Narratives of medieval nation and national medievalism

中世纪民族和民族中世纪主义的叙事

• 批准号: AH/E505740/1
• 负责人: Anke Bernau
• 金额: $ 2.87万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2007 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FE505740%2F1
• 关键词: Narratives; medieval; nation; national; medievalism

Recent work in medieval studies, such as Thoriac Turville-Petre's England the Nation (1996), has successfully challenged assumptions that an sense of nationhood did not exist in the Middle Ages. My work contributes to this growing body of scholarship, as well as to studies of medievalism, by focusing on two main issues: the expression of nationalistic sentiment through the proliferation and dissemination of newly-created foundation myths in the fourteenth century; and the use of the Middle Ages as a foundation myth for subsequent expressions of national identity. The first article focuses on the appropriation of the medieval past - both historical and fictional - to articulate a nationalistic agenda as presented in the mass media of film. D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) draws on the Middle Ages as a point of origin for its powerful narratives of nationhood from popular and from academic contexts. In this article, I examine the uses of the medieval in the articulation of Griffith's pro-South, pro-slavery agenda by discussing how the Middle Ages are evoked in conjunction with a range of different temporalities related, respectively, to modernity, race, the American South, the Anglo-Saxon American and female virginity. In these intersections, 1 show how the medieval both founds and undermines the providential vision of America that Griffiths proposes. The second article considers the strategies of expressing and creating a sense of nationhood through the example of the Albina myth that emerged in the fourteenth century. Whereas previous chronicles, since the twelfth century, had drawn on the Brutus origin myth made popular by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the early-fourteenth century witnessed the emergence of an origin myth that narrates the founding of Albion by rebellious, sinful women, before Brutus arrived to make it Britain. This new foundation myth circulated widely, and in all of the three languages being used in England at the time. It comprises a host of different generic registers, tropes and themes. This article reads the Albina myth in relation to its contemporary socio-political and narrative contexts, particularly in relation to memorial practices and medieval theories of memory. It argues that the myth was not primarily meant to be read as 'historical' in the sense of an actual occurrence, but that it provides a mode of reading national history that offers its audiences a memorial framework within which to remember the nation in specific ways. As such, 1 argue that the Albina myth is to be understood primarily as a potent and effective mnemonic tool. The third article moves on the from the second, focusing on the changes / both in the definition of Englishness and the understanding of the role origin myths played in national historiography / that took place in the fifteenth to the early-seventeenth centuries. 1 examine the questions: How did English chroniclers and antiquarians address national continuity in a period of profound change and rupture? How were these changes reflected in the ongoing use and growing debate about the truth value of English origin myths, such as those of Albina, Brutus and Arthur? In addition, 1 look at the emergence of the idea of "the Middle Ages' in this period as a point of origin in relation to which Englishness could increasingly be defined. This article departs from the idea that historical consciousness became more recognisable 'modem' in its methodology during this period; instead, I suggest that what changed was an understanding of memorial practices and the ways in which historical and mnemonic frameworks were capable of relaying and narrating the national past and also its present and future.

中世纪研究的最新成果，如Thoriac Turville-Petre的《英格兰国家》（England the Nation，1996），成功地挑战了中世纪不存在民族意识的假设。我的工作有助于这一日益增长的学术机构，以及中世纪的研究，通过集中在两个主要问题：民族主义情绪的表达，通过扩散和传播的新创建的基础神话在十四世纪;和使用中世纪作为基础神话为随后的国家身份的表达。第一篇文章集中在中世纪的过去-历史和虚构的-明确的民族主义议程提出的大众媒体的电影拨款。D.W.格里菲斯的《一个国家的诞生》（1915）以中世纪为起点，从流行和学术背景出发，对国家的强大叙述。在这篇文章中，我研究了中世纪的格里菲斯的亲南方，亲奴隶制议程的衔接中的用途，讨论如何中世纪被唤起与一系列不同的时间性相关，分别是现代性，种族，美国南部，盎格鲁-撒克逊美国人和女性童贞。在这些交叉点中，我展示了中世纪是如何建立和破坏格里菲思提出的美国天赐愿景的。第二篇文章通过出现于十四世纪的阿尔比纳神话的例子来考虑表达和创造民族意识的策略。自12世纪以来，以前的编年史都是借鉴蒙茅斯的杰弗里（Geoffrey of Monmouth）所流行的布鲁图斯起源神话，而14世纪早期则出现了一个起源神话，讲述了在布鲁图斯抵达英国之前，叛逆的、有罪的妇女建立了阿尔比恩。这一新的奠基神话流传甚广，并以当时英格兰使用的三种语言传播。它包括一系列不同的通用寄存器，比喻和主题。本文阅读阿尔宾纳神话与当代社会政治和叙事背景的关系，特别是与纪念实践和中世纪记忆理论的关系。它认为，神话主要不是为了在实际发生的意义上被解读为“历史的”，但它提供了一种阅读国家历史的模式，为观众提供了一个纪念框架，在这个框架内，以特定的方式记住这个国家。因此，我认为，阿尔宾娜神话应主要被理解为一个强大而有效的记忆工具。第三篇文章从第二篇开始，重点关注15世纪到17世纪早期发生的变化，无论是在英国性的定义上，还是在对起源神话在民族史学中所起作用的理解上。1检查的问题：英国编年史家和古物如何解决国家的连续性在一个深刻的变化和破裂的时期？这些变化是如何反映在持续使用和日益增长的辩论的真实价值的英语起源的神话，如阿尔宾纳，布鲁图斯和亚瑟？此外，我把这一时期“中世纪”观念的出现看作是一个起源点，在这个起源点上，英国人越来越多地被定义。本文从历史意识在这一时期的方法论中变得更加可识别的“现代”的想法出发;相反，我认为改变的是对纪念实践的理解，以及历史和记忆框架能够中继和叙述国家过去以及现在和未来的方式。