Narratives of medieval nation and national medievalism

最近的中世纪研究工作，如托里亚克·特维尔-皮特的《英格兰与国家》(1996)，成功地挑战了中世纪不存在民族意识的假设。我的著作通过关注两个主要问题，为这一日益增长的学术体系以及对中世纪主义的研究做出了贡献：通过传播14世纪新创造的基础神话来表达民族主义情绪；以及将中世纪作为随后表达国家认同的基础神话。第一篇文章侧重于对中世纪历史的挪用--无论是历史上的还是虚构的--以阐明电影大众媒体中呈现的民族主义议程。D·W·格里菲斯的《一个国家的诞生》(1915)以中世纪为起点，从流行和学术的背景中对国家进行了强有力的叙述。在这篇文章中，我考察了中世纪在格里菲斯亲南方、支持奴隶制议程的表述中的使用，讨论了中世纪是如何与一系列不同的时间性联系在一起的，分别与现代性、种族、美国南方、盎格鲁-撒克逊美国人和女性童贞有关。在这些交集中，1展示了中世纪如何建立和破坏格里菲斯提出的美国的天意愿景。第二篇文章以14世纪出现的阿尔比纳神话为例，探讨了表达和创造民族意识的策略。自12世纪以来，以前的编年史都借鉴了由蒙茅斯的杰弗里流行的布鲁图斯起源神话，而14世纪初见证了一个起源神话的出现，讲述了在布鲁图斯到达英国之前，叛逆、有罪的妇女建立了阿尔比翁。这一新的建国神话广为流传，并以当时英格兰使用的所有三种语言传播。它由许多不同的类属语域、比喻和主题组成。本文从当代社会政治和叙事语境，特别是纪念实践和中世纪记忆理论的角度来解读阿尔比纳神话。它认为，这个神话主要不是为了被解读为实际发生意义上的历史，而是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，可以在其中以特定的方式记忆这个国家。因此，我认为Albina神话应该主要被理解为一种强有力的、有效的助记工具。第三篇文章从第二篇开始，重点讨论了15世纪到17世纪初发生的英式定义和对起源神话在民族史学中的作用的理解方面的变化。1考察这些问题：在一个深刻的变化和破裂的时期，英国的编年史和古物学家是如何处理民族连续性的？这些变化如何反映在持续使用和日益激烈的关于英语起源神话的真理价值的辩论中，例如阿尔比纳、布鲁图斯和亚瑟的神话？此外，我认为“中世纪”这一概念在这一时期的出现是一个可以越来越多地定义英语的起源。这篇文章不同于这一时期历史意识在方法论上变得更加可识别的“现代”的观点；相反，我认为改变的是对纪念实践的理解，以及历史和助记框架能够传递和叙述国家的过去以及现在和未来的方式。

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.