Narratives of medieval nation and national medievalism

最近在中世纪研究方面的工作，如托里亚克·特维尔-彼得雷的《英格兰民族》（1996），成功地挑战了中世纪不存在国家意识的假设。通过关注两个主要问题，我的工作对这一不断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14世纪新创建的基础神话的扩散和传播来表达民族主义情绪；以及将中世纪作为后来表达民族认同的基础神话。第一篇文章聚焦于挪用中世纪的过去——包括历史的和虚构的——以阐明在电影大众媒体中呈现的民族主义议程。D.W.格里菲斯（D.W. Griffith）的《一个国家的诞生》（The Birth of a Nation, 1915）以中世纪为起点，从通俗和学术的角度对国家进行了强有力的叙述。在这篇文章中，我通过讨论中世纪是如何与一系列与现代性、种族、美国南方、盎格鲁-撒克逊美国人和女性童贞相关的不同时期联系起来的，来研究中世纪在格里菲斯亲南方、亲奴隶制议程的表达中的应用。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天意的美国愿景的。第二篇文章以14世纪出现的阿宾娜神话为例，探讨了表达和创造国家意识的策略。从12世纪开始，以前的编年史都是取材于蒙茅斯的杰弗里（Geoffrey of Monmouth）广为流传的布鲁图斯起源神话，而14世纪早期出现了一个起源神话，讲述了在布鲁图斯到达英国之前，叛逆、有罪的女人建立了阿尔比恩。这个新成立的神话广为流传，在当时英国使用的三种语言中都流传着。它包括许多不同的通用语域、修辞和主题。本文将从当代社会政治和叙事语境，特别是与纪念实践和中世纪记忆理论的关系来解读阿尔宾娜神话。它认为，神话的主要目的不是作为“历史”来阅读，因为它是真实发生的，而是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，我认为阿宾娜神话主要应该被理解为一种强有力的有效的记忆工具。第三篇文章在第二篇文章的基础上继续进行，重点关注15世纪到17世纪早期发生的变化，即英国性定义的变化，以及对起源神话在国家史学中所起作用的理解。我考察了以下问题：英国编年史家和古物学家如何在一个深刻变化和破裂的时期解决民族连续性问题？这些变化是如何反映在持续使用和越来越多的关于英国起源神话的真实价值的争论中，比如关于阿宾娜、布鲁图斯和亚瑟的神话？此外，我还会把这一时期“中世纪”概念的出现作为英格兰性逐渐被定义的起点。在这一时期，历史意识在方法论上变得更加“现代”。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传递和叙述国家过去、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.