Proposed research title(s) History, 'Weird Time', and the Subterranean in Britain, c. 1100-1400

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My research looks to investigate a curious motif in literatures of the Middle Ages, spanning genres, in whichsubterranean, cavernous, or buried spaces are associated with warped or asynchronous experiences of time. Storiesabound of caves and hollows in which time seems to pass more slowly than on the surface world; of messianic kingssuch as Arthur, who sleep in 'suspended animation' within hollow mountains until called upon to save their people; andinstances in which figures journey into crypts, barrows, or underground passageways, there confronting relics of theforgotten past. Providing an ecocritical reading of these texts, I will look to foreground these underground spaces asmediaeval sites of what literary scholars have referred to as 'weird time', moments where quotidian or dominantunderstandings of time are intruded upon by alternative temporalities of disturbing, alien duration. This notion of'dominant' times and histories introduces the crux of my project, investigating instances where the subterranean isimplicated in 'colonial' discourses of the British past and future in Anglo-Norman history writing and political prophecy.Here underground spaces are often figured as sites of encounter between the English present and relics of the Welsh,Anglo-Saxon and British past; and here, too, the atemporality of subterranean space is often evoked in order tomarginalise the subaltern polities of Britain both geographically and within British history.