and exchange is that of Chaucer as the ‘Father of English Poetry’.41 This reputation, too, Refugee Tales harnesses. In his ‘Prologue’ to the first volume of tales, Herd conflates Chaucer-the-author with his well-travelled characters and credits him with creating a new and inclusive language. Chaucer’s pilgrims come from near and far, And all the while finding stories And then all of them Gathering one night in London And so the Host says Since we’re walking Why don’t we tell each other tales And so they do Compare to this myths 7 and 9 in Thomas A. Prendergast and Stephanie Trigg, 30 Great Myths about Chaucer (Hoboken, 2020), 37–43, 51–55. 37 Stephanie Trigg, Congenial Souls: Reading Chaucer from Medieval to Postmodern (London, 2002), xvi, xxi. 38 Ibid., 23. 39 On the Chaucerian discursive community, see also Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Cambridge, 2010), 164. 40 Barr, ‘Stories’, 103. 41 John Dryden quoted in Trigg, Congenial Souls, 150. See also Prendergast and Trigg’s recent discussion of the myth in 30 Great Myths, 1–6. 36

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Out of Southwark And what comes out of Southwark Is a whole new language Of travel and assembly and curiosity And welcome. (RT I, viii)

What is more, Herd aligns the discursive aim of Refugee Tales with what he supposes to be Chaucer’s, which is to renew the English language. Herd repurposes the description of the Friar in the General Prologue: ‘Somwhat he lipsed, for his wantownesse, / To make his Englissh sweete upon his tongue.’42 Refugee Tales, in Herd’s description, sets out to make ‘sweet again’ a language that has been ‘[r]endered hostile by act of law’ (RT I, viii–ix). According to Herd, language powers the Home Office’s ‘hostile environment’ policy: There is a … general sense … in which the person seeking asylum in the UK is locked out of the language. Thus, at every point at which the person who has sought asylum encounters the processes that constitute the system, what they encounter is an effort to thwart, disrupt, or discredit their account. (RT II, 119, my italics)

In contrast to the adversarial approach to another person’s narration taken by this modern listener (‘the system’), the Chaucer of much conventional Chaucerian criticism is a man of great humanity, unusually accepting of human diversity and human foibles.43 Likewise, the authors of Refugee Tales seek to find a language that is humane, ‘welcoming’, and ‘tender’ (RT I, ix). In Herd’s description, the project is essentially about restoring language’s ability to connect its speakers through forthright exchange: what we choose to walk for Is the possibility of trust In language To hear the unsaid spoken And then repeated Made Unambiguous and loud. (RT I, vi)

The project’s second major piece of medievalism is what we could call its performative remaking of place. The itineraries of the annual walks have included places in South East England strongly associated with the national Middle Ages. In the first year, the walkers took their cue from Chaucer’s fictional pilgrimage and walked to Canterbury Cathedral, with the difference that their starting point was not Southwark but Dover, which until late 2015 housed a detention centre (or ‘Immigration Removal Centre’, as it is called in official parlance) right by the famous white

42 Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘General Prologue’, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford, 2008), lines 264–65. 43 Trigg, Congenial Souls, 10–11, 152.

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cliffs, one of Britain’s most recognizable national symbols.44 The 2017 walk started at Runnymede, whose claim to fame is its association with the sealing of Magna Carta in 1215 (to which I will return below). The walks of 2016, 2017, and 2018 ended in Westminster. Britain’s centre of power exhibits a complex layering of temporalities, and the Houses of Parliament are thoroughly steeped in medievalism.45 The walk of 2019 took the walkers from Brighton to Hastings. That walk’s motto, ‘Walking the Border’, referred to the walkers’ hope for a borderless nation. Inevitably, however, the destination also contested narratives of national victimhood at the hands of foreigners, a classic of which is the myth of the ‘Norman Yoke’, which centres on the Battle of Hastings and the subsequent Norman Conquest of England.46 The regular walk planned for 2020, which ended up not taking place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, had Winchester as its destination, one of the two ‘proto-capitals’ – the other being London – of Alfred the Great, the early medieval trailblazer for a unified England.47 An important point of these routes, then, is that they include powerful ‘medieval’ memory sites of the nation.

Andrew B.R. Elliott, ‘Medievalism, Brexit, and the Myth of Nations’, Studies in Medievalism, 29 (2020), 36. 45 In 1835, the year after most of the Palace of Westminster had been destroyed in a fire, a House of Commons committee decided that the Palace should be rebuilt to recall ‘Gothic or Elizabethan’ architecture – ‘the national style’. Quoted in Michael Alexander, Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England (New Haven, 2007), xviii. The ancient power and legitimacy of the English, and by extension British, system of government was thus to be projected by architectural medievalism. As Michael Alexander points out, this sense of uninterrupted tradition was, at that time, ‘an inherited assumption, persuasion or conviction, not a claim requiring justification’ (127). That assumption of a ‘unique continuity’ in ‘the country’s medieval heritage and its present-day government and culture’ has recently regained a certain prominence in Brexit discourse: Matthias D. Berger, ‘2016 and All That: Medievalism and Exceptionalism in Brexit Britain’, in Brexit and Beyond: Nation and Identity, ed. Ina Habermann and Daniela Keller (Tübingen, 2021), 23–39 and Matthias D. Berger, ‘Roots and Beginnings: Medievalism and National Identity in Daniel Hannan’s How We Invented Freedom and Why It Matters’, in Anglistentag 2016: Proceedings, ed. Ute Berns (Trier, 2017), 119–35. Ironically, however, plans to celebrate ‘Brexit Day’ on 31 January 2020 with the chimes of Big Ben foundered as the House of Commons refused to accept private donations to speed up the extensive refurbishment work being carried out on the bell tower: Peter Walker, ‘Downing Street Kills Off Plans for Big Ben Brexit Bong’, The Guardian, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/16/big-ben-unlikely-to-chime-on-brexitday-no-10-indicates [accessed 14 May 2020]. 46 As I argue in ‘2016 and All That’ (see note above), the Norman Conquest has served as a reference point for a number of Brexit figureheads, who find in it a useful symbol for their Eurosceptic agenda: they include Boris Johnson (the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom), Jacob Rees-Mogg (sometime Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency), and the former Member of the European Parliament, sitting member of the House of Lords, and arch-Eurosceptic Daniel Hannan. Invoking the Norman Yoke, under which the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ supposedly lost the unique freedoms they had previously enjoyed, these Eurosceptics have readily compared the British relationship with the EU to the takeover of England by continental forces in 1066. 47 Janet Nelson, ‘Power and Authority at the Court of Alfred’, in Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Related Themes in Memory of Lynne Grundy, ed. Jane Roberts and Janet Nelson (London, 2000), 327. 44

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Memory scholars such as Aleida Assmann have highlighted the ability of places to stabilize and ‘store’ cultural memory, and thus to embody group identity. Assmann points out that ‘[w]hile historiography focuses on change and development, the interest in place emphasises aspects of continuity in change, of permanence … and retention’.48 Among other examples, old seats of government and sites of such historic events as battles or treaties are prototypical memory sites, although Pierre Nora’s conceptual framework of the lieu de mémoire also includes more abstract referents to account for national memory.49 At such sites, Assmann writes, ‘time collapses’ for the modern visitor ‘in a symbolic reclaiming and re-enactment and an unmediated, embodied access to the past seems possible’.50 Thanks to the apparent sameness of place, interaction with such sites promises to open a gateway to an ‘authentic’ past.51 Place, as described by Tim Cresswell, is never finally established but operates through every-day practice.52 Refugee Tales makes use of that processual nature of place. In a sense, these activist ‘pilgrimages’ are less about the distinctive symbolic places at which they start, stop off, and end, and more about the purposeful act of walking that connects them.53 By connecting static places loaded with medievalist resonance for the nation, and involving them in the deliberate act of walking and talking with those marginalized for moving, Refugee Tales destabilizes these places while still drawing on their symbolic force. The walks set out to remake the country from the medieval ground up, one memory site at a time. Following what Herd calls ‘ancient pathways’ and cutting across ‘tracts of southern England intimately 48 Aleida Assmann, ‘How History Takes Place’, in Memory, History, and Colonialism: Engaging with Pierre Nora in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts, ed. Indra Sengupta (London, 2009), 155–56. 49 Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols (Paris, 1984–1992); Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: “Les lieux de mémoire”’, Représentations, 26 (1989), 7–24. 50 Assmann, ‘History Takes Place’, 159. 51 Compare also Trigg’s discussion of ‘authentic’ medievalist place and the complexities and contradictions that arise from modern physical ‘access’ to the past by scholars and nonspecialists at medieval cathedrals: Stephanie Trigg, ‘Walking Through Cathedrals: Medieval Tourism and the Authenticity of Place’, New Medieval Literatures, 7 (2005), 9–33. See also my ‘“This Most Historic of Locations”: Performing Authentic Nationhood at Hastings and Morgarten’, Studies in Medievalism, 27 (2018), 85–102, where I explore the complex layering of national meanings, local significance, and commercialization at two medieval battlefields in the early twenty-first century. 52 Tim Cresswell, Place: An Introduction, 2nd edn (Chichester, 2015), 68–70, 116. Cresswell defines ‘place’ as ‘space invested with meaning in the context of power’ (19). ‘Space’ and ‘location’, in contrast, belong to a ‘realm without meaning’ (16) and are mere sets of coordinates. While I adopt Cresswell’s basic definitions of place and space here, alternative definitions of space have also been proposed. Gieseking, Mangold, Katz, Low, and Saegert’s theoretical premise, for example, is that both place and space are ‘created and re-created through the actions and meanings of people’: Jen Jack Gieseking et al., ‘Diverse Conceptions between People, Place, and Space’, in The People, Place, and Space Reader, ed. Jen Jack Gieseking and William Mangold, with Cindi Katz, Setha Low, and Susan Saegert (Abingdon, 2014), 3. 53 Despite invoking the pilgrimage that frames the embedded narratives in The Canterbury Tales, Refugee Tales is secular in impetus. For a critical discussion of the concept of a ‘secular pilgrimage’, see Peter Jan Margry, ‘Secular Pilgrimage: A Contradiction in Terms?’, Shrines and Pilgrimage in the Modern World: New Itineraries into the Sacred, ed. Peter Jan Margry (Amsterdam, 2008), 13–46.

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connected to a national view’ (RT I, 138), the project seeks to offer a counter-narrative of movement and exchange to that of a deeply rooted, settled, and self-contained national identity. And again, it looks to Chaucerian precedent for this, detecting in the Canterbury Tales ‘the pleasure and necessity of movement’ and ‘expression that gestures outwards’ (RT I, 139). The final major medievalism deployed by Refugee Tales is its association with Magna Carta. Not only did the walk of 2017 start at Runnymede; the second volume of Refugee Tales further elaborates on the idea that Magna Carta is the origin of the due process of law. This interpretation is based on a generous Whiggish reading of Magna Carta’s Chapters 39 and 40: 39. No free man is to be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go against him, nor will we send against him, save by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. 40. To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay, right to justice. (quoted in RT II, 120)

Herd admits that the references to the ‘free man’ and his ‘peers’ might be quibbled over, but he is adamant that ‘[a]ny equivocation … is over-ruled by Chapter 40, where the universalising tone of Magna Carta is inscribed: no one is to be denied right to justice’ (RT II, 121).54 In positing Magna Carta as the origin of the principle of due process, Refugee Tales buys into the consensus narrative that was told over and over in 2015, the year of Magna Carta’s eight-hundredth anniversary. That powerful narrative sees Magna Carta as the founding document of the rule of law, which in turn is a fundamental ideological tenet of Englishness,55 and of wider anglophone identity. Specifically, Refugee Tales invokes a radical strain of Magna Carta interpretive history by highlighting the rule of law as a means to achieve social change. It should be noted at this point that conservative readings of the charter continue to vie for mastery with the radical strain. Many of the myriad festivities that took place in 2015 across the UK and other countries with a common law tradition showed that Magna Carta fits snugly into defences of the constitutional and legal status quo. Hew Locke’s ‘The Jurors’, a permanent art installation installed on Runnymede in 2015, is a telling example of these competing interpretations. Like Refugee Tales, the installation commemorates a Magna Carta fully invested with its reputation as the founding document of the rule of law, to be put to use in an 54 Herd’s reading is hardly unusual, but the first chapter of Magna Carta does state that ‘all the liberties written out below’ are granted only to ‘all free men of our kingdom’. Claire Breay and Julian Harrison, eds, Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy (London, 2015), 265. On the longstanding debate on the constitutional significance of the charter, see e.g. Martin Krygier, ‘Magna Carta and the Rule of Law Tradition’, Papers on Parliament, 65: Proceedings of a Symposium Held by the Department of the Senate and the Rule of Law Institute of Australia to Commemorate the 800th Anniversary of the Sealing of Magna Carta, ed. Paula Waring (Canberra, 2016), 11–29 and Jonathan Sumption, ‘Magna Carta Then and Now: Address to the Friends of the British Library’, The Supreme Court, 2015, https://www.supremecourt.uk/ docs/speech-150309.pdf [accessed 1 September 2019]. 55 Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge, 2003), 216–17.

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ongoing struggle for positive social change. Consisting of a circle of twelve bronze chairs, ‘The Jurors’ invites visitors to sit in judgement of injustices past, present, and future.56 However, the fact that the installation was unveiled in a ceremony attended by countless dignitaries of state, including the Queen, rather complicates Locke’s critique of injustice: such injustice (e.g. slavery, colonialism, and discrimination against women) has been state-sanctioned, and indeed in certain cases justified with recourse to Magna Carta,57 at various points in history. At the least, the ceremony spoke to the thoroughly institutionalized nature of Magna Carta and its importance in official national self-representation. The three core medievalisms of Refugee Tales have one thing in common: they all constitute an appeal to some form of precedent. The language it seeks is new, and so is its (human) geography, but just as with the invocation of Magna Carta, the fountainhead of inspiration is the national Middle Ages. There is perhaps a more general point to be made here concerning the use of medievalism that celebrates national continuity in support of inclusivity. By appealing to tradition the way they do, Refugee Tales and medievalisms like it make use of a fundamentally conservative mode of argumentation in progressive causes. A particularly instructive parallel to Refugee Tales in this respect is Protest: Stories of Resistance (2017, edited by Ra Page), which sets out to represent a specifically British tradition of protest.58 Protest, too, starts in the Middle Ages, with the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Both of these collections, while emerging from a contemporary universalist human rights discourse, simultaneously appeal to the particular nature of national tradition. In their modus operandi at least, they are thus no different from conservative medievalisms that look back to medieval precedents to celebrate national identity and support political causes of their own. The similarities in the approaches to tradition taken by these progressive medievalisms and some of their conservative counterparts can perhaps best be understood in terms of a feeling of ‘obligation to do justice to the past’, which Emily Robinson notes can be ‘found in conservative as well as radical-left politics’.59 For instance, much of Eurosceptic and Brexiter ideology is rife with that feeling.60 Robinson suggests we consider such similarities in terms of the notion of nostalgia as theorized by Svetlana Boym, who distinguishes between ‘restorative’ and ‘reflexive’ nostalgia.61 Restorative nostalgia ‘stresses nostos and attempts a transhistorical reconstruction of the lost home’, thinking itself not nostalgia but rather ‘truth and tradition’, whereas reflexive nostalgia ‘thrives in algia, the longing itself, and delays the homecoming – wistfully, ironically, desperately’. At its best, reflexive nostalgia ‘can present an ethical Hannah Ellis-Petersen, ‘Sculpture at Runnymede Celebrates Magna Carta’s Blow against Injustice’, The Guardian, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jun/15/hew-lockesculpture-jurors-runnymede-magna-carta-against-injustice [accessed 15 June 2015]. 57 Breay and Harrison, Magna Carta, 141. 58 Ra Page, ed., Protest: Stories of Resistance (Manchester, 2017). 59 Emily Robinson, History, Heritage and Tradition in Contemporary British Politics: Past Politics and Present Histories (Manchester, 2012), 24. 60 Berger, ‘Roots and Beginnings’, 127–28. 61 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, 2001); see also Helen Dell, ed., The Medievalism of Nostalgia: postmedieval, 2/2 (2011), 116–20. 56

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and creative challenge, not merely a pretext for midnight melancholias’.62 Robinson argues that there are numerous examples of British ‘radical or progressive nostalgia, which stress the ideas of continuity and lineage as forcefully as their counterparts on the Tory right’.63 Refugee Tales takes up the ethical challenge of reflexive nostalgia. I am not suggesting, then, that the ‘conservative’ appeal to precedent by progressive medievalisms weakens their arguments. In the case of Refugee Tales, however, the appeal to medieval Englishness poses certain difficulties for the originators, who seem to wish to burst free from the narrow national framework that constrains and criminalizes the movement of people. Herd states: ‘Serviceable as that language of national identity might once have been as a way of organising a relation to space, … such a way of orienting ourselves to space badly needs to be re-made’ (RT I, 138). And yet, Refugee Tales proceeds from some of the most powerful medievalisms of Englishness – which here plays its customary role of standing in for Britishness, a role Refugee Tales never questions. The use of these medievalisms in Refugee Tales emphatically does not serve to explode the national community they have commonly been enlisted to support; rather, they serve to expand that community. In fact, Refugee Tales keeps a national frame in sight at all times. Not only does it walk and appropriate medievalist memory sites of the nation, invoke Magna Carta, and look for inspiration to a medieval author who has, for better or worse, been canonized as articulating a benevolent and demotic kind of originary Englishness. Its very call to action is in the first instance national in scope. Refugee Tales does not so much subvert signifiers of Englishness as claim that in them has always inhered a universal welcoming spirit: the tolerance, conviviality, and mobility of Chaucer and the germs of human rights in Magna Carta. It is possible to see Refugee Tales as channelling a distinctively left-wing take on tradition: tradition as a series of ‘roads not taken’. It certainly suggests that the potential of the English Middle Ages has been thwarted: the Chaucerian welcoming spirit suppressed, movement restricted, legal standards betrayed. But progressive utopianism prevents this from becoming a misty-eyed appeal to a golden age. The rupture is not absolute, the aim not restoration but improvement. The kind of tradition that the medievalism of Refugee Tales invokes is about the past of better futures. Exceptionally in a political landscape in which medievalism is mostly the province of conservatives, Refugee Tales uses the Middle Ages to pursue a bottom-up progressive politics. It treats immigration (whether that immigration follows forced or voluntary emigration) and the concomitant rise in racial and ethnic diversity in British society as things to be welcomed. The campaign walks, talks, and writes against outdated and oppressive canons of nationhood while maintaining an unspoken belief in the ability of national narratives to organize people in meaningful ways. It counters marginalization and exclusion from the national self by arguing for an expanded conceptualization of that self, resorting to national medievalist symbols to make its case. Illustrious medieval precedent, and especially Chaucerian precedent, serves as a springboard for progressive political activism.

62 63

Boym, Future of Nostalgia, xviii. Robinson, History, 23.

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Interestingly, however, the enabling Chaucerian discourse of Refugee Tales and medievalist discourse more generally recede with each new volume that is published. None of the tales in the third volume openly references Chaucer, and the foreword and afterword too are shy of referring to the Middle Ages. Besides including tales told by refugees themselves rather than through an intermediary for the first time, the third volume is also the first to include the tale of an ex-detainee not in the UK but in the US. The fourth volume, not once explicitly referring to medieval history or Chaucer, takes this move away from the project’s original symbolic core even further by including the accounts of refugees in both Canada and the non-English-speaking countries of Italy, Greece, and Switzerland. This ‘going global’ is signalled, once again, on the cover artwork, which features a pointedly un-medieval view of our planet as seen from space. It seems the strong national resonance of the prestigious medievalisms that originally propelled the project is becoming increasingly restricting as that project widens its scope to protest the injustices and cruelties of immigration policies worldwide. Depending on the prominence that host countries other than Britain are given in future iterations of Refugee Tales, we can expect Chaucer – at least in his role as the father of English letters – to henceforth play invisible host to its many storytellers. Yet for all that, Refugee Tales remains underpinned by the national Middle Ages, a Middle Ages it takes as a basis not for exclusion but for welcome.

11 Nordic Giants: Using Left-Wing Post-Rock to Deepen Our Understandings of White Supremacist Interpretations of Vikings1 Eirnin Jefford Franks

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here has been much scholarship on the way the concept of ‘Vikings’ has been interpreted in modern music movements, with much of this, necessarily, focusing on the genres of extreme metal, Viking metal, and black metal, and in turn their links with right-wing extremism and white supremacy. These are, of course, incredibly important topics: as scholars of the Viking Age, we must be acutely aware of the uses and abuses of our studies, and how this impacts perceptions beyond the academy. However, studies exploring the political implications of Viking medievalism do not often explore the imagery beyond these areas. The band Nordic Giants first came to my attention when I was an undergraduate, when they played a show at my local music-centred pub. I was captured by the imagery on their poster: I remember seeing two feathered figures surrounded by dark colours and swirling shapes. The more I delved into their music, the more I was captured: the theatrical duo had a strong left-wing political focus to much of their music and focused on a humanitarian message of human kindness and connection for ourselves and for the planet. As my studies progressed, I became more aware of the ways in which the band drew on Norse imagery in their stylization and conceptualization. This stood in stark contrast to the other portrayals of Vikings I was so used to seeing: images of hairy, unkempt men professing violence and bloodlust,

1 Due to the nature of this topic, I will be addressing white supremacy, racism, antisemitism, anti-Blackness, murder, terrorism, sexism, and homophobia, including reference to censored slurs.

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often in the name of white supremacy.2 I was fascinated by this contrast, and hence this chapter has been many years in the making. By taking a comparative approach between Nordic Giants and a selection of other musicians who make use of Viking imagery, but with a right-wing stance, it is possible to delve beyond the discussion of what images are being presented, and to uncover what makes this distinction so stark. The central point of difference is ultimately masculinity: while right-wing musicians interpret Vikings as the epitome of a modern conception of masculinity, Nordic Giants break from this to explore interpretations of Vikings through an ungendered lens. As such, Nordic Giants employ a different discursive space that can carry a different political message from that of right-wing metal bands. Discursive Spaces This chapter will explore political alignment along the axis of so-called left-wing to right-wing politics, following the general conceptualization of these terms, whereby right-wing politics focuses more on conservativism, while left-wing politics focuses on libertarianism. This chapter will use these terms to refer loosely to these conceptualizations, with discussions of the right-leaning politics often focusing on a more extreme alignment than discussions of left-leaning politics. For example, the rightwing politics discussed in this chapter will explore extremist white supremacy and its components, while the left-wing politics will take a more humanitarian stance, devoid of active antiracist beliefs.3 An important comparative point that allows for the distinction evident between Nordic Giants and other Viking-themed bands is the use of different genres. Nordic Giants’ music falls into the post-rock genre, whereas many other musicians create music within the genres of extreme, black, and Viking metal.4 The history of each of these genres impacts the way each band is able to construct their image of ‘Vikingness’. The term ‘post-rock’ was coined by Simon Reynolds in March 1994 in a review of Bark Psychosis’ album Hex.5 As it is a term defined by those outside of the genre, rather than within, there is not a clear community boundary as there is with extreme metal genres. Similarly, the musical definition is not strict either: post-rock is generally focused around using classical rock instruments in less conventional ways and ways that focus on creating intricate soundscapes. For example, bows may be used on electric guitars, and drumsticks on bass guitars. Vocals are often used as an extra instrument, rather I will use the term ‘Vikings’ in this chapter to reference the modern construction of Vikings as seen in popular media, and the terms ‘Norse’ and ‘pre-Christian Scandinavian’ to refer to the historically studied cultures of the Viking Age and early medieval period. 3 I would like to make a distinction between being ‘not racist’ and active antiracism. Antiracism refers to the labour of dismantling white supremacy and acknowledging one’s own position within white supremacy, grounded within actions. Being ‘not racist’ consists of not endorsing racism, but also not taking any steps to dismantle racism. See Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist (New York, 2019); Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race (New York, 2019). 4 For simplicity, I will use ‘extreme metal’ in this chapter to refer to these various genres. 5 Simon Reynolds, ‘Bark Psychosis: Hex’, Mojo (1994), https://www.rocksbackpages. com/Library/Article/bark-psychosis-ihexi [accessed 30 December 2020]. 2

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than conventional singing: this technique is best demonstrated by Sigur Rós, who refer to their use of vocals as ‘Hopelandic’, recognizing that these vocals are not producing language.6 These techniques are certainly true of Nordic Giants: while one band member plays keys, synth, trumpet, and loops, the other plays cymbals and skins, bowed guitar, and samples – hardly standard equipment for a classic rock band.7 Nordic Giants are signed to the label Kscope. This label defines themselves as ‘post-progressive’ and highlights their desire to platform artists within this genre. In particular, they draw attention to ‘the atmospheric offerings of Air, Talk Talk, and Royskopp [sic], and the cinematic Post-Rock vistas of Sigur Ros [sic], Godspeed You Black Emperor and Tortoise’,8 referencing other bands that are key parts of the post-rock movement.9 Nordic Giants are therefore placed squarely within this genre, within which there are no other well-known examples of bands making use of Viking imagery. Extreme metal has a very different history. It developed in Scandinavia in the late 1980s and early 1990s and is a subgenre of heavy metal. The musical qualities do not try to replicate the sounds of the Vikings but instead follow heavy metal’s sonic qualities of harsh guitars, heavy drumbeats, and ‘overall loudness’.10 The concept of the Vikingness is drawn through the presentation of the bands, their beliefs, and their claim of Viking heritage, focusing on an image of Viking warriors. As Simon Trafford notes: ‘[T]he particular appeal of the Vikings for extreme metal fans and musicians was very strongly related to existing predilections within heavy metal culture, namely, a valorization of macho masculinity, a revulsion for genteel social norms, and a taste for themes of war and chaos.’11 Indeed, Deena Weinstein has argued that as a genre, metal has outlasted other rock genres due to its hypermasculine culture.12 This hypermasculinity is a key feature of the aesthetic of metal, and is therefore also critical to the discursive space being created. Another key feature in the construction of extreme metal is, as Weinstein has termed it, ‘chauvinistic Paganism’: a subgroup of pagan metal that ‘scapegoats and demonizes those seen to be, or who have been, a threat to one’s ethnic heritage – one’s “roots”’.13 This is a core part of much of the extreme metal I will be using as comparative points. This mindset is innately right-wing and white supremacist. 6 ‘Post-rock’, Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016, https://www.britannica.com/art/post-rock [accessed 30 December 2020]. 7 Kevin Thompson, ‘Review – Nordic Giants – Amplify Human Vibration by Kevin Thompson’, Progradar, 2017, https://www.progradar.org/index.php/tag/roka [accessed 30 December 2020]. 8 ‘About/Contact’, Kscope, 2020, https://kscopemusic.com/contact [accessed 30 December 2020]. 9 Cos Staff, ‘Dreamlab: The Semantics of Post-Rock’, Consequence of Sound, 2012, https://consequenceofsound.net/aux-out/dreamlab-the-semantics-of-post-rock [accessed 30 December 2020]. 10 Simon Trafford, ‘Viking Metal’, in The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism, ed. Stephen C. Meyer and Kirsten Yri (Oxford, 2020), 564–66. 11 Ibid., 566. 12 Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture (Cambridge, MA, 2009). 13 Deena Weinstein, ‘Pagan Metal’, in Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music, ed. Donna Weston and Andy Bennett (London, 2014), 58. Weinstein uses the term Pagan Metal to refer to metal subgenres that deal with a range of so-called ‘pagan’ cultures and

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By existing in different genres with different histories, different discursive spaces are employed: what it means to ‘be a Viking’ is constructed in specific ways. It is hard, if not impossible, for someone within extreme metal to be accepted as embodying Vikingness if they do so in a way that differs significantly from the idea of what it means to be a Viking in that space: it is questionable, and rather unlikely, that someone within extreme metal would consider Nordic Giants to embody Vikingness. As has been demonstrated, this construction of a Viking in extreme metal spaces is focused on hypermasculinity. In comparison, the lack of a defined discursive space of Vikingness in post-rock allows Nordic Giants to construct an alternative presentation of Vikingness. Nordic Giants Nordic Giants are a post-rock duo from Brighton, England. They describe themselves as ‘claustrophobic cinematic clatter’14 and focus heavily on the way their music links to short films that are often made in connection to their music.15 They present themselves as using their music to promote their message: one of positivity and human kindness. At the time of writing, their latest project is an album titled Amplify Human Vibration, released in 2017, and accompanied by a documentary of the same title, released in 2020. In an essay published by the UK newspaper The Independent, the band states that the purpose of the project is ‘to show that every person can make a positive impact on the world, no matter how small and to simply remind everyone the true power each of us have, especially when we all unite together as one’.16 The band spread their message very explicitly through their music. Neither of the duo sing on their tracks and instead feature other singers and sample speeches. In their aforementioned album alone, they make use of: • Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech ‘Beyond Vietnam’ on the song ‘Spirit’; • ‘The Taxonomy of Illusions’ by the ethnobotanist, mystic, and author Terence McKenna on the opening track of the same name; • ‘The Mystery of Change’ by philosopher Alan Watts on ‘Reawake’; • and ‘We Are Power’ by Native American activist John Trudell on ‘Immortal Elements’. They use yet more notable speeches on other songs: • ‘Mechanical Minds’ from the 2013 EP Build Seas, Dismantle Suns uses ‘The Final Speech’ from The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin; spiritualities, including, but not limited to, Celtic and Slavic, alongside Norse. 14 Nordic Giants, ‘About’, Nordic Giants, http://www.nordicgiants.co.uk/about [accessed 18 October 2018]. 15 Ibid. 16 Remfry Dedman, ‘Nordic Giants – Amplify Human Vibration: Exclusive Album Stream’, The Independent, 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/ features/nordic-giants-amplify-human-vibration-exclusive-album-stream-a8005806.html [accessed 18 October 2018].

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• ‘Together’ from the 2012 EP Shine again makes use of ‘Beyond Vietnam’ by Martin Luther King Jr; • ‘Evolve and Perish’ on the 2015 album A Séance of Dark Delusions uses words from Michael Ruppert in the opening of Vice’s 2014 documentary Apocalypse, Man; • ‘Néoténie’ from the 2013 EP Build Seas, Dismantle Suns uses a lecture from author William S. Burroughs at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics on 11 August 1980; • ‘Dark Clouds Mean War’ from the 2013 EP Build Seas, Dismantle Suns uses Napoleon’s final speech from the 1970 film Waterloo, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk. This selection of speeches, focusing on issues of equality, climate justice, and death, primarily from activists and campaigners, underlines the political cause of the band. Of course, this is not true of all the speakers featured: Napoleon’s militarism is inherently at odds with a left-wing ethos, and in his full lecture, William S. Burroughs uses the racialized ‘n’ slur. However, the words spoken within the songs still carry strong messages and strong emotions. These speeches therefore create a powerful discography, with the political leanings of the band being unmistakeable to the listener. As the name suggests, Nordic Giants have a fascination with the imagery of Norse mythology within their branding, although they never explicitly refer to this image or themselves as ‘Vikings’, nor do they discuss a sense of heritage or ancestry. However, the implication of the ‘giants’ in the name appears to be a reference to the so-called ‘giants’ (Old Norse: jötnar) of Norse mythology, which, when combined with the element ‘Nordic’, clearly highlights pre-Christian Scandinavian religion as the point of reference. When it comes to the duo behind the act, they are anonymous and are only ever known as their stage personas, Löki and Rôka Skulld, who hide themselves behind elaborate costumes.17 The former name, Löki, clearly draws on the figure of Loki of Norse mythology, using the ö character in a way that appears to be unaware of, or uninterested in, its linguistic value, and possibly also drawing inspiration from the long history of decorative diacritics in rock, such as Mötorhead and Mötley Crüe. The latter name has two elements. Rôka has a less clear point of inspiration but seems to follow a similar idea of drawing on names and linguistic features from what are perceived to be Other cultures. It is possible that it is a misinterpretation of the name Röskva, as seen in the Prose Edda’s telling of Þórr and

17 The names Löki and Rôka are used to sign off on many of their social media posts: Nordic Giants, ‘Tour Update – July 2020: Sad News – But Due to the Ongoing “Disruptions” the Decision Has Been Made to Cancel the Tour in September! …’, Facebook, 2020, https:// www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=3291261464229359&id=111865965502274 [accessed 30 December 2020]. The name Skulld only appears on the artist’s individual Facebook page: Roka Skulld, ‘Rôka Skulld’, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/RokaSkulld [accessed 30 December 2020].

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Útgarðr Loki, but this is unclear.18 Alongside this, the name Skulld appears to be a deliberate misspelling of Skuld, one of the three nornir who reside under Yggdrasill and choose the fate of men.19 Notably, Röskva and Skuld in Norse mythology are both women. Alongside these names, a repeatedly featured vocalist Nordic Giants make use of is a female singer credited as ‘Freyja’, a clear nod to the goddess known from Norse mythology. These images of myth and mystery are further perpetuated by the ‘About’ section of their website, which describes how ‘two mythical creatures create an experience with bowed guitar, piano that is both haunting and rousing, and climatic and thunderous drums’.20 It is also said that ‘dressed in feathers and shrouded in a ubiquitous fog the pair look more like residents of Middle Earth’,21 implicitly acknowledging the inspiration Norse mythology had for Tolkien’s world-building in The Lord of the Rings.22 Furthermore, they also say that ‘seeing Nordic Giants has been described as akin to a religious experience’,23 seemingly acknowledging links to pre-Christian Scandinavian religion, and to spirituality, as will be demonstrated later. Further compounding this image is the band’s logo. Featuring a tree with swirling branches, it is referred to by the band as their ‘Nordic tree’.24 While it is not explicit, it is implied that this is inspired by Yggdrasill, the tree at the centre of the cosmos, according to Snorri Sturluson.25 Furthermore, the band often refer to their fans as the ‘Nordic Army’,26 close their Facebook posts with the phrase ‘the Nordic Army marches on’,27 and when discussing touring, they refer to ‘invading’ countries or cities.28 These communications have the strongest tones linking their branding to the martial image of Vikings commonly portrayed by other Viking-themed acts. The earlier-mentioned costumes of the duo are intriguing. The pair are never (knowingly) seen outside of these costumes, and they are an integral part of the Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. Anthony Faulkes (London, 1988), 37. References are to this edition. 19 ‘Vǫluspa (Konungsbók)’, in Eddukvæði I: Goðakvæði, ed. Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason (Reykjavík, 2014), 295–96, 19–20. References are to this edition. 20 Nordic Giants, ‘About’. 21 Ibid. 22 Jane Chance, Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader (Lexington, 2004). 23 Nordic Giants, ‘About’. 24 Nordic Giants, ‘¥¥¥ One of our most loyal fan and friends – has become the first person to get a tattoo of our Nordic tree – Mr Brice, we thank you!!! Pic’s [sic] coming soon ¥¥¥’, Facebook, 2013, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=6029823897239 60&id=111865965502274 [accessed 30 December 2020]. 25 ‘Vǫluspa (Konungsbók)’, 295, 19. 26 Nordic Giants, ‘¥ Calling Nordic Army – tickets are getting very low for some venues now – Don’t miss your chance to see our brand new show and the amazing support acts’, Facebook, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1022875487734646 &id=111865965502274 [accessed 30 December 2020]. 27 Nordic Giants, ‘¥ For those of you that joined us last year for our 7 depths of Consciousness Tour – you may well remember these remixed tracks’, Facebook, 2016, https:// www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1191281190894074&id=111865965502274 [accessed 30 December 2020]. 28 Nordic Giants, ‘News on our European invasion later this year, coming tomorrow …’, Facebook, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=15755615657 99366&id=111865965502274 [accessed 30 December 2020]; Nordic Giants, ‘Tonight we 18

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image they create. These costumes consist of dark masks over the top half of the face, with feathers extending from this. Their bodies are partially covered by their feathered outfits, with their exposed skin covered in tattoos and body paint. They wear necklaces of animal bones, tusks protruding from the lower halves of their masks like boars, and the back of one costume is styled to look like exposed ribs and a spine. These costumes seem to draw heavily on the images of shamanistic practices that exist within the circumpolar regions, particularly those of the Sámi who lived throughout Scandinavia alongside pre-Christian Norse Scandinavians. Indeed, it is still debated as to whether these shamanistic practices also took place within pre-Christian Scandinavian religion, although there is no consensus on this.29 This is further strengthened by the description of band member Rôka as playing the cymbals and skins.30 While not explicitly linked, knowledge of Sámi religious culture as historically using reindeer-hide drums allows one to speculate that a loose knowledge that this existed within Scandinavian religions may have been part of the inspiration for this choice.31 A further minor way in which Nordic Giants continue to perpetuate their image of Vikingness is the name of their song ‘Runestones’ from their 2015 release 7 Depths of Consciousness. While the song itself is instrumental and does not lend itself to any deeper analysis, the name alone is important: it is a clear nod to the runic writing system for which the Vikings are so well known, and in popular culture is imagined to have magical powers within a religious setting. Significantly, however, the use of actual runes is non-existent within Nordic Giants’ branding, which stands in stark contrast to many Viking-themed metal bands, who often make use of runes in a variety of ways. In combining these various elements, Nordic Giants create a conceptualization that is both explicitly Viking-themed, and notably different from other images of Vikings so often presented in various forms of media. This difference is significant: it allows an alternative portrayal and different discursive space in which Nordic Giants can shift the political associations of the use of Vikings. The combination of these elements creates a complex portrayal of Vikings that is distinct from that of other bands in the extreme metal genre. This distinction is important: it is what allows Nordic Giants to champion ideas of tolerance and hope, as opposed to the hatred of right-wing metal bands. The use of a medieval culture is not an accident. The conceptualization of the medieval as an uncorrupted time has been noted by multiple scholars: Amy S. Kauf­ man and Paul B. Sturtevant argue that ‘people who are disenchanted with the innovations of modern society often idealize the Middle Ages as natural and pure, the “original” condition of humankind. These people see the Middle Ages as a landscape invade Bristol and It’s the last date of the UK tour! see you all soon’, Facebook, 2017, https:// www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1639112672777588&id=111865965502274 [accessed 30 December 2020]. 29 This is in reference to the ritual practice of seiðr. See Clive Tolley, Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic (Helsinki, 2009), I; Neil Price, The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (Oxford, 2019). 30 Thompson, ‘Review – Nordic Giants’. 31 Rolf Kjellström and Håkon Rydving, Den samiska trumman (Stockholm, 1988).

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for heroism, passion, and legendary deeds.’32 In doing so, the Middle Ages are interpreted in ways that suit the interpreter. Where right-wing musicians will interpret this to mean a time that was exclusively white and devoid of immigration, Nordic Giants seem to conceptualize this purity in terms of a time before industrialization and its effects on the climate and on individualism, seeing the Middle Ages as a time of community-driven culture.33 This use of the medieval has particularly been brought to the fore by Annette Kreutziger-Herr, who states that ‘the Middle Ages serves as a toy. It is the sum of small pieces of hidden meaning, a collection of diffuse images and yearnings illustrating that this time has indeed sunk into oblivion, but it has left behind a treasure of legends, ideals, dreams, hopes, and “visions”.’34 The medieval acts as a blank canvas upon which an artist can paint their ideals and their politics and allow the cultural understanding of the purity of the medieval to legitimize their ideas, rooting them in a sense of the natural state of humanity. However, this medievalism is one of the few ways in which Nordic Giants and Viking metal use the same technique to share their political aims. In order to understand what makes the former stand out, we must briefly look at one of the different, and overt features of extreme metal: hypermasculinity. This hypermasculinity has been noticed by many scholars before me: Steven P. Ashby and John Schofield argue for ‘the stereotypical image of the “Viking warrior” as a hirsute symbol of masculinity’, as used by metal bands.35 This is also outlined by Weinstein, who notes that ‘although Norse gods are plentiful, metal bands tend to select those that embody the heroic masculinity that metal heads have always valued’,36 and Gry Mørk states that ‘manliness is here linked to the Norse tradition and its gender ideals. The male Viking represents paradigmatic and traditional masculinity.’37 This idea is clearly at the heart of extreme metal perceptions of Vikings and forms a core part of the discursive space. This image is created in a number of ways. One such way is the visual aesthetics of the musicians: Ashby and Schofield’s comment, a ‘hirsute symbol’, acknowledges this, with many musicians sporting long hair and beards as a statement of masculinity. An overwhelming sense of aggression accompanies this, in line with models

32 Amy S. Kaufman and Paul B. Sturtevant, The Devil’s Historians: How Modern Extremists Abuse the Medieval Past (Toronto, 2020), 7. 33 The implications of reading of aspects of the (early) Middle Ages as pure, uncorrupted, or primitive is also discussed in Chapters 3 and 8. 34 Annette Kreutziger-Herr, ‘Postmodern Middle Ages: Medieval Music at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century’, Florilegium 15 (1998), 188. 35 Steven P. Ashby and John Schofield, ‘“Hold the Heathen Hammer High”: Representation, Re-enactment and the Construction of “Pagan”’ Heritage’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21/5 (2015), 499. 36 Weinstein, ‘Pagan Metal’, 60. 37 Gry Mørk, ‘Why Didn’t the Churches Begin to Burn a Thousand Years Earlier?’, in Religion and Popular Music in Europe: New Expressions of Sacred and Secular Identity, ed. Thomas Bossius, Andreas Häger, and Keith Kahn-Harris (London, 2011), 140.

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of toxic masculinity of the twenty-first century. However, by far the most prominent way in which this masculinity is portrayed is through martial imagery. Indeed, Simon Trafford and Aleks Pluskowski argue that 38

[m]artial imagery clearly plays an important role in the iconography of many Metal bands, with eras of inspiration ranging from prehistory through to the Gulf War. The Viking Age is certainly not short of suitable material, and weapons and warriors are readily incorporated into the iconography of Viking Metal bands, ranging from logos, such as that used by Norwegian ‘folkloric black metal’ band Windir, which substitutes two Viking-Age swords for the ‘i’s, through to band member personas.39

We can therefore argue that the prominence of this hypermasculinity allows it to become a key feature in the discursive space of extreme metal’s Vikings. Naturally, not every extreme metal band making use of this imagery holds right-wing views. What is important to note here is that right-wing metal bands do make use of this imagery: extreme metal’s right-wing Vikings are always hypermasculine. For popular audiences, Vikings are seen as the ultimate example of masculinity. This becomes part of the paradigm of cisheteropatriarchy, a system within which Western culture functions, and which is rooted in white supremacy.40 Therefore, Vikings are ideal to be used as a vehicle for right-wing ideologies. By contrast, hypermasculinity is absent from Nordic Giants’ interpretation of Norse culture. While there is some martial imagery, this is created solely through words and focuses on the concept of movement, rather than active violence. Furthermore, the outfits they wear, while somewhat masculine to reflect the gender of the performers, are not overtly hypermasculine. The masculinity presented is exclusively in relation to the performers’ own genders, rather than creating a conceptualization with masculinity at the heart of it. In this way, Nordic Giants create a relatively ungendered interpretation of Vikings, setting them far apart from extreme metal bands. It is only through this comparison to extreme metal bands that we can see how distinct an approach to gender and Viking medievalism Nordic Giants take. One of the key ways in which Nordic Giants achieve this is through the shamanistic interpretation of the Vikings. As noted above, it is unclear if this is a misunderstanding of the shamanism that was present in Sámi culture or an interpretation of the Norse ritual practice of seiðr. However, it is somewhat unimportant as to which distinct culture is being interpreted here: although they are both significantly 38 The origin of the term ‘toxic masculinity’ is unclear, but one key definition is provided by Terry A. Kupers, who states that ‘toxic masculinity involves the need to aggressively compete and dominate others and encompasses the most problematic proclivities in men’: Terry A. Kupers, ‘Toxic Masculinity as a Barrier to Mental Health Treatment in Prison’, Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61/6 (2005), 713. 39 Simon Trafford and Aleks Pluskowski, ‘Antichrist Superstars: The Vikings in Hard Rock and Heavy Metal’, in Mass Market Medieval: Essays on the Middle Ages in Popular Culture, ed. D.W. Marshall (Jefferson, 2007), 67. 40 Andrea Smith, ‘Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking Women of Color Organizing’, in Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, ed. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (Durham, NC, 2016), 72.

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different in their historical contexts, the impact of their interpretations in this context does not differ greatly. At the root of this is the question of gender within both practices. One of the key understandings a popular audience may have about shamanism, as a broad concept, is the role of gender fluidity and non-conformity, with many people understanding this in terms of a ‘third sex’ or ‘third gender’.41 Similarly, seiðr has been broadly discussed with regard to the ways in which its practice challenges the gender of the practitioner and pushes them outside of cisnormative boundaries.42 As such, drawing on either one of these concepts offers the implication of non-normative genders and a challenge to cisheteronormativity, allowing Nordic Giants to create an ungendered portrayal of Vikings. Another key implication of drawing on either Sámi shamanism or Norse seiðr is that both of these practices are linked to religion, and in turn spirituality. This appears to be important to Nordic Giants and is not limited to the inspiration for their costumes. In his review of the album Amplify Human Vibration, Kevin Thompson paints a powerful image of the spiritual touch to the song ‘Autonomous’: ‘[S]at in the church of instrumentation, resting on the pews of chords and bars, we can embrace the blissful notes from the organ playing sweetly on Autonomous, the final track that will guide us into the light of understanding on a wave of musical euphoria.’43 While the contrast of Christian imagery against the stylization of non-Christian imagery is stark, it underlines the sense of spirituality that is central to Nordic Giants. This, combined with the use of names and images from Norse mythology, acts as a signal that Nordic Giants see themselves as spiritual ambassadors of the truth, trying to warn and rescue mankind from their own collapse, in line with their messaging. This is further reinforced by using a distant culture that appears to be an Other. This technique is not uncommon. In Kirsten Yri’s study of the art rock band Dead Can Dance, she notes that the band makes use of elements understood to be medieval by popular audiences, and that they assign ‘“premodern” attributes of spirituality and naturalness’ to the medieval,44 alongside associating this with the ‘Other’ through Orientalism: ‘[T]hey impart a distinctly Othered sound that vaguely references the North African or Arab world.’45 This combination of the medieval and spirituality in Yri’s analysis is significant, as it draws together existing ideas with which Nordic Giants work, reinforced by this use of the Other. Underscoring the importance of these ideas, Susan Fast notes the ‘longing for the Other, in particular as a source of power alternative to that possessed by the dominant culture’.46 This Price, The Viking Way, 249. See Eirnin Jefford Franks, ‘Valfǫðr, vǫlur, and valkyrjur: Óðinn as a Queer Deity Mediating the Warrior Halls of Viking Age Scandinavia’, Scandia: Journal of Medieval Norse Studies, 2 (2019), 33 for further discussion on why these terms should not be used. 42 Jefford Franks, ‘Valfǫðr, vǫlur, and valkyrjur’, 38–39; Price, The Viking Way, 172–83. 43 Thompson, ‘Review – Nordic Giants’. 44 Kirsten Yri, ‘Medievalism and Exoticism in the Music of Dead Can Dance’, Current Musicology, 85 (2008), 54. 45 Ibid., 62. 46 Susan Fast, ‘Days of Future Passed: Rock, Pop, and the Yearning for the Middle Ages’, in Mittelalter-Sehnsucht? Texte des interdisziplinären Symposions zur musikalischen Mittelalterrezeption an der Universität Heidelberg, April 1998, ed. Annette Kreutziger-Herr 41

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is key: Nordic Giants use this medievalism, an ungendered approach, and an implication of spirituality (specifically non-Abrahamic spirituality, contrasting the cultural norm of England) to create an image of being an Other, which allows them to place themselves in opposition to, as Fast terms it, ‘the dominant culture’. For Nordic Giants, this dominant culture appears to be capitalist, industrialized society at large. This in turn allows them to disseminate their message of tolerance, hope, and kindness through ideas of community and nature. Right-Wing Abuses By analysing Nordic Giants’ different approach and isolating the key factor in this – gender – we can therefore gain a deeper understanding of how masculine interpretations of Vikings facilitate white supremacy. It is also important for us as scholars to understand the full extent of this impact by explicitly identifying links between masculinity and Vikings, white supremacist views, and the death tolls directly related to this relationship. The exploration of Nordic Giants above allows us to see the starkness of this comparison, and the role masculinity, particularly hyper- and toxic masculinity, plays in it. The development of extreme metal in Scandinavia in the 1980s and 1990s came hand-in-hand with violence. The early years of the music scene were defined by the burning of medieval churches throughout Norway. This was directly linked to ideas surrounding a Viking past: Varg Vikernes saw the burning of Fantoft stave church on 6 June 1992 as a modern version of the attack on Lindisfarne in 793.47 Vikernes is one of the most prominent figures of discussion in this area. He is the man behind the one-man-band Burzum and was incredibly influential in the early days of the extreme metal movement. In 1993, he murdered fellow musician Øystein Aarseth (also known as Euronymous), his former bandmate from the band Mayhem, and was subsequently sentenced to twenty-one years in prison for this murder (of which he served fifteen), alongside other charges including arson. While there, he wrote a manifesto entitled Vargsmål, which promoted a so-called nationalist heathen ideology, arguing that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are invasive religions that destroyed the native paganism of Europe, and therefore must be eradicated. This native paganism is that of the Vikings. Since his release from prison in 2009, Vikernes has been active online, primarily through his previous YouTube account, ‘Thulean Perspective’. While this account was active, it garnered tens of thousands of views, with his videos ranging from music releases to interpretations of Norse mythology and commentary on recent events. One such video was a commentary on the terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March 2019.48 In this video, he made a number of racist statements, including blaming the government for allowing mass and Dorothea Redepenning, (Kiel, 2000), 35. 47 Mørk, ‘Why Didn’t the Churches’, 127. 48 Kristian ‘Varg’ Vikernes, ‘They got what they wanted … (NZ terror attack)’, Thulean Perspective: BitChute, 2019, https://www.bitchute.com/video/N3ozrpk_eyw [accessed 30 December 2020]. This video was originally uploaded to YouTube and reuploaded on BitChute following Vikernes being banned from YouTube.

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immigration, with the implication that this refers to people of colour only, and referring to the government using triple parentheses, for example ‘(((they)))’: within extremist white supremacist circles, this denotes that the party being referred to is Jewish.49 Vikernes is part of what is known as ‘National Socialist Black Metal’, or NSBM, but he is far from alone: it is this group that comprises the most extreme points of comparison in this study.50 Another example is the German band Absurd. Like Vikernes, the original members were imprisoned for murder in 1993.51 The lyrics of their music promote nationalist, pro-heathen revivalist, and anti-Judeo-Christian rhetoric. Their political leanings cannot be mistaken. Alongside these politics, their use of the Viking Age as a point of inspiration is unequivocal. One of the original band members is Hendrik Möbus, who uses the stage name Jarl Flagg Nidhogg. This is a clear reference to Norse myth: jarl is the Old Norse equivalent of ‘earl’, and Nidhogg (ON: Níðhǫggr) is the serpent who gnaws at the roots of Yggdrasill.52 Furthermore, their 1999 EP was titled Asgardsrei, said to be a term that existed for a godly group of Germanic warriors associated with the Wild Hunt,53 but it should be noted that this term has no historical attestation before the nineteenth century.54 This EP included a booklet of images of the Knights Templar, the Teutonic Order, and the Waffen-SS:55 presumably these are seen to be the ‘Asgardsrei’ warriors. This association between Nazi soldiers and Viking warriors is particularly striking and should not be understated. Another example of bands making extreme use of this imagery is the Greek NSBM band Der Stürmer, who are named after the antisemitic Nazi newspaper. The stage names of the band members are Jarl Von Hagall, Commando Wolf, and Hjarulv Henker, monikers that are clearly inspired by both Nazi-associated names and interpretations of Norse names and words. For example, Henker is German for hangman or executioner, which immediately underlines the violent nature of the band members. Alongside this, jarl, as previously stated, is Old Norse for ‘earl’, and Hjarulv appears to be a somewhat fanciful version of the word úlfr in Old Norse, translating to wolf.56 In particular, hagall refers to a rune from the various Futhark alphabets, which was later co-opted by Nazis to refer to an ‘unshakeable faith’ in the Nazi philosophy, according to Heinrich Himmler.57 Furthermore, the band’s website 49 ‘Echo’, ADL, 2022, https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/echo [accessed 27 April 2022]. 50 It must be stated that there are no left-wing extremist uses of Viking imagery to make a direct comparison with on this topic. 51 Disincarnated and Murmur_666, ‘Absurd’, Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives, 2002–2021, https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Absurd/383 [accessed 3 May 2022]. 52 Snorri Sturluson, Edda, 17. 53 Kris Kershaw, The One-Eyed God: Odin and the (Indo-)Germanic Männerbünde (Washington, 2000), 29. 54 The earliest attestation appears to be Peter Nicolai Arbo’s 1872 painting by the name Åsgårdsreien. 55 Discogs, ‘Absurd (3)’, Discogs, 2021, https://www.discogs.com/Absurd-Asgardsrei/ release/369774 [accessed 15 January 2021]. 56 I am unable to find any reference to explain the ‘Hjar’ part of this name, and it appears to be an elaboration with no historical meaning. 57 Robin Lumsden, Himmler’s Black Order: A History of the SS, 1923–45 (Stroud, 1997), 147.

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describes their ideology as a ‘Heathen/National Socialist Weltanschauung [world view].’58 The backgrounds to these webpages and their albums include images of Adolf Hitler and the Swastika.59 The connection the band draws between Norse culture and Nazi ideology is inescapable. A 2009 interview between Henker and the NSBM blog ‘Ulvhedin Grom’ also demonstrates the extent to which masculinity is central to this ideology. When asked to describe the subject matter of their latest album, Henker stated: The inspiration comes from the modern state of Europe as this is compared with the forgotten and often deliberately ignored past. Only an idiot would disagree upon the fact that Aryan ethics, way of life and thought and actions are gone from Europe and the western world, replaced by this anarchist mass of liberal, effeminate [my italics], hedonistic mass-people.60

Henker is then asked ‘your thoughts on non-NS black metal? Or Heathen themed groups that don’t embrace NS ideology? Personally I think there’s too much harmless, pacifistic and “feminine” sounding Black metal.’ Henker responds: I totally agree with you. Even the modern ‘Black Metal’ scene reflects the condition of the average European man … useless people always produce something useless. The spirit that once permeated Black Metal with warlike anger is now almost gone … the Aryan religion is built upon the ethics and psyche of a warlike, conquering people, not to some pot-influenced hippie mumblings. In general, all these f******* are part of modernity.61

Evidently, masculinity is the crux of the matter for Henker. The use of the ‘f ’ slur, referring to homosexual men, is clearly referencing masculinity, and combining this with discussions of ‘warlike anger’ highlights that aggressive, toxic hypermasculinity is central to how he conceptualizes Viking culture. It goes without saying that these ideas are extremely harmful – but they also come with a death toll. On 22 July 2011, Anders Behring Breivik murdered seventy-seven people in Norway. Breivik identified himself as an Odinist62 and made use of a range of medievalisms, including Viking, often confusing them with one another. As Andrew B.R. Elliott has commented: ‘[H]e fused his pseudo-Christian knighthood with references to Norse mythology, calling his outfit “Loki’s armour” 58 Der Stürmer, ‘Biography’, The Pagan Front, 2007, https://web.archive.org/web/202003 29070400/http://www.thepaganfront.com/dersturmer/bio.html [accessed 3 May 2022]. 59 Der Stürmer, ‘News’, The Pagan Front, 2007, https://web.archive.org/web/2019090 4073112/http://www.thepaganfront.com/dersturmer/main.html [accessed 3 May 2022]; Der Stürmer, ‘Releases’, The Pagan Front, 2007, https://web.archive.org/web/20190820194739/ http://www.thepaganfront.com/dersturmer/release.html [accessed 15 January 2021]. 60 I have cut this quote off here, as Henker goes on to use the racialized ‘n’ slur. 61 ‘Interview with Hjarulv Henker/Der Sturmer’, Ulvhedin Grom, 2009, https://ulvhedingrom.livejournal.com/200437.html [accessed 30 December 2020]. I have censored the homophobic ‘f ’ slur here: unlike the slur in the quote above, this plays an important role in the wider text. 62 A form of neo-pagan belief that centres on Óðinn, and commonly has white supremacist leanings.

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and carving the name Mjolnir, after Thor’s hammer, in runic letters onto his Glock. Likewise, his motorbike was called Sleipnir after Odin’s eight-legged horse, and his Ruger rifle Gungnir, after Odin’s spear.’63 Breivik wrote a manifesto – a theme among these terrorists – titled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence. This manifesto was sent to Vikernes,64 among others, which reinforces the fact that Breivik felt somewhat inspired by Vikernes. In 2019, the New York Times undertook a study of the links between white extremists.65 From this, we can further see that Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator of the 15 March 2019 shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, was inspired by Breivik. Tarrant murdered fifty-one people and injured a further forty-nine. Simultaneously, he released his own manifesto, The Great Replacement,66 which closes with the phrase, ‘I will see you in Valhalla.’67 The link between white supremacist terrorism and ideas around a Viking past are undeniable. This interpretation of the past continues to have ramifications, including during the writing of this chapter. On 6 January 2021, a group of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, resulting in five deaths.68 One of the figures that drew the most press attention during this was Jake Angeli, who refers to himself as the ‘Q Shaman’.69 Angeli is a subscriber to the ‘Q Anon’ conspiracy theory, which has strong right-wing white supremacist leanings surrounding beliefs in a ‘deep state’ controlling the US government, full of corruption and criminal acts such as paedophilia, and the belief that Donald Trump is the only person who can defeat this group.70 Angeli attended the riot in an outfit he is now well known for: a Native American headdress, a bare chest, and a flag attached to a spear. A number of elements of this outfit drew the attention of medievalists, including myself: on his chest, he sports three tattoos, one of the so-called valknut, one of the ‘tree of life’, and one of Thor’s hammer.71 These 63 Andrew B.R. Elliott, Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, 2017), 140. 64 John Lichfield, ‘Musician and “Anders Breivik Sympathiser” Kristian Vikernes Arrested in France for “Plotting Massacre”’, Independent, 2013, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ world/europe/musician-and-anders-breivik-sympathiser-kristian-vikernes-arrested-franceplotting-massacre-8711653.html [accessed 30 December 2020]. 65 Weiyi Cai and Simone Landon, ‘Attacks by White Extremists Are Growing; So Are Their Connections’, New York Times, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/ world/white-extremist-terrorism-christchurch.html [accessed 30 December 2020]. 66 Kaufman and Sturtevant, The Devil’s Historians, 53. 67 Brenton Tarrant, The Great Replacement, https://img-prod.ilfoglio.it/userUpload/ The_Great_Replacementconvertito.pdf [accessed 8 January 2021], 86. 68 Kenya Evelyn, ‘Capitol Attack: The Five People Who Died’, The Guardian, 2021, https:// www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/08/capitol-attack-police-officer-five-deaths [accessed 10 January 2021]. 69 Matt Binder, ‘“QAnon Shaman” Is Seen Leading the Charge as Pro-Trump Mob Breaks into U.S. Capitol’, Mashable, 2021, https://mashable.com/article/qanon-capitol-trump-jakeangeli/?europe=true [accessed 10 January 2021]. 70 Mike Wendling, ‘QAnon: What Is It and Where Did It Come From?’, BBC News, 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/53498434 [accessed 10 January 2021]. 71 Eirnin (@queertyyr), ‘I’m currently writing about hypermasculinity and Viking Medievalisms in white supremacy … the horns, valknut, and the “tree of life” (Yggdrasil) on this guy underline this terrifyingly perfectly’, Twitter, 2021, https://web.archive.org/

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are all clear references to Norse myth. The valknut appears as a symbol in Viking Age art, although its meaning, or possible lack thereof, is unknown. The ‘tree of life’ is likely to be that of Yggdrasill, and Thor’s hammer is a reference to Mjölnir. Furthermore, his use of a spear may also be a nod to Óðinn’s spear Gungnir, recalling Breivik’s use of this same imagery. It is clear that white supremacists are empowered by ideas of Viking masculinity, and this is core to their politics: it is by contrasting this against Nordic Giants that we can see how stark and fundamental this is. ‘A time comes when silence is betrayal’ It is imperative that students and scholars of Viking Age Scandinavia understand the ways in which images of Vikings are being used within popular culture.72 As this chapter has demonstrated, these uses vary greatly, and they create different impacts: medievalism can be used for positive and negative causes. Nordic Giants’ interpretation of Norse culture is unique. By focusing on elements of mythology and spirituality within a medieval, and specifically Norse, setting, they are able to legitimize their left-wing politics as being based in the natural state of humanity, using techniques that are not inherently dissimilar to other groups using medievalism for political aims. Due to the shared use of medievalism as a vehicle for disseminating political ideas, understanding the differences between Nordic Giants and extreme metal bands allows us to isolate the core differences in the interpretations of the past. As I have demonstrated, this core difference is the role of masculinity, particularly in its toxic and hypermasculine forms. I have also demonstrated the extent of the damage caused by these hypermasculine interpretations of a Viking past. I have noted the deaths of 133 people as a direct result of white supremacist ideology that is in part motivated by an interpretation of this hypermasculine Viking past. It can be easy for work on the Viking Age and medieval Scandinavia to be seen to exist in a vacuum, but the role of our scholarship is more far-reaching than we often give it credit for. I have felt this work touch my life on a personal level in a multitude of ways. An important part of my approach to my work surrounding gender and queerness in the Viking Age involves public outreach. In August of 2020, The Sunday Times ran an article about Neil Price’s recently released book, The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, and his speculation that the individual buried in the grave Bj.581 may have been a transgender man, in modern terms. I was quoted alongside Price, giving my support for this idea, based on my academic and public-facing

web/20221115101636/https://twitter.com/queertyyr/status/1346915269470466049 [accessed 10 January 2021]. It is worth noting that in this tweet, I mistakenly identified the headdress’ horns as being a reference to the cultural misunderstanding of Norse warriors wearing horned helmets. This was later pointed out to me and I rectified the mistake. 72 The title of this section is taken from a quote from Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech, as heard on Nordic Giants’ track ‘Spirit’.

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work. I faced a backlash from this, which included images of myself and my partner being shared on the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish sites for the Nordic Resistance Movement. My partner is Black: an image of us together was chosen, rather than one of me alone, to try to discredit my work by framing me as a white race traitor, highlighted by two of the websites describing me as ‘self-hating’ in the photo captions.74 More importantly, this was an act of anti-Black racism and raised significant concerns for the safety of my partner and his family. Alongside this, people have shared tweets of mine and tagged Vikernes in them, to draw attention to the fact that my work directly challenges his ideas about a Viking past. I have received a hateful email with the subject line ‘Odin’ in which the author stated multiple times that he wanted me dead, through a variety of means, while also making references to his homophobic and antisemitic views. My work surrounding queerness challenges the fragility of masculinity deeply, hence why I have faced such a huge backlash to it. The perception of Vikings as being the ultimate example of masculine ideals is at the root of white supremacists’ obsession with this subject. The impact of interpretations of the past can vary, but it is clear that the impact of this particular interpretation is huge and has played a role in a number of deaths within the last decade. As Nordic Giants demonstrate, this is not the only interpretation available. It is therefore vital that scholars make efforts to disrupt this narrative within their work, not only for the sake of historical accuracy, but to limit the damage these interpretations can play in the modern world. 73

Rosamund Urwin, ‘Odin’s Beard! Transgender Vikings May Have Played a Key Role in Pillage Life’, The Sunday Times, 2020, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/odins-beardtransgender-vikings-may-have-played-a-key-role-in-pillage-life-h2pp82k98 [accessed 30 December 2020]. 74 Nordfront, ‘Historien omskrives af forskere med en politisk agenda: “Kvindelig vikingekriger var transperson”’, Nordfront, 2020, https://www.nordfront.dk/historienomskrives-af-forskere-med-en-politisk-agenda-kvindelig-vikingekriger-var-transperson [accessed 30 December 2020]; ‘Historien skrivs om av PK-forskare: “Kvinnlig vikingakrigare var transperson”’, Nordfront.se, 2020, https://www.nordfront.se/historien-skrivs-omav-pk-forskare-kvinnlig-vikingakrigare-var-transperson.smr [accessed 30 December 2020]; Frihetskamp, ‘Historien omskrives av forskere med en politisk agenda: “Kvinnelig vikingkriger var transperson”’, Frihetskamp, 2020, https://www.frihetskamp.net/historienskrives-om-av-forskere-med-politisk-agenda-kvinnelig-vikingkriger-var-transperson [accessed 30 December 2020]. 73

12 ‘The Great Original Suffragist’: Joan of Arc as a Symbol in the US Women’s Suffrage Movement Suzanne LaVere

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oan of Arc’s image was shaped in a variety of ways and widely used even during her lifetime in France, England, and beyond, and she continued to be a powerful symbol for many causes and ideas long after her death. Her role as a woman who did extraordinary things and pushed beyond boundaries set by powerful men played into the way Joan was used as a symbol in the women’s suffrage movement, especially in the early twentieth century as she moved toward beatification and eventual sainthood. In England, suffragettes looked to Joan for inspiration, seeing her as both an active, militant soldier for her cause and a sacrificial, devoted martyr. Suffragists in the United States, especially those who had marched alongside their sisters in England, embraced the idea of Joan of Arc as a symbol for the suffrage cause in an attempt to disrupt their tactics in the face of repeated failures to gain the franchise. In particular, young women outfitted as Joan of Arc on horseback became the focal point of suffrage parades throughout the country. Contemporary press accounts indicate that this deployment of Joan as a symbol of womanhood had a marked impact on how the public perceived the suffrage movement. While some objected to Joan’s image being used in this way, the overall reaction was positive and may have helped to change perceptions of the suffragists and their goals. By 1917 and the US entrance into World War I, usage of Joan of Arc’s image mostly shifted to a wartime footing, indicating that her identity continued to be shaped to fit the concerns of the moment. From the earliest days of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, Joan of Arc has played a role. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her keynote address to the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848, compared those fighting for the vote to Joan of Arc, arguing that:

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now is the time for the women of this country, if they would save our free institutions, to defend the right, to buckle on the armor that can best resist the keenest weapons of the enemy – contempt and ridicule. The same religious enthusiasm that nerved Joan of Arc to her work nerves us to ours.1

However, it was in England that Joan first became a truly potent representation of female agency in the women’s suffrage movement, especially under the auspices of the militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst and soon including another daughter of Emmeline’s, Sylvia. As has been extensively discussed by Lisa Tickner, Colleen Denney, Laura Nym Mayhall and others, the WSPU slogan ‘deeds not words’ fitted well with the image of Joan they championed, with Joan as a steadfast fighter for rights who acted rather than waiting for things to happen.2 A 1913 article in their newspaper The Suffragette sums up their feelings about Joan as ‘the militant women’s ideal. They feel the closest kinship with her and in every word and in every act of hers they recognize the same spirit as that which strengthens them to risk their liberty and endure torture for the sake of freedom.’3 The fact that Joan had once fought the English did not seem to hamper English suffragettes’ use of her image; Joan’s Frenchness was generally ignored in favour of her role as a female fighter. All three Pankhurst women identified and were identified with Joan of Arc in the press and by fellow suffragettes. In addition, WSPU member Emily Wilding Davison’s spectacular death at the Epsom Downs racetrack in 1913 when trying to hang a suffrage banner on the king’s horse during the English Derby was characterized as a martyrdom, and as Carolyn Collette argued, in the ‘retrospective narratives of her contemporaries, Davison’s Derby actions were shaped to link her directly to Joan of Arc’.4 The WSPU funeral procession for Davison was also connected to Joan; as Collette wrote, the rumor began that her dying words were those of Joan of Arc, ‘Fight on, God will give the victory!’ This motto, commonly attributed to Davison, appeared both on a banner carried by a Joan of Arc figure in the London funeral cortege and on a banner carried by the Newcastle branch of the WSPU at the Morpeth funeral.5

For these suffragettes, Joan was a symbol of both militancy and self-sacrifice, making her an ideal figure to embrace in the cause of suffrage. 1 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, ‘Seneca Falls Keynote Address, Delivered July 19, 1848, Seneca Falls, New York’, The National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House, 2013–2020, https:// susanb.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Elizabeth-Cady-Stanton-Seneca-Falls-1848.pdf [accessed 14 December 2020]. 2 On the WSPU and its associations with Joan of Arc, see Colleen Denney, The Visual Culture of Women’s Activism in London, Paris, and Beyond: An Analytical Art History, 1860 to the Present (Jefferson, 2018); Laura E. Nym Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860–1930 (Oxford, 2003); and Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–1914 (Chicago, 1998). 3 The Suffragette (9 May 1913), 501. Quoted in Denney, Visual Culture, 76. 4 Carolyn P. Collette, ‘“Faire Emelye”: Medievalism and the Moral Courage of Emily Wilding Davison’, The Chaucer Review, 42/3 (2008), 228. 5 Ibid., 228–29.

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Besides the more militant actions they became associated with, such as window-smashing and arson, the WSPU held many parades and demonstrations to advocate for women’s suffrage. These parades featured women dressed as historical figures and allegorical representations, and unsurprisingly, given her importance within the movement, Joan of Arc was often a prominent figure. As Lisa Tickner wrote: Joan of Arc symbolised the women’s ‘holy crusade’, and women impersonating her in armour and riding astride white horses (‘palfreys’) led WSPU processions. Christabel [Pankhurst] referred to her as ‘our patron saint’, for which purpose she was borrowed from the French and made the central emblem of feminist rebellion against the state.6

WSPU members could also make an important point about reduced roles for a certain class of women, using historical figures, as Mary Dockray-Miller wrote, ‘to call attention to what they perceived as an ironically wider range of rights and opportunities for wealthy and aristocratic women during the medieval period when compared to the early twentieth century’.7 Overall, the figure of Joan of Arc served as both an inspiration and an important tool for suffragettes in England as they pushed for the vote. As a figure of the remote medieval past whose actions and motivations remain somewhat enigmatic, Joan was an effective symbol that could cross national boundaries and be used to promote a variety of causes. As the idea of the use of Joan of Arc crossed national boundaries when deployed by English suffragettes, so did it cross the Atlantic as American suffrage advocates picked up on this emerging tradition. They were heavily influenced by their English counterparts, but also brought their own traditions of patriotic parades, political demonstrations, and public-relations savvy to create even bigger spectacles, often with Joan of Arc at the centre, to call attention to their cause and impress and recruit those who witnessed them. Campaigners including Harriot Stanton Blatch, Alice Paul, and Inez Milholland drew on their own experiences working with militant activists in England and marching in English suffrage parades to bring those ideas to the United States.8 Blatch, the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, introduced mass suffrage parades to the US beginning in 1908 in New York City, with ten thousand marching in the May 1912 parade.9 Members of groups such as the Joan of Arc Suffrage League, founded in 1909 by Nellie van Slingerland, who said she was

Tickner, The Spectacle of Women, 209–10. Mary Dockray-Miller, Public Medievalists, Racism, and Suffrage in the American Women’s College (Basingstoke, 2017), 53. 8 See Ellen Carol DuBois, ‘Working Women, Class Relations, and Suffrage Militance: Harriot Stanton Blatch and the New York Woman Suffrage Movement, 1894–1909’, The Journal of American History, 74/1 (1987), 34–58; J.D. Zahniser and Amelia R. Fry, Alice Paul: Claiming Power (Oxford, 2014); and Linda J. Lumsden, Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland (Bloomington, 2004) 9 Frances Diodato Bzowski, ‘Spectacular Suffrage; Or, How Women Came Out of the Home and into the Streets and Theaters of New York City to Win the Vote’, New York History, 76/1 (1995), 57–94. 6 7

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divinely inspired by Joan to found the group, marched in these parades and communicated the message that the ranks of suffragists were growing.10 Parades organized by a variety of leaders and groups began to spread throughout the country in the 1910s. Many of these parades, especially the larger ones, featured a woman playing Joan of Arc dressed in armour or, more rarely, flowing robes, and riding a horse astride. Like suffrage advocates in England, American women saw Joan as an inspirational figure who would also serve as the prime focus for the crowd’s attention and make a point about the strength and determination of women. An accompanying goal of these parades was to dispel the popular stereotype of the women’s suffrage advocate as a wizened old spinster or battle-axe of a wife who beat her husband into submission. As Belinda Stillion Southard has argued, these parades ‘functioned as an exhibition of femininity and celebrated women’s traditional gender roles as they provided a spectacle for others to admire or gaze upon. On the other hand, the parade represented the intrusion of women into the public sphere and women’s demand for equal rights.’11 Mary Chapman and Angela Mills have noted that parades and similar publicity stunts ‘packaged threatening ideas of women’s political potential within visually attractive, media-friendly forms’ and helped to promote the ‘modern image of the suffragist as the young, energetic, attractive, and marriageable “New Woman”’.12 Even more so than in England, suffrage leaders, especially Alice Paul, argued that spectacle, pageantry, and a focus on beauty could sway those viewing the parade to back women’s suffrage. Using beautiful young women to portray Joan of Arc in parades became an integral part of this strategy. In the 1910s, Joans rode in most of the major parades in locations throughout the country and often drew adulation from media sources, with vivid descriptions of the armour, appearance, and horse-handling skills of the Joan figures. In New York City’s May 1912 parade, Marie Stewart appeared as Joan of Arc, and as the Hartford Courant noted, she was ‘the most conspicuous feature of the parade’ and ‘wore a suit of shining mail and rode astride a large milk white horse’.13 Stewart ‘created a sensation by her masterly handling of her spirited white charger’ and was ‘easily the most attractive feature of the demonstration’.14 Commentary in the Topeka Daily Capital noted the success of this type of spectacle, stating that ‘woman suffrage has chiefly suffered from indifference, people have not regarded it as a serious matter’, but that the New York parade ‘must have opened the eyes of a good many people to the fact that suffrage is a cause that is growing … The demonstration made a greater impression on New York than the most successful meeting and the most

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1909.

‘Joan of Arc Spirit at Suffrage League’, The New York Times (New York), 9 September

11 Belinda A. Stillion Southard, Militant Citizenship: Rhetorical Strategies of the National Woman’s Party, 1913–1920 (College Station, 2011), 62. 12 Mary Chapman and Angela Mills, eds, Treacherous Texts: An Anthology of U..S. Suffrage Literature, 1846–1946 (New Brunswick, 2011), 171. 13 ‘10,000 Women March in Suffrage Parade: Big Crowds Line Streets to See the Marchers’, The Hartford Courant (Hartford, CT), 6 May 1912. 14 Ibid.

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eloquent arguments’ because it was viewed by thousands of people. Another effective parade was held in New York City in November 1912, with even more women marching and Isabel Rea as Joan of Arc leading a delegation by torchlight. The New York Sun described how ‘thousands of hands clapped’ as she rode by, ‘astride a white horse panoplied in crimson plush’, wearing ‘glittering armor’ and carrying ‘a long sword’.16 With each parade, the number of marchers increased, as did the number of eyes drawn to the spectacle. The centrality of the Joan of Arc figures indicates that organizers believed portrayals of the Maid to be effective at attracting attention and potentially winning supporters to the cause of women’s suffrage. In a bid to gain politically influential followers to the suffrage cause, Nellie van Slingerland of the Joan of Arc Suffrage League joined with the Just Government League of Maryland to organize a parade in Baltimore in June 1912 that coincided with the Democratic National Convention. An article in the Washington Post dramatically described the evening parade, opening with the line ‘[w]ith her armor scintillating in the glare of the focused convention searchlights, Joan of Arc, in the person of Miss Ida Neepier, waved her mailed hand at 8 o’clock tonight and the greatest spectacular feature of the convention was underway in the march of the woman suffragists’.17 Another paper described Neepier’s costume and called Joan ‘the patron saint of the cause, typifying the fighting spirit of the female sex’.18 While support of women’s suffrage was not added to the Democratic platform, newspaper accounts indicate that the parade drew further attention to the cause. Perhaps the height of the suffrage parade movement was the Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington, DC, spearheaded by Alice Paul.19 As James Glen Stovall remarked, Paul ‘envisioned an event that would arrest and impress viewers with a kaleidoscope of color, people and ideas. Grace, movement, and feminine beauty would be the tools that would lift the idea of suffrage onto a higher plane of public debate than it had ever attained in the United States.’20 The parade was to be held on 3 March 1913, scheduled for the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration specifically to draw attention to the cause of women’s suffrage and to serve as a contrast to Wilson’s all-male event.21 The planning for the parade was extensive, and press accounts were widespread as of January 1913. In these accounts, we can see both the 15

‘New York’s Woman Parade’, The Topeka Daily Capital (Topeka, KS), 9 May 1912. ‘20,000 Women in Suffrage Parade’, The New York Sun (New York), 10 November 1912. 17 ‘In March for Votes, Woman Suffragists Parade the Streets of Baltimore’, The Washington Post (Washington, DC), 28 June 1912. 18 ‘Suffrage March at Baltimore: Women Paraded to Impress Democratic Platform Makers’, The Fulton Democrat (McConnellsburg, PA), 27 June 1912. 19 See Sarah J. Moore, ‘Making a Spectacle of Suffrage: The National Woman Suffrage Pageant, 1913’, Journal of American Culture, 20/1 (1997), 89–103; Annelise K. Madsen, ‘Columbia and Her Foot Soldiers: Civic Art and the Demand for Change at the 1913 Suffrage Pageant-Procession’, Winterthur Portfolio, 48/4 (2014), 283–310; and Jennifer L. Borda, ‘The Woman Suffrage Parades of 1910–1913: Possibilities and Limitations of an Early Feminist Rhetorical Strategy’, Western Journal of Communication, 66/1 (2002), 25–52. 20 James Glen Stovall, Seeing Suffrage: The Washington Suffrage Parade of 1913, Its Pictures, and Its Effect on the American Political Landscape (Knoxville, 2013), xi. 21 Linda J. Lumsden, ‘Beauty and the Beasts: Significance of Press Coverage of the 1913 National Suffrage Parade’, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 77/3 (2000), 594–95. 15

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potential rewards and risks of Paul’s strategy. As Linda Lumsden has argued, Paul’s ‘emphasis on femininity was radical because it offered a visible alternative to the male model, although it risked trivializing the parade’s political message’.22 Based on newspaper stories, Paul managed to draw attention to the spectacle that was to occur, but some accounts focused on what was deemed a ‘beauty contest’ between suffrage advocates rather than necessarily on the cause for which they fought. Washington socialite and renowned beauty Gladys Hinckley was tipped in January to play Joan of Arc, which one paper mentioned as ‘a position sought by many beautiful women as the most desirable of any in the pageant’.23 Some papers stated that Hinckley was put forth to act as Joan specifically to rival Inez Milholland, the glamorous suffragist who had already made a name for herself as a lawyer and advocate for the vote, had led several previous parades, and would ultimately lead this parade as a Joan-like herald on horseback.24 Milholland had been described for a few years as ‘the beautiful suffragist Joan of Arc’ in the press and would continue to cultivate that comparison for the rest of her brief life.25 For the next six weeks, newspapers played up a rivalry between Hinckley and Milholland, between Washington and New York society, and argued that it was suitable recompense for the lack of an inaugural ball. The ‘qualifications’ of each woman were listed in several papers, including Milholland’s ‘flashing dark gray eyes’ and ‘dimples’ and Hinckley’s ‘Grecian profile’ and ‘statuesque figure.’26 Most accounts emphasize that those watching the parade would see not only Hinckley and Milholland, but ‘many others of striking beauty … in what probably will be the most famous beauty contest in the history of the country’.27 Linda Lumsden’s notion that the political content of the parade might be overshadowed by the emphasis on femininity seems quite evident in the flood of press coverage of this supposed ‘beauty contest’. One Texas newspaper made clear, however, that Alice Paul had at least succeeded in her goal of erasing stereotypes about suffragists, stating ‘away forever with those horrible caricatures of “the typical suffragette”. Let your rapt eyes linger on the likenesses of Miss Inez Milholland’ and ‘Miss Gladys Hinckley!’28 While some in the suffrage movement perhaps resented this intense focus on beauty rather than on the cause in the press prior to the parade, Paul’s emphasis on what may now be termed public relations drew unprecedented attention to the spectacle.29 Paul ensured that Milholland’s herald adorned the programme and became the symbol of the march. It was indeed an impressive display, although marred by Ibid., 595. ‘Capital Girl in Beauty Contest: Washington Suffragettes Have Candidate of Their Own for Honor’, The Washington Times (Washington, DC), 21 January 1913. 24 See Lumsden, Inez. 25 See for example ‘Society Girls Spurn Imputation of Inferiority to Male Troopers’, San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA), 11 February 1912. 26 See for example ‘Society’, The Topeka State Journal (Topeka, KS), 21 January 1913 and ‘Rival Beauties in Suffrage Parade’, The Central New Jersey Home News (New Brunswick, NJ), 22 January 1913. 27 ‘Who’s the Most Beautiful Suffraget[te]? This Is Overshadowing Problem at Capital’, The South Bend Tribune (South Bend, IN), 25 January 1913. 28 ‘Waco Morning News’, The Waco Morning News (Waco, TX), 30 January 1913. 29 Lumsden, ‘Beauty and the Beasts’, 594. 22 23

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violence and controversy over the side-lining of Black women in the parade. As Ann Marie Nicolosi noted: 30

[T]he day of the parade, Milholland used her equestrian skills and led the pageantry as the sole mounted ‘Joan of Arc’ figure of the Washington, D.C. parade. Crowned with a golden headpiece and dressed in flowing robes, Milholland provided a vision of religious iconography and secular spectacle characteristic of the era.31

Press accounts spoke of her larger-than-life appearance as ‘that modern Joan of Arc – the Herald beautiful, who sat splendidly [on] her magnificent mount of pure white, at times dispersing, what in spite of police protection, might have been a noisy rabble, which, however, gave way at the sight of this majestic apparition’.32 There is no indication, even after all the anticipation in the press, that Gladys Hinckley appeared as Joan of Arc; although not explicitly styled as Joan, Milholland alone claimed the spotlight as she so often did. Upon Milholland’s tragic death from pernicious anaemia in 1916 while on a speaking tour of the western United States, press comparisons to Joan of Arc added the idea that she, like Joan, was not only a warrior, but also a martyr, in this case to the suffrage cause.33 The Pensacola News Journal averred that the women were ‘kindred spirits’ who ‘both fought men, though with different weapons, the one to free her people from the tyranny of the English, the other to free her sex from the tyranny of the world. Either would have done the other’s work had she been in the other’s place.’34 The mention of the ‘tyranny of the English’ is particularly striking: the wide-ranging American use of Joan of Arc as a suffrage symbol was borrowed from English suffragettes, but in a country whose national narrative focuses on the overthrow of tyrannical English rule, the article’s author draws a parallel between Joan’s cause and the founding of the American nation. A tribute on the anniversary of her death in 1924 from her hometown newspaper in Plattsburgh, New York, argued that Milholland ‘may not, like Joan of Arc, have heard heavenly voices, but she heard the voice of humanity and she laid down her life a martyr to the cause she espoused as truly as did the Maid of Orleans at Rouen’.35 The article declared that ‘Northern New York is as proud of being the land which gave her birth as is Northern The famed activist and suffragist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who both associated herself with Joan of Arc and was referred to in the press as a Joan of Arc, refused along with other Black suffragists to be pushed to the back of the procession. She joined with the Illinois delegation against the ruling of parade organizers and was called ‘The Modern Joan [of] Arc’ by the Chicago Defender. See Patricia A. Schechter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill, 2001), 200–01. 31 Ann Marie Nicolosi, ‘“The Most Beautiful Suffragette”: Inez Milholland and the Political Currency of Beauty’, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 6/3 (2007), 299. 32 Mary Judge Garrett, ‘A Letter from Washington’, The Greenville Advocate (Greenville, AL), 12 March 1913. 33 This idea of Milholland as a martyr was encouraged by Alice Paul, who organized a memorial service in the US Capitol building and widely circulated her image. See Nicolosi, ‘The Most Beautiful Suffragette’, 307–08 and Lumsden, Inez, 174. 34 ‘Inez Milholland Boissevain’, Pensacola News Journal (Pensacola, FL), 28 November 1916. 35 ‘The Inez Milholland Masque’, Plattsburgh Daily Press (Plattsburgh, NY), 6 June 1924. 30

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France of being the birthplace of Joan.’36 Here, Joan of Arc remains a proudly French figure, but Milholland in both her actions in life and her martyr-like death is granted a sort of secular canonization as ‘the Joan of America’.37 In the wake of the Washington parade, Joan of Arc continued to be used as a symbol in demonstrations throughout the country. Parades held in Hartford, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, Des Moines, and several other American cities between 1914 and 1917 employed the successful formula of the Washington and New York parades, using spectacle, symbolism, and sheer numbers to press for the suffrage cause. Joan of Arc was a near constant in these parades, with a succession of accomplished young women portraying her and often leading the parades. Joan was hailed in newspaper accounts of the Shreveport, Louisiana parade, for example, as ‘the first great emancipator of women’, and the ‘great original suffragist’, showing that the association of Joan with the suffrage movement was being presented to readers.38 The image of a young woman riding astride a white steed in shining armour had become a potent symbol for women’s rights, but also an almost fetishized emblem of female beauty and power over men. This is perhaps best illustrated by a short story syndicated in several newspapers from 1914 through 1916 entitled ‘Arms and the Girl’, by Forbes Dwight.39 The story features a young man enraged at his fiancée’s refusal to give up playing the role of Joan of Arc in a suffrage parade simply because he asks her to. She returns his ring, and his response is ‘Well, so be it! If she would persist in making a silly spectacle of herself … perhaps it was just as well things were as they were.’40 The next morning, while running late for an appointment, he collides with the suffrage parade, and suddenly sees ‘a wonderful vision, a girl in flashing armor, trim and lithe and straight on a snow-white horse. The shimmering helmet she carried in her hands, leaving her hair like spun gold gleaming in the morning sun.’41 He ‘caught his breath and watched her with fascinating eyes’ and realized that ‘she wasn’t making a spectacle of herself; that she was something wonderful and sublime in her flashing armor’.42 He joins the small group of men in the parade and gets gently mocked by the crowd of spectators. Later, he tracks down his Joan, still in armour, removes her gauntlet, and asks to put the ring back on her finger. Enraptured by the sight of his fiancée as Joan, the young man not only surrendered total control to her but became a convert to the suffragist cause. While the author Ibid. Ibid. 38 Mrs Edith Brown Bailie, ‘No Discourtesy to Suffragists: Shreveport League Is to Participate in May Festival Parade’, The Times (Shreveport, LA), 24 March 1916; Mrs Edith Brown Bailie, ‘Artistic Floats in Women’s Big Parade’, The Times (Shreveport, LA), 7 May 1916. 39 A slightly longer version of the story, subtitled ‘It Made All the Difference in the World’, appeared in the Boston Globe on 26 April 1914, with an abridged and somewhat altered version lacking the subtitle appearing in several papers nationwide throughout 1915 and 1916. 40 Forbes Dwight, ‘Arms and the Girl: It Made All the Difference in the World’, The Boston Globe (Boston, MA), 26 April 1914. 41 Forbes Dwight, ‘Arms and the Girl’, The Monmouth Inquirer (Freehold, NJ), 7 October 1915. 42 Dwight, ‘Arms and the Girl: It Made All the Difference in the World’. 36 37

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noted that the young woman did not ‘make a spectacle of herself ’, it is her striking appearance as Joan of Arc that entrances a man who had previously cringed at the thought of her playing this role. Lest we think, however, that the parades and use of Joan of Arc were simply about spectacle and beauty, there were also frequent mentions in newspaper articles about the sincerity of the marchers and their belief in the cause, and this is often linked with the example of Joan. The parades and other activities associated with fighting for the cause of suffrage affected women on a profound level and inspired them to continue their task. In a Des Moines Register society column, a Miss Elizabeth Perkins, visiting the Votes for Women League, inspired the members by ‘telling of the suffrage work as she had viewed it in New York City’ and of ‘the big street parade [in May 1912] in which she had a part and of how it gave her a sort of Joan of Arc feeling to be marching along the street to show her allegiance to a cause’.43 Notably, Perkins also emphasized the ‘dignified and quiet way in which the women of New York went about the work’, putting forth the suffrage cause and the work it entailed as a serious, rather than frivolous and superficial undertaking.44 Similarly, an article about a May 1913 parade in New York City described leaders telling marchers to avoid ‘laughter or talking in the ranks and above all no nods, waving hands, or other greetings to relative and friends’ intoning, ‘Let the spirit, the faith of Joan D’Arc lead us on.’45 Another article noted that the women were ‘serious and determined, and say that an exhibit of the spirit of Joan of Arc will assist them in impressing the people that they are in earnest in their demand for the ballot’.46 While the spectacle of parades and the sight of a beautiful Joan of Arc astride a white charger was meant to dazzle and entertain those watching, suffragists also effectively communicated the notion that for them, Joan represented faith, determination, and the righteousness of their cause. While some newspaper coverage of the suffrage movement’s use of Joan of Arc was positive and even rapturous, many articles, op-eds, and letters to the editor took a different position. In opposition to those women who used Joan of Arc as a symbol in support of suffrage, some newspaper items instead upheld Joan as an exponent of more traditional feminine values and decried suffragists, whom they saw as misusing Joan’s image. For example, a 1909 article in The Tennessean, a Nashville paper, that purported to interview various men and women about votes for women, quoted a woman named Miss Lizzie Bloomstein as saying ‘a woman only soils her skirts when she dabbles in politics. Her hands and heart have higher and better work cut out for them. She should be the inspiration to the men, as was Joan of Arc: to lead the men to a higher pathway.’47 Here, Joan is not seen as the active suffragette, but as the unspoiled, pious woman that the men fight for. An editorial in the New York Times written in the wake of Joan’s beatification in 1909 decried the usage of Joan as a suffrage symbol, especially in connection with ‘Society’, The Des Moines Register (Des Moines, IA), 21 September 1912. Ibid. 45 ‘30,000 Suffrage Advocates Gather for Great Parade’, The Evening Sun (Baltimore, MD), 3 May 1913. 46 ‘Thirty Thousand Women Were in Line’, Lead Daily Call (Lead, SD), 3 May 1913. 47 ‘Social News in and around Nashville’, The Tennessean (Nashville, TN), 18 July 1909. 43

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the new Joan of Arc Suffrage League, stating that ‘the selection of JEANNE DARC’s [sic] name for a suffragists’ league is to be accounted for only because she was a woman of historical renown. Above everything else she was a religious zealot, and of her type there is no example among the discontented women of this age.’48 The editorial served a dual purpose, accusing suffragists of historical ignorance while also needling them for their supposed impiety. Similarly, a letter to the editor from 1912 by a Randolph Mills, also in the New York Times, argued that suffragists were misusing Joan of Arc, in this case stating that ‘[m]an has never fought woman, but in suffragism, woman is fighting man. She glories in militancy, in terms of war, in muster of forces, and we see the beautiful religious significance of Joan of Arc degraded to the level of the incoherent sentiments of a syncopated Marseillaise parade.’49 Here, the military elements of Joan’s life favoured by suffragists are pushed aside, and suffragists are accused of ignoring what the writer sees as the only aspect of Joan that truly matters. An article in the New York Tribune in 1913 echoes this, interviewing Mme Carlo Polifeme, president of Le Lyceum Société des Femmes de France, a Franco-American women’s friendship society in New York. Mme Polifeme declared that she did not think Joan of Arc would be a suffragist, ‘fighting policemen, breaking windows, in peevish rage’.50 She also argued that the suffrage cause’s use of Joan’s name and image was a ‘profanation’ and ‘it was sacrilege to have her represented in the suffrage parade. Some woman wore a suit of armor, got astride a white horse, and called herself Jeanne D’Arc. Ugh! I shudder to recall it.’51 Randolph Mills seems almost to decry Joan’s Frenchness and associate it with a senseless militarism, while Mme Polifeme, whose Frenchness is presented as giving her legitimacy to talk about Joan, rejects the idea that the French heroine could ever be associated with fighting or violence. Both agree, however, that suffrage advocates misinterpret and misrepresent Joan’s actions and beliefs to be akin to their own. Sometimes, these anti-suffrage views took the form of nasty jibes directed toward suffrage leaders that contrasted rather than compared them with Joan of Arc, as was a common theme in other news accounts and editorials. Rosalie Jones was a particular target of these insults. Jones led a march from New York City to Albany to petition the governor on behalf of the suffrage movement, and subsequently led another from New York City to Washington, DC for the March 1913 suffrage parade. The press coverage of both marches was extensive, with groups of reporters from several major newspapers travelling alongside the group.52 Jones was dubbed a ‘general’ leading a band of hikers or pilgrims, and while some newspapers referred ‘Ste. Jeanne’s New Duties’, The New York Times (New York), 12 September 1909. ‘Tug of Primal Instincts; In Discontented Working Women Not to be Satisfied by Feminism’, The New York Times (New York), 26 May 1912. 50 ‘Jean D’Arc Not a Suffragette: Birthday of the Maid Observed by Patriotic Frenchmen’, New York Tribune (New York), 6 January 1913. 51 Ibid. Mme Polifeme and her society gifted a statue of Joan of Arc to the women of the United States in 1922 that still stands in Washington, DC. See ‘Statue of Jeanne D’Arc Unveiled with Simple But Impressive Services’, The Washington Post (Washington, DC), 7 January 1922. 52 See Tiffany Lewis, ‘Mediating Political Mobility as Stunt-Girl Entertainment: Newspaper Coverage of New York’s Suffrage Hike to Albany’, American Journalism, 36/1 (2019), 109–11. 48 49

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to her favourably as a ‘modern Joan of Arc’, she was also the subject of ridicule. A Binghamton, New York paper mocked her two separate times a week apart, writing, ‘[o]ne difference between Joan of Arc and “General” Rosalie Jones is that Joan had something worth fighting for’ and ‘Joan of Arc is going to have a statue in New York City. This is unfair. Why crowd Joan in ahead of “General” Rosalie Jones?’54 Overall, the prominence of Joan in the American women’s suffrage movement was extensively covered in the press, with a wide variety of opinions expressed about what Joan of Arc represented and meant in their changing world. Others already opposed to women’s suffrage sometimes publicly decried the suffrage movement’s use of Joan of Arc, like Mme Carlo Polifeme, or at least dispelled belief that Joan would be a militant suffrage advocate. Prominent Catholic figures were especially vocal in airing their views in relation to Joan of Arc and suffrage, and this was covered extensively in the American press. In the years surrounding her beatification in 1909, Church officials pushed the idea of Joan as an ideal of Catholic womanhood but had focused on her steadfastness and devotion to God above her actions on the battlefield. Although the way they expressed their views varied in tone, these officials were united in their opposition to the idea that Joan would be a militant suffragist. A somewhat subtle denial of Joan’s association with the suffrage movement came from Father Bernard Vaughan, a popular English Jesuit who wrote a book entitled Life Lessons from Blessed Joan of Arc and lectured extensively on Joan during a speaking tour in the US in 1912.55 Papers wrote favourably about his folksy manner and love of American slang, listing a number of his witticisms.56 Vaughan is quoted in the New York Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch making the same point in speeches in both those cities: that while he does not know what Joan would think of women’s suffrage, ‘if she were here, ladies and gentlemen, I think she might break our hearts, but I know she would not break our windows’.57 Vaughan emphasized in St Louis what he saw as Joan’s desire to retreat from the action of the battlefield and re-join the traditional feminine sphere, saying ‘when she thought her work completed, she was filled with joy at the idea of getting back to her domestic duties and shed tears of bitter resignation when she found she was mistaken and had to take up the forceful part again’.58 The Post-Dispatch quotes Vaughan as trying to walk what he might have seen as a noncommittal path, saying ‘there are lots of good people on both sides of 53

53 ‘Suffrage “Pilgrims” Make Fine Start on Washington “Hike”’, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, NY), 12 February 1913. 54 ‘Wise and Otherwise’, Press and Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, NY), 3 January 1913; ‘Making a New Record’, Press and Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, NY), 9 January 1913. 55 Vaughan apparently earned the admiration of King Edward VII, who heard Vaughan preach, and admiring his outspoken criticisms of the powerful, invited him to dine with him. See ‘Catholic News: Gathered from Our Exchanges throughout the Country’, The Catholic Tribune (St. Joseph, MO), 13 April 1907. 56 ‘Fr. Vaughan’s Epigrams’, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO), 29 April 1912. 57 ‘Real Joan of Arc No Window Smasher: In Eloquent Terms Father Vaughan Absolves Soldier Maid of Modern “Militancy”’, The New York Times (New York), 2 April 1912. 58 ‘Joan of Arc Today Would Break Our Hearts, Not Windows, Says Fr. Vaughan’, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO), 29 April 1912.

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the suffrage question’, but overall he makes clear his feelings that any association of Joan of Arc with a more militant strain of suffragism is improper and unsavoury.59 Another more emphatic Catholic rejection of what was viewed as militant suffragism occurred in the leadup to the women’s suffrage parade in Washington. In February 1913, the aforementioned Rosalie Jones and her group of hikers headed for Washington arrived in Baltimore and stopped at the home of the influential archbishop, James Cardinal Gibbons. Gibbons endorsed some progressive causes such as the expansion of labour unions but was well known for his opposition to women’s suffrage. In an 1894 sermon, he said of women, ‘she cannot vote, and I am heartily glad of it. I hope that the day will never come when she can vote, and if the right is granted her, I hope she will regret it, even though there are some misguided women who think they want it.’60 Gibbons later expanded upon his beliefs, arguing that women’s attempts to gain suffrage caused the breakdown of the home in a piece for The Ladies’ Home Journal, written in 1902. In ‘The Restless Woman’, Gibbons wrote that he viewed ‘woman’s rights women’ as ‘the worst enemies of the female sex … under the influence of such teachers, we find woman, especially in higher circles, neglecting her household duties, gadding about, at rest only when in perpetual motion’.61 Given these views, it seems hard to believe that Gibbons would embrace a group of women marching hundreds of miles for the vote. However, some newspaper accounts of the meeting between the Cardinal and the hikers stated that he encouraged their activities. The accounts all agreed that the meeting was cordial, and that the group was received with kindness; one headline, for example, states ‘Gibbons Gracious to Women Hikers’.62 Jones was described as presenting the Cardinal with a ‘Votes for Women’ flag, and he supposedly accepted it after being assured that this would not signal advocacy for their cause.63 All accounts record the Cardinal saying he hoped legislators would not be hard-hearted toward the suffragists, as in the Detroit Free Press, where he is recorded as saying ‘[t]heir hearts must be harder than the ground on which you have trod and the stones which have torn your feet if they do not form a favorable opinion from your courage’.64 While some stories state that the Cardinal was ultimately not won over to the cause of women’s suffrage, others report him as saying that the hikers deserve Ibid. Henry Brown Blackwell, ‘A Cardinal Point’, The Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News, 25 (13 October 1894), 324. 61 James Cardinal Gibbons, ‘The Restless Woman’, The Ladies’ Home Journal, 29/2 (1902), 6. See also Jennifer Naccarelli, ‘Guided by Their Conscience: Catholic Suffragists in America 1890–1920’ (doctoral dissertation, Claremont Graduate University, 2011), 37. 62 ‘Gibbons Gracious to Women Hikers: Cardinal, Supposed Enemy of Suffrage, Gives Suffragette Band Audience’, The Palladium-Item (Richmond, IN), 25 February 1913. 63 ‘Invade the Camp of the “Enemy”: Woman Suffragists in Washington Thus Try to Gain Converts’, The Boston Globe (Boston, MA), 26 February 1913. 64 ‘Cardinal Gibbons Addresses Army of Suffrage Pilgrims as Modern Joans of Arc: American Head of Catholics Gives Audience to Suffragists and Lauds Them’, The Detroit Free Press (Detroit, MI), 26 February 1913. This interaction is characterized differently in the Washington Times story on the meeting; while the correspondent quotes Gibbons similarly, when asked if he was prepared to commit himself to the suffrage cause, Gibbons replied ‘No, not yet’: ‘Cardinal Greets Suffrage Army: Baltimore Prelate Wishes Them Luck, But Is Still Skeptic as to the Cause’, The Washington Times (Washington, DC), 25 February 1913. 59

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good results, and that he sent them off by saying ‘You are modern Joans of Arc – God bless you all.’65 Given the differing ways in which his meeting with the hikers was characterized, a few days later, Gibbons felt the need to respond to what he called false reports. Multiple newspapers have stories from a few days later featuring Gibbons making a speech to a Catholic women’s auxiliary and praising them as: true women, women who know their place … then look at the other picture in contrast. On one hand we see good accomplished in a quiet, modest way. On the other we see the noisy, clamorous, and spectacular way of other women, and as an example of this, I point to the hikers who were among you a few days ago.66

Gibbons went on to tell reporters ‘I did not say on any occasion that they reminded me of Joan of Arc, nor did I compare their sacrifice with that of the noble woman of France.’67 When asked if he thought the hikers’ trek had helped the cause of suffrage, he replied, ‘Oh, I am sure it has not.’68 While Gibbons was notably more harsh and defensive in his language than Father Vaughan, both of these prominent Catholic figures sought to wrest Joan of Arc from what they saw as the perverse grasp of militant suffragists and return her to their more traditional view of the obedient and pious Maid. In addition to some negative reactions to their use of Joan of Arc as a symbol, those in the women’s suffrage movement would also see the public increasingly start to view Joan through a different lens. As the United States entered the First World War in April 1917, Joan of Arc’s image was more frequently used as a patriotic symbol to emphasize the alliance with France and the determination and strong support for fighting men that American women were told they must show to help pave the way for victory. Rather than in suffrage parades, women playing the role of Joan of Arc could far more often be seen in patriotic parades and pageants for Liberty Loans, Red Cross drives, and even celebrations of Bastille Day in solidarity with French allies. This was typical of the era: as Carolyn Kitch remarks, ‘[t]hroughout popular culture, the emergency of war prompted a return to more traditional images’.69 While the deployment of Joan as a suffrage symbol did not disappear, this use of her image was overshadowed by her role as an inspiration for both women and men as the war progressed. Newspapers from across the country reveal the widespread use of young women playing Joan of Arc in these patriotic parades. Almost invariably, the woman playing Joan was described as clad in armour or mail and riding a white horse, much as she tended to appear in suffrage parades. The Joan figure usually led the parade: for example, a Red Cross pageant in Baltimore was led by ‘history’s great woman, ‘Cardinal Gibbons Addresses Army of Suffrage Pilgrims as Modern Joans of Arc’. ‘Cardinal Flays Hikers: Calls Them “Noisy, Clamorous and Spectacular”’, The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, MD), 1 March 1913. 67 ‘Cardinal Is Really Rude about Hikers: Noted Catholic Prelate Denies Being in Favor of Woman’s Suffrage’, Muncie Evening Press (Muncie, IN), 1 March 1913. 68 Ibid. 69 Carolyn Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media (Chapel Hill, 2001), 101. 65

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Joan of Arc, impersonated by Miss Clare Randolph Goode. And an inspiring Joan she was, garbed in brilliant mailed armor, with wristlets of fiery brass and her noble head bared to the sun!’70 This description recalls the rhapsodic ones often accorded to Joans in suffrage parades and attests to the continued popularity of using beauty and spectacle to promote a cause. One newspaper even seemed to concede that this type of depiction of Joan of Arc, though striking, might not necessarily match reality: in a Buffalo, New York parade for War Savings Stamps, ‘Miss Margaret Sweeney … clad in a suit of steel armor and helmet’ and ‘astride a pure white charger’ was ‘accoutered to represent the popular conception of the Maid of Orleans’.71 As with the suffrage parades, the importance of spectacle outweighed notions of historical accuracy. By 1917, the image of a woman on horseback in a parade had become so identified with Joan of Arc that even a woman not specifically portraying her could be associated with her. Describing a Red Cross parade in Richmond, Indiana, the Richmond Item noted ‘[M]iss LaVerne Jones and Miss June Robinson, dressed in Red Cross uniforms and [m]ounted on horses’ leading the procession.72 Jones is described as having ‘carried an American flag and presented a “Joan of Arc” appearance’, indicating that the image had become so ingrained that a medieval costume was unnecessary for creating the association with Joan of Arc in the minds of even middle-class, Midwestern Americans.73 Often in these parades, the Joan figure was pointedly placed to serve as a recruitment tool for women war workers. Women portraying Joan led marching lines of Red Cross nurses, as in a Texas parade wherein, as the Houston Post described, ‘100 Red Cross nurses paraded on Main Street led by Joan of Arc on a white steed.’74 The American Red Cross used these parades and other forms of advertising to aggressively recruit nurses, stating that they would help save France as Joan did. Just as suffragists associated themselves with Joan of Arc, so did the Red Cross, as in a newspaper recruiting call from The Gulf Division of the Red Cross in Alabama. The call states that ‘[e]very woman who joins the nursing service of the Red Cross is a modern Joan of Arc’, and notes that the organization’s initials A.R.C. associate it with Joan.75 It proclaims that ‘[e]very woman with “A.R.C.” after her name has heard the “voices” just as surely as did Joan of Arc. And, like her, these women are to help free France.’76 Here, Joan is deployed as a symbol of solidarity among the Allied nations; American women received the message that they could serve their own country as they devoted themselves to the cause of French freedom. Overall, Joan of 70 ‘City Thrilled by Big Parade: Thousands Line Streets to Cheer Red Cross Pageant’, The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, MD), 19 May 1918. 71 ‘Maid of Orleans Is Given Striking Personification’, The Buffalo Times (Buffalo, NY), 23 June 1918. 72 ‘Thousands Parade for Red Cross: Spectators Shower Coins into Flag’, The Richmond Item (Richmond, IN), 19 June 1917. 73 Ibid. 74 ‘Cavalry Brigade Recruiting Slow’, The Houston Post (Houston, TX), 5 May 1918. 75 ‘A.R.C. Women Helping to Free France’, The LaFayette Sun (LaFayette, AL), 12 June 1918. 76 Ibid.

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Arc was widely used to promote the purchase of war bonds and to inspire women to devote themselves to the dangerous work of wartime nursing. This martial and active image of Joan seen after the US declaration of war was counterbalanced, however, by the idea of a more passive notion of women deriving inspiration from Joan so that they in turn might inspire fighting men. This echoes the views of the newspaper op-eds and Catholic leaders discussed above. For example, a story in the National Field, a newspaper from Kansas, described a speech given to women in Kansas City by one Rev. Grant Robbins in May 1917. He declared ‘we do not need another Joan of Arc to mount a charge and ride at the head of an army’, dismissing the idea of women playing a direct role in the war, but argued that ‘the spirit of this Maid of Orleans is found on every battle field. There is the unseen tie which reaches … from every hamlet and city to the battle field, that becomes an inspiration to the men behind the guns.’77 He then stated that women should focus on economizing in the kitchen and keeping the training camps filled with their husbands and sons free from the ‘contaminating and debauching influences of liquor’.78 Additionally, an article in the Buffalo Commercial from September 1917 described a scene with drafted soldiers leaving home: ‘The departing conscripts were as so many heroes doing their duty as a matter of course, while the women lining the curbs were as Joan of Arc spurring them into action.’79 Here, the role of Joan of Arc as a combatant is not even mentioned: the women of Buffalo are depicted as emulating Joan’s power to inspire men to fight for a just cause. Controversies arose in the women’s suffrage cause over support of the war, or at least the idea of suspending suffrage activism after the United States’ entry into the war. While Paul and members of the National Women’s Party continued to picket the White House in protest at President Wilson’s lack of support for a women’s suffrage amendment, employing ‘silent sentinels’ with banners in the hopes of persuading and pressuring Wilson, leaders of the National American Women Suffrage Association like Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw joined national defence councils despite not personally supporting the war.80 Shaw denounced the National Women’s Party’s tactics in a speech before the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, declaring that Paul was ‘grossly mistaken in her views and has neither political sagacity nor wisdom’.81 Shaw was introduced before her speech by the Rev. Walter Russell Bowie, who declared that women during the war had entered ‘a larger sphere of usefulness and service’ even beyond the fight for suffrage and comparing women to Joan of Arc, saying ‘they have seen visions of great ideals and voices – far and

77 ‘Women Have Right: K.C. Pastor Says Mothers Have Right to Demand Clean Army Camps’, The National Field (Salina, KS), 10 May 1917. 78 Ibid. 79 ‘Buffalo Soldiers Off for War Work: Proud Women Hide Tears as 100 Draft Patriots Leave for Training Camp’, The Buffalo Commercial (Buffalo, NY), 6 September 1917. 80 Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene, Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign (Urbana, 2007), 168. 81 ‘Federal Suffrage on Wilson’s Advice: Dr. Anna Howard Shaw Says Women Waste Time in State Struggles’, The Times Dispatch (Richmond, VA), 14 November 1917.

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challenging – of service calling them to larger things’.82 The suffrage cause, and Joan of Arc’s deployment as a symbol within it, had been profoundly changed by the war. Some prominent suffragists went further than Catt and Shaw, giving full-throated endorsements of the war and using facets of what they saw as the gentler parts of Joan of Arc’s identity to support it. Dr Kate Waller Barrett, for example, vice-president of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia and later a founding member of the League of Women Voters, gave a speech to a mothers’ group in March 1918 that the Hartford Courant described as discussing ‘the magnificent example set for all womankind by Joan of Arc’.83 The paper records Barrett as saying ‘In Joan of Arc … there was always that feminine touch which was able to call up in the breasts of the wildest men the highest chivalry and desire to protect women.’84 Here, Joan is inspiration for men, and not fighting on the battlefield herself; Joan’s role as a soldier is completely elided, and she becomes instead a symbol of all womanhood, inspiring men’s protective nature. Increasingly during the period of US involvement in the war, the image of Joan as soldier for a righteous cause was competing with a more domesticated and traditionally feminine image of Joan (and in turn all good women) as the reason men fought. This resonates with the notion that Joan has represented many things to many people who sometimes had conflicting visions of what she could embody. The figure of Joan of Arc crossed national boundaries with ease from France to England to the United States, with little regard to the conflicts those nations had had in the past. The common cause of women’s suffrage among advocates in England and the United States, and the ways in which Joan could be used to advocate for that cause, swept away any notion of prior conflicts. The common cause of the Allied nations against German tyranny in the First World War reinforced the bonds between the nations and made Joan a powerful symbol of solidarity. Joan, as a figure of the distant medieval past, could be reshaped to fit with modern conflicts and concerns, often without much regard for the context in which she lived. The 1910s, bookended by Joan’s beatification and canonization, filled in the latter half with the conflicts of the First World War, and ending with the leadup to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, showed that Joan of Arc remained a malleable and potent symbol five hundred years after her death.

Ibid. ‘Achievements of Women Results of Men’s Influence: Dr. Barrett Outlines Woman’s Effect on World Thought’, Hartford Courant (Hartford, CT), March 7, 1918; Heather Brook Adams and Jason Barrett-Fox, ‘Figuring Vice: Sex, Women, and Work in Kate Waller Barrett’s Exhibitionist Rhetoric’, in Women at Work: Rhetorics of Gender and Labor, ed. David Gold and Jessica Enoch (Pittsburgh, 2019), 117. 84 ‘Achievements of Women Results of Men’s Influence’. 82 83

Index References to illustrations are given in italics. Aarseth, Øystein 183 Aboriginal people  82–83, 84–85 Abramtsevo artists’ colony  69 Cathedral of the Saviour  69 Absurd (rock band)  184 Ackland, Valentine  147 activist medievalism, overview  9–13, 14 Aleksei Mikhailovich (tsar)  62 Alexander II (tsar)  69 Alfred the Great  166 Ancient Kyiv Park (Kyivan Rus Park) 62–63, 64 Angeli, Jake  186–87 antiquarianism European 93 German 40 nobility/gentry and  27–28 Russian  66, 71, 72 Society of Antiquaries of London  19, 23, 25 and troubadour medievalism  112–16, 118, 119 and Wales  134 antiracism 174 antisemitism  158, 184, 188 Antonine Itinerary 28 armour made by Kelly Gang  82, 90, 92, 93 art nouveau, Russia  67, 68–69 Ascanius, Peter  24 Astashovo, houses at  71 Augustine of Canterbury  36 Australia bushfires 86–88 bushrangers  79, 81, 84 colonialism  82–83, 93, 148, 150 ‘diggers’  91, 92

Felons’ Apprehension Act 81 indigenous peoples  82–83, 84–85 Ned Kelly  6–7, 79–93 mateship, virtue  88–89, 91, 92 national identity  83–86, 88–91, 93 white settlers romanticization of  80, 82, 83, 84–85, 86, 91, 93 Stow’s The Girl Green as Elderflower 148 Babes in the Wood fairy tale  144, 150–51 ballad genre  119–20 Barbaric Age medievalism  103, 105 Barbazan, Étienne  114 bards  40, 53, 122 Barrett, Kate Waller  204 Bertram, Charles Britannicarum Gentium Historiæ Antiquæ Scriptores tres  19–22, 25–26, 30–31 as exile  19, 22–25, 29–30 map of Britain and Ireland  20 Bible, Russian translations  67 Black suffragist women  195 Blakeney, William  23 Blatch, Harriot Stanton  191 Bloomstein, Lizzie  197 Bondarchuk, Sergei  177 Book of Taliesen (Llyfr Taliesin) 131 Borba, Janet Graham  105 borealism 97 Bothmer, Hans Caspar von  24 Bowie, Walter Russell  203–04 Branwen ferch Llŷr 132 Breivik, Anders Behring  159, 185–86 Brennu-Njáls saga 100 Brexit ideology  166 n.46, 169

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British Museum  113 Brontë, Charlotte  38 Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights 39 Buffalo Commercial (newspaper)  203 Burney, Charles, General History of Music 115 Burroughs, William S.  177 bushfires, Australia  86–88 bushrangers, Australia  79, 81, 84 Butts, Mary  129 Byng, John  23 Byzantine style (architectural style)  69

Collingwood, W.G., A Pilgrimage to the Saga-Steads of Iceland 101 colonialism Australia  82–83, 93, 148, 150 Germany  4–5, 49, 56–57 commercialism  8, 95, 97–98, 102–06 Congress of Vienna  47 Copenhagen 23 Costa, Emanuel Mendes da  24 Crescimbeni, Mario Giovanni, Istoria della volgar poesia 113–14 Culloden, battle of  25

Caesar, John ‘Black’  84 Caledonia  21, 29 Camden, William, Britannica 28 canals, Great Britain  29–30 Canute (king)  22, 30 n.53 Carlyle, Thomas  38 Cartwright, Thomas  100 n.24 Catt, Carrie Chapman  203 Caxton, William  164 ‘Celtic mind’, romanticization of  134–35 Chalmers, George, Caledonia 29 Chaplin, Charlie  176 Charlottesville, Unite the Right rally  107, 158–59 Chaucer, Geoffrey, Canterbury Tales 11, 12, 163–65, 168 chauvinistic Paganism (music genre)  175 child refugees see ‘Green Children of Woolpit’ chivalry, imagery of  84, 92, 106 Christ the Saviour, Cathedral of, Moscow 69 Christchurch, New Zealand, terrorist attack  183, 186 Christianity Church of England  36 Gudrun 36–37 Protestantism  26, 36, 72 Roman Catholic Church  31, 36–37, 199, 200 Church Slavonic language  62, 65, 66, 67, 72, 74 Clare, John Vagabond in a Native Place 121 The Village Minstrel 120–21 classical texts, Middle Ages as repository of 30–32

Davison, Emily Wilding  190 Dead Can Dance (rock band)  182 Denmark  22–23, 24, 98 Danes as ancestors of English  37, 38–39, 40, 45 Der Stürmer (rock band)  184–85 Des Moines Register (newspaper)  197 Detroit Free Press (newspaper)  200 diaspora see exile and diaspora, C. Bertram and ‘diggers’, Australia  91, 92 Dwight, Forbes, ‘Arms and the Girl’ 196–97 East Slavs  59–61, 75, 76 Ebbutt, M. I.  79–80 Eco, Umberto, ‘Dreaming of the Middle Ages’  103, 106 n.53 ecomedievalism 105 Edict of Tolerance (Russia)  71 Edwards, Gareth, Rogue One (film)  106 Eiríkur Magnússon  99 elision of Middle Ages  30–32 Elizabeth, Grand Duchess of Russia  68 England see United Kingdom Enoch Quirm (character in Powys’s Maiden Castle), role of  131–35, 136, 137, 138–39, 140 Equal Suffrage League of Virginia  203, 204 ethnonationalism  6, 37, 44 Eurosceptic ideology  166 n.46, 169 exile and diaspora, C. Bertram and  19, 22–25, 29–30 expansionist discourse, overview  4–5 (see also colonialism)

Index extreme metal (music genre)  175–76, 180–81, 183 fairy tales (see also ‘Green Children of Woolpit’) Babes in the Wood  144, 150–51 far-right ideology Charlottesville rally  107, 158–59 extreme metal music genre  173, 174, 175, 181, 183–88 Iceland  107–08, 109 Fenwick, Nicholas  22 n.9, 24 fin’amour genre  123–24 First World War  73, 91, 201–04 Fitzpatrick, Alexander  81 folk songs  48 food and restaurants  62, 97–98 Forbes, Urquhart Atwell  29 Frederick V of Denmark  24 Friðþjófs saga hins frækna 100 Game of Thrones (TV series)  102–05 Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group  162 Gaucelm Faidit  115 gender  12 (see also women; women’s suffrage movement) Game of Thrones 102 gender fluidity  182 masculinity see under Viking imagery transgender people  187–88 Germany German National Assembly  49 reception of TheTale of Igor’s Campaign 48–57 colonialism  4–5, 49, 56–57 political context  47, 48–51, 56–57 Romantic nationalism  52–53 and Wars of Liberation  50 Gervinus, Georg  35 Gibbons, James  200 Gildas, De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae 19 Glitnir (Icelandic bank)  97–98 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von  50 Goode, Clare Randolph  202 Gothic Revival (architectural style)  69–70, 166 n.45 Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen (periodical) 48 Great Britain see United Kingdom

207

Great Dictator, The (film; Charlie Chaplin) 176 ‘Green Children of Woolpit’ accounts by Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh  143–46, 154, 156 and child refugees  10–11, 143–56 Hag project  152–53 migrant children and D. Nayeri’sThe Ungrateful Refugee  10–11, 153–56 Modern Fairies project  150–52 R. Stow’s The Girl Green as Elderflower 148–50 S. Townsend Warner’s ‘Elphenor and Weasel’ 146–48 Grimm, Wilhelm  52, 54–55 GUM (Trading Rows), Moscow  76 Hag project  152–153 Hagen, Friedrich von der  35, 37–38 hagiography genre  71–72 Hanover, royal house  26, 68 Harris, Alexander  91 Hartford Courant (newspaper)  192, 204 Hartmut (character in Kudrun)  41–42, 43 Hazlitt, William, On Going a Journey 121 Henker, Hjarulv  184, 185 Herculaneum 112–13 Herd, David  164, 165, 167, 168, 170 Herder, Johann Gottfried  48, 50, 54 Herwig (character in Kudrun)  41, 42–43 Hesse-Kassel, Mary, Landgravine of  24 Hesse-Kassel, princes of  23, 24 Heyne, Christian Gottlob  55–56 Hickes, George  100 Hinckley, Gladys  194, 195 Historical Museum, Moscow  70, 76 Hitler, Adolf  57, 185 Homer 53 Houston Post (newspaper)  202 Human Rights, Universal Declaration of 162 Hutten, Christoph von  113 Iberian Mother of God, Shrine of, Moscow 70 Iceland  7–8, 95–109 far-right use of medieval Iceland 107–09 landscape and film location  102–06

208

Index

national identity  7–8, 97–99, 107–08, 109 overseas interest in  99–102 sagas  98, 100, 106 n.55 tourism  97, 101–02, 103–05 immigration see ‘Green Children of Woolpit’; migration; Refugee Tales indigenous peoples  82–83, 84–85, 153 international medievalism activism  9–13, 14 nationalism 3–6 non-specificity/’medieval’ as blank canvas  6–7, 8, 14, 106, 179–80 overview 1–15 romanticization 6–9 Ireland  20, 21, 22, 34, 40, 113, 120 Irish settlers in Australia  80, 84–85, 91 Íslendingabók (Book of the Icelanders)  95 n.2, 96 Íslendingasögur (Sagas of Icelanders)  100 Ivan IV (‘The Terrible’)  63–64 Izmailovo Kremlin, Moscow  61–62, 63 Jacobaeus, Joannes Adolphus  24 Jagger, Mick  84 Joan of Arc as suffrage symbol  13, 189–204 English suffrage movement  190–91 opposition to  197–201 US suffrage movement  13, 191–97 WWI patriotism  201–04 Joan of Arc Suffrage League  191, 193, 198 Johnson, Daisy  152–53 Jón Stefánsson  100, 101 Jones, LaVerne  202 Jones, Rosalie  198–99, 200 Jordan, Gregor, Ned Kelly (film)  80, 83–93 Joseph of Arimathea  36 Just Government League of Maryland  193 Karamzin, Nikolay  64 Kazan’ Cathedral, Moscow  70, 76 Keightley, Thomas  145 Kelly, Dan  81, 92 Kelly, Ellen  80, 81, 89 Kelly, John ‘Red’  80 Kelly, Ned  6, 79–93 Cameron Letter  81–82 Jerilderie Letter  82, 84, 89 life 80–82

Ned Kelly (film)  80, 83–93 as Robin Hood figure  6–7, 79–80, 85–86, 88, 89, 91, 93 Kent Refugee Help  162 King, Martin Luther  176, 177, 187 n.72 Kolomenskoe Palace, Moscow  62 Kolyadina, Elena, Tsvetochnyi krest (Flower Cross) 64–65 König, Heinrich  47, 48–49 Kremlin, Moscow  61, 76 Krichinskii, Stepan  67 Kscope (record label)  175 Kudrun (13th-c. epic)  4, 33, 34–38, 39, 41, 42, 43–44 adaptation of see Letherbrow, Emma, Gudrun Hartmut (character)  41–42, 43 Herwig (character)  41, 42–43 Kulikovo Field  73, 74 Kulturbringer myth  5 Kyiv 75 Ancient Kyiv Park (Kyivan Rus Park) 62–63, 64 Vladimir the Great, monument  61, 62 La Borde, Jean-Benjamin-François de  114 Lachmann, Karl  35 Ladies’ Home Journal (periodical)  200 landscape Australia 86 ecomedievalism 105 Iceland  96, 102–03, 105–06, 108–09 language Church Slavonic  62, 65, 66, 67, 72, 74 and inclusivity  164–65 Old Norse  95, 98, 100, 177, 184 spelling and writing  177–78, 179, 184 Lawrence, D.H.  129 Le Grand d’Aussy, Pierre-Jean-Baptiste 114 League of Women Voters  204 Ledger, Heath  84 Leskov, Nikolai  71–72 ‘Skomorokh Pamphalon’  72 Letherbrow, Emma, Gudrun  4, 33–45 changes to structure and characterization 39–43 Kudrun see Kudrun (13th-c. epic) paratextual strategies  38–39, 45 religious aspect  35–37

Index Romantic nationalism  38–39, 44–45 violence 43–44 Libelle of Englyshe Polycye (verse treatise) 99 libraries in 18th c.  112–13 Liedertheorie 35 Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin 137 Llyfr Taliesin (Book of Taliesen)  131 local Middle Ages  159 Locke, Hew, ‘The Jurors’  168–69 Louise of Great Britain  24 Luzhkov, Yurii  61, 62 Lyceum Société des Femmes de France, Le 198 Mabinogi (story collection)  127, 132, 135 (see also Welsh literature, medieval) McKenna, Terence  176 Macpherson, James  48 (see also Ossian) Maffei, Scipione  113 ‘magical thinking’ in Powys’s Maiden Castle  128, 129–30, 132–35, 136, 137, 139 Magna Carta  166, 168–69, 170 Maiden Castle hillfort, Dorset  131, 133–34 Malory, Thomas, Le Morte d’Arthur 136 manuscript book production  66, 72, 76 manuscripts, study and editing of  51, 53, 111, 113–16, 118 martial imagery in metal bands  181 Martin, George R.R.  102–03 Marwnat Uthyr Pen 132 Mary, Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel  24 masculinity see under Viking imagery mateship, Australian virtue  88–89, 91, 92 ‘medieval’, term  1 medievalism, international see international medievalism Medievalists of Color  14 memory sites  166, 167 ‘Middle Ages’, term, in Russian context  59 migration  10–12, 158–62 (see also ‘Green Children of Woolpit’; Refugee Tales) UK and  162, 163, 165 white settlers in Australia romanticization of  80, 82, 83, 84–85, 86, 91, 93 Stow’s The Girl Green as Elderflower 148

209

Milholland, Inez  191, 194, 195, 196 Mills, Randolph  198 minstrelsy, Romantic perceptions of  112, 118–24 Modern Fairies project  150–52 modernism, Russia  67, 72 Moore, Thomas, Lalla Rookh 120 Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände (periodical) 55 Möring, Karl  49 Morris, William  101–02, 106 Moscow Christ the Saviour, Cathedral of  69 Historical Museum  70, 76 Iberian Mother of God, Shrine of  70 Izmailovo Kremlin  61–62, 63 Kazan’ Cathedral  70, 76 Kolomenskoe Palace  62 Kremlin  61, 76 Red Square  68 n.24, 69, 70, 76 Restaurant Dobrynya  62 St Basil the Blessed, Cathedral of  69, 70, 76 Sts Mary and Martha, Convent of  68 Trading Rows (GUM)  76 Tret’yakov Gallery  71 Müllenhoff, Karl  35, 39 n.23 Müller, Joseph Zacharias  51–52, 53–54 museums in 18th c.  113 music see under Viking imagery music manuscripts, study and editing of 113–16 Musin-Pushkin, Aleksei  51 National American Women Suffrage Association 203 National Field (newspaper)  203 National Geographic (periodical)  115 National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM; music genre)  184–85 ‘national’, term  2 National Women’s Party (United States) 203 nationalism 3–6 and colonialism Australia  82–83, 93, 148, 150 Germany  4–5, 49, 56–57 and national borders Russia and Soviet Union  5–6, 59–60, 75

210

Index

Scotland and England  3–4, 19, 27, 28, 30, 32 and national identity  157–61 Australia  83–86, 88–91, 93 England  4, 37–39, 40, 44–45, 158, 163–71 Iceland  7–8, 97–99, 107–08, 109 versus patriotism  24–25 and religion  37 Romantic  9 (see also romanticization) Gudrun  34, 38–45 Tale of Igor’s Campaign  52–53, 55 Nayeri, Dina  10–11, 154–56 Nazi ideology  57, 184, 185 Ned Kelly (film; dir. Gregor Jordan)  80, 83–93 Neepier, Ida  193 Nennius 31 Historia Brittonum 19 Nesterov, Mikhail  69 New York Sun (newspaper)  193 New York Times (newspaper)  186, 197–98, 199 New York Tribune (newspaper)  198 Nibelungenklage 37 Nibelungenlied  33, 35, 37–38, 53, 55 Niendorf, Martin Anton  35, 39 non-specificity/’medieval’ as blank canvas  6–7, 8, 14, 106, 179–80 Norden, Frederik Ludvig  24 Nordic Giants (post-rock band)  12, 173–74, 175, 176–83, 187 Amplify Human Vibration  176, 182 ‘Norman Yoke’ myth  166 Norse medievalisms see Iceland; Viking imagery Norse mythology  12, 100, 177–78, 183, 184, 185–86, 186–87 nostalgia  73, 82, 83, 148, 169–70 Novgorod the Great  75–76 NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal; music genre)  184–85 Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson  98 Old Believers  66, 71, 72, 76 Old Norse language  95, 98, 100, 177, 184 Old Northernism  99, 100 Ossian  48, 53, 55, 56 Oswald, Elizabeth Jane, By Fell and Fjord 101

Pankhurst family  190, 191 parades and marches  191–97, 198–99, 200, 201–02 (see also protest walks) Paris, Trinity and Saint Sergius, Church of 73 patriotism, Enlightenment  24–25 Paul, Alice  191, 192, 193, 194, 195 n.33, 203 Pearson, C.H.  29 Pendlebury, William  24 Pensacola News Journal (newspaper)  195 Percy, Thomas  100, 119 Perkins, Elizabeth  197 Peter III of Russia  23 Peter the Great  50, 60, 66 place and national medievalism  165–68 non-specificity of  7, 8, 14, 106 spatialization of time  161 Pogorelovo, houses at  71 Poland, Partition of  49–50 Polenov, Vasilii  69 Polifeme, Mme Carlo  198 Pompeii 113 post-rock (music genre)  174–175, 176 Powys, John Cowper Autobiography  127, 128, 129, 130, 136 The Complex Vision  129, 137–38 In Defence of Sensuality  129, 133 Maiden Castle  9, 127–40 beast symbolism and the totality of experience 135–39 Enoch Quirm (character) , role of  131–35, 136, 137, 138–39, 140 imagined ancestry and the ‘idea’ of Wales  127, 130–35 ‘magical thinking’  128, 129–30, 132–35, 136, 137, 139 priestcraft  35, 36–37, 45 Prolog (collection of hagiographies)  71–72 Protest: Stories of Resistance 169 protest walks  11, 162, 164, 165–66, 167–68 Protestantism  26, 36, 72 racism  14, 158–59 and antiracism  174 Australia  82–83, 84–85 Germany 49 Gudrun 44–45

Index and Norse medievalisms  107–08, 109, 183–88 suffragist movement and  195 railway termini  69–70 Ralph of Coggeshall  143, 144, 154 Rantzau, Cai von  23, 24 Rea, Isabel  193 Red Cross, charity  201, 202 Red Square, Moscow  68 n.24, 69, 70, 76 Refugee Tales  11–12, 157–71 anthologies  162–63, 171 echoes of Chaucer  163–65 Magna Carta  166, 168–69, 170 medieval places  165–68 national medievalism  158–62 Refugee Tales project  162–71 refugees see ‘Green Children of Woolpit’; migration; Refugee Tales religion and spirituality Church of England  36 Gudrun 36–37 and Norse medievalisms  178, 179, 181–83 Protestantism  26, 36, 72 Roman Catholic Church  31, 36–37, 199, 200 Remizov, Aleksei  72–73 Repin, Il’ya  64, 69 Restaurant Dobrynya, Moscow  62 Rhŷs, John, Studies in Arthurian Legend  128, 131–32, 135, 136–37, 138 n.44 Richard I of England  115, 125 Richard of Cirencester  19, 29, 30, 31 Richmond Item (newspaper)  202 Ritson, Joseph  119 Robbins, Grant  203 Robin Hood  6–7, 79–80, 85–86, 88, 89, 91, 93 Robinson, June  202 Rogue One (film; dir. Gareth Edwards)  106 Roman Britain see Scotland, Roman, and 18th-c. medievalism Roman Catholic Church  31, 36–37, 199, 200 Romanov, imperial house  60, 62, 66, 68, 75, 76 Romantic nationalism  9 Gudrun  34, 38–45 Tale of Igor’s Campaign  52–53, 55

211

Romanticism, British, and troubadour medievalism  8–9, 116–125 romanticization 6–9 of Iceland  99–106 Ned Kelly and Robin Hood  6–7, 79–80, 92 of the Welsh  9, 128, 134 Rome, ancient, England and  27–28 Ropet, Ivan  71 Royal Society  24, 25 runes  179, 184 Ruppert, Michael  177 Rus’, term  59 Russia and Soviet Union Edict of Tolerance  71 national identity and cultural historicism  5–6, 59–76 architecture  60, 61–63, 67–71, 73–74, 76 literature  63–67, 71–73, 74 post-Soviet period  61–66, 69, 70, 73, 75 Russian Empire  47, 49, 50, 60, 66–73 Soviet period  66, 68 n.24, 69, 70, 73–74 visual arts  64, 73 ‘Russia’, term  59 Russian Orthodox Church  64, 67, 71, 72 Russian style (architectural style)  60, 67–71, 73, 76 The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, German reception of  48–57 sagas, Icelandic  98, 100, 106 n.55 Sage Gateshead, concert venue  151 St Basil, Church of, Ancient Kyiv Park  63, 64 St Basil the Blessed, Cathedral of, Moscow  69, 70, 76 St. Louis Post-Dispatch (newspaper)  199 St Martin’s land (fairy location)  144, 149, 155 St Nicholas, Church of, Izmailovo Kremlin 61, 63 St Petersburg, Saviour on the Spilt Blood, Church of  69 St Sergii of Radonezh, Church of, Kulikovo field 73, 74

212

Index

St Theodore, Cathedral of, Tsarskoe Selo  67, 68, 68 Sts Mary and Martha, Convent of, Moscow 68 Sámi people  179, 181 San-Marte (Albert Schulz)  35 Saviour, Cathedral of the, Abramtsevo  69 Saviour on the Spilt Blood, Church of, St Petersburg 69 Schlegel, August Wilhelm  56–57 Schlözer, August Ludwig  48 Schulz, Albert (San-Marte)  35 Scotland, Roman, and 18th-c. medievalism 19–32 C. Bertram’s forged history  19–22, 23, 25–26, 27, 28–29, 30–32 elision of Middle Ages  30–32 Union of England and Scotland  3, 25–30 Scott, Walter  122–23 Ivanhoe 122 The Lay of the Last Minstrel 122 Second World War  76 Seven Years War  23, 47 shamanism  179, 181–82 Shaw, Anna Howard  203 Shchusev, Aleksei  68, 73 Shervud, Vladimir  70 Sigur Rós (post-rock band)  175 Simrock, Karl  35, 39 Skene, William F.  29 Slavic people  54, 56–57 East Slavs  59–61, 63, 75 Slingerland, Nellie van  191–92, 193 Sloane, Hans  113 Society for the Rebirth of Artistic Ancient Rus 67 Society of Antiquaries of London  19, 23, 25 Song of Solomon  66 Sorokin, Vladimir, Day of the Oprichnik 63–64 Soviet Union see Russia and Soviet Union spatialization of time  161 spectateur du nord, Le (periodical)  51 spelling and writing  33 n.3, 114, 177–78, 179, 184 spirituality see religion and spirituality Stanton, Elizabeth Cady  189–90 Stelletskii, Dmitrii  73

Stevenson, Robert Louis, Songs of Travel 121 Stewart, Marie  192 Story of the Kelly Gang, The (film; dir. J. Charles Tait and N. Nevin Tait) 88–89 Stow, Randolph, The Girl Green as Elderflower 148–50 Stukeley, William  19, 21, 22, 24, 29 Itinerarium Curiosum 23 suffrage movement see women’s suffrage movement Suffragette (newspaper)  190 Sweeney, Margaret  202 Tale of Igor’s Campaign, The, reception of 48–57 Tarrant, Brenton  186 Tennessean (newspaper)  197 Theodore Settlement, Tsarskoe Selo  67, 68 Thibaut de Champagne, Je me cuidoie partir 113–14 Titley, Walter  22 n.9, 24 Tolkien, J.R.R.  102–03, 178 Tolstoi, Lev  71 Ton, Konstantin  69 Topeka Daily Capital (newspaper)  192–93 Torres Strait Islander people  82 tourism Iceland  95, 97, 100–02, 103–05, 108–09 Russia, theme parks and restored/rebuilt buildings  61–62, 67 n.23, 69, 70, 76 Ukraine, theme parks and restored/ rebuilt buildings  62–63 Trading Rows (GUM), Moscow  76 transgender people  187–88 travel, Romantic preoccupation with  101– 02, 121–24 Tret’yakov Gallery, Moscow  71 Trinity and Saint Sergius, Church of, Paris 73 troubadour medievalism  8–9, 111–25 ambiguous nature of troubadours  117– 21, 124–25 British Romantic perceptions of troubadours  111–12, 116–24, 125 editing and publication of manuscripts 113–16 troubadours and travel  121–24

Index trouvères (poet-composers)  112, 113–14, 115, 116–17, 123 n.52 Trudell, John  176 Trump, Donald  186 Tsarskoe Selo  67, 68 St Theodore, Cathedral of  67, 68 Theodore Settlement  67 Ukraine  59 n.1, 60, 61 Kyiv  61, 62–63, 75 Unbegaun, Boris  74 Union of England and Scotland  3, 25–30 Unite the Right rally, Charlottesville  107, 158–59 United Kingdom attitude to Iceland  99–102 Brexit ideology  166 n.46, 169 Church of England  36 diversity of  26, 170 England/Britain, use of terms  27 Home Office  162, 163, 165 Houses of Parliament  166 immigration policy  157 n.1, 158, 162, 165 national identity, British, C. Bertram and 24–25 national identity, English Gudrun  4, 37–38, 40, 44–45 Refugee Tales  158, 159, 163–70 Romantic perceptions of troubadours  111–12, 116–24, 125 Scotland see Scotland, Roman, and 18thc. medievalism Wales  127–29, 130, 131, 133–35, 139, 140 Welsh literature, medieval  130, 131–32, 135, 136–37 women’s suffrage movement  190–91 United States storming of Capitol  96 n.5, 107, 186 women’s suffrage movement  191–201, 203–04 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 162 Varnhagen von Ense, Karl August  50–51, 56 Vasnetsov, Viktor  69, 71 Vaughan, Bernard  199–200, 201

213

Vespasiana (fictional Roman province)  19, 21, 26, 29 Vikernes, Varg  183–84, 186, 188 Viking imagery Iceland  95, 97–98, 104 masculinity Iceland  97, 98, 104 metal bands  174, 175, 176, 180–81 white supremacism  183, 185, 186 n.71, 187, 188 popular music  174–85 genres 174–76 Nordic Giants  173–75, 176–83 NSBM genre  184–85 white supremacism  183–88 Vladimir the Great, monuments  61, 62 Vodolazkin, Evgenii, Lavr (Laurus)  65–66 Vogt, Carl  49 Votes for Women League  197 Wales  127–29, 130, 131, 133–35, 139, 140 Welsh medieval literature  130, 131–132, 135, 136–137 walks see parades and marches; protest walks war First World War  73, 91, 201–04 Joan of Arc as patriotic symbol  201–04 martial imagery in metal bands  181 Second World War  76 Wars of Liberation, Germany and  50 white settler narrative and  91–92 Warburton, John  24 Warner, Sylvia Townsend ‘Elphenor and Weasel’  146–48 Kingdoms of Elfin 147 Wars of Liberation, Germany and  50 Washington, DC, Woman Suffrage Procession 193–95 Washington Post (newspaper)  193 Waterloo (film; dir. Sergei Bondarchuk) 177 Waterson, Marry ‘Green Children’  151 ‘Green in My Growing Pains’  150–51 Watts, Alan  176 Watts, Carol  163 Welsh literature, medieval  130, 131–32, 135, 136–37 Wheeler, Mortimer and Tessa Verney  131

214

Index

white supremacism and national medievalism  157–59 and Norse medievalisms  107–08, 109, 173–74, 175, 181, 183–88 Wild Colonial Boy, The (ballad)  84 William of Newburgh  143, 144–45, 154, 156 Wilson, Woodrow  193, 203 Windling, Terri  151–52 Woman Suffrage Procession, Washington, DC 193–95 women as inspirers of men  203, 204 war workers  202–03 Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU)  190, 191

women’s suffrage movement Black suffragist women  195 England 190–91 opposition to  197–201 United States  13, 191–97 Wordsworth, William  123, 124 ‘Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle’ 122 ‘Why, Minstrel, These Untuneful Murmurings?’ 121–22 World War I  73, 91, 201–204 World War II  76 Wright, Thomas  29 Yolen, Jane  151

Medievalism I Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination edited by David Clark and Nicholas Perkins II Medievalist Enlightenment: From Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques Rousseau Alicia C. Montoya III Memory and Myths of the Norman Conquest Siobhan Brownlie IV Comic Medievalism: Laughing at the Middle Ages Louise D’Arcens V Medievalism: Key Critical Terms edited by Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz VI Medievalism: A Critical History David Matthews VII Chivalry and the Medieval Past edited by Katie Stevenson and Barbara Gribling VIII Georgian Gothic: Medievalist Architecture, Furniture and Interiors, 1730–1840 Peter N. Lindfield IX Petrarch and the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France: Translation, Appropriation, Transformation Jennifer Rushworth X Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media: Appropriating the Middle Ages in the Twenty-First Century Andrew B.R. Elliott XI Translating Early Medieval Poetry: Transformation, Reception, Interpretation edited by Tom Birkett and Kirsty March-Lyons

XII Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones Shiloh Carroll XIII William Morris and the Icelandic Sagas Ian Felce XIV Derek Jarman’s Medieval Modern Robert Mills XV François Villon in English Poetry: Translation and Influence Claire Pascolini-Campbell XVI Neomedievalism, Popular Culture, and the Academy: From Tolkien to Game of Thrones KellyAnn Fitzpatrick XVII Medievalism in English Canadian Literature: From Richardson to Atwood edited by M.J. Toswell and Anna Czarnowus XVIII Anglo-Saxonism and the Idea of Englishness in Eighteenth-Century Britain Dustin M. Frazier Wood XIX Subaltern Medievalisms: Medievalism ‘from below’ in Nineteenth-Century Britain edited by David Matthews and Michael Sanders XX Medievalist Traditions in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Celebrating the Calendar Year Clare A. Simmons XXI Old English Medievalism: Reception and Recreation in the 20th and 21st Centuries edited by Rachel A. Fletcher, Thijs Porck and Oliver M. Traxel