England in Europe: Women, Multilingualism and Patronage in the Eleventh Century

欧洲的英国：十一世纪的女性、多语言和赞助

• 批准号: AH/G006024/1
• 负责人: Elizabeth Tyler
• 金额: $ 2.55万
• 依托单位: University of York
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2009 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FG006024%2F1
• 关键词: England; Europe; Women; Multilingualism; Patronage

The eleventh century has traditionally been constructed as a fallow period for English literary culture. The linguistic and political upheaval caused by the Danish (1016) and Norman (1066) conquests is thought to have imposed a period of inactivity, creating a fundamental discontinuity between Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman literary culture. My research studies histories produced for English royal women to challenge this traditional view. Especially important are those written for Queen Emma (+1052), Queen Edith (+1075) and Queen Matilda (+1118). Both Emma and Edith, finding themselves at the centre for the period's turbulent political life and court culture, sought to protect their interests by commissioning Flemish clerics to write histories of their husbands' reigns. Queen Matilda, the Anglo-Saxon wife of the Norman king Henry I, inherited the literary culture of her pre-conquest predecessors. I argue that in order to see this history-writing as integral to English literature, we need both to set aside nationalizing literary history, which would dismiss these works as foreign rather than international, and to take the agency involved in women's patronage serious. Taking such an approach, I show that far from being an interlude the 11th century was a vibrant period of creativity for English literature. The literary culture of late Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman England (with its often contradictory accounts of conquest, factionalism and near civil war) was extraordinarily lively as clerics and lay patrons, most especially women, grappled with what it meant to give a true account of events. At the heart of much of this history-writing lie innovative responses to the Roman story-world, especially as transmitted in classical Latin poetry. Moreover because this history-writing flourished in multilingual context (with Latin, English, French, Danish and Flemish all being used), the early use of English as a written language was able to encourage the emergence of written French and thus nourished European literary culture more broadly.

11世纪传统上被认为是英国文学文化的休耕期。由丹麦人（1016年）和诺曼人（1066年）的征服引起的语言和政治动荡被认为造成了一段时期的不活跃，造成了盎格鲁-撒克逊人和盎格鲁-诺曼文学文化之间的根本中断。我研究的是英国王室女性的历史，以挑战这一传统观点。尤其重要的是为女王艾玛（+1052），女王伊迪丝（+1075）和女王玛蒂尔达（+1118）而写的。艾玛和伊迪丝都发现自己处于这一时期动荡的政治生活和宫廷文化的中心，为了保护自己的利益，她们委托佛兰德牧师撰写丈夫统治时期的历史。玛蒂尔达女王，诺曼国王亨利一世的盎格鲁-撒克逊妻子，继承了她被征服前的前任的文学文化。我认为，为了将这种历史写作视为英国文学不可或缺的一部分，我们既需要抛开文学史的民族化，因为民族化会将这些作品视为外国作品而非国际作品，也需要严肃对待女性赞助的机构。通过这种方法，我表明，11世纪远不是一个插曲，而是英国文学创作的一个充满活力的时期。盎格鲁-撒克逊晚期和盎格鲁-诺曼早期英格兰的文学文化（对征服、派系斗争和近乎内战的描述常常相互矛盾）异常活跃，因为神职人员和外行赞助人，尤其是女性，努力解决如何真实地描述事件。这种历史写作的核心是对罗马故事世界的创新回应，尤其是在古典拉丁诗歌中传播的故事。此外，由于这种历史写作是在多语言的背景下（拉丁语、英语、法语、丹麦语和佛兰德语都被使用）蓬勃发展的，早期使用英语作为书面语言能够鼓励书面法语的出现，从而更广泛地滋养了欧洲文学文化。