New Medieval Literatures

Volume Four

(Oxford University Press, May 2001 ISBN 0-19-818738-6)

The essays in New Medieval Literatures Volume Four explore nation, identity and otherness. They reflect on the origins of the 'medieval' as a kind of otherness, and on the ideological implications of reading the past as other. There is a preoccupation with encounters with the other, and with the nature of frontiers, historiographical and geographical. Several essays feature medieval travellers and their itineraries: Leland, Mandeville, Gawain, the Old English Exodus, the new world emperor's eastward journey, and the Trojan diaspora. Some Contributors traverse medieval geographical and historiographical borders; others, focusing on Lancastrian, Yorkist and Henrician England, are concerned to map on a large and detailed scale the contours of the land to either side of the medieval border. The 'Analytical Survey' traces recent trends in manuscript research, detecting the refoundation of Middle English studies in a new, young research enterprise that rethinks nationalist historiographies and geographies. Collectively, these essays engage with making the frontier of the medieval appear and disappear.

Introduction: 'Now you see it; now you don't': Nation, Identity and Otherness
WENDY SCASE
The Surveying Subject and the 'Whole World' of Belief: Three Case Studies
DAVID LAWTON
The Old English Exodus and the Colonization of the Promised Land
ANNE SAVAGE
'In Contrayez Straunge': Colonial Relations, British Identity, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
PATRICIA CLARE INGHAM
Prophetic Nations
RUTH NISSE
Merlin, Erceldoune, Nixon: A Popular Tradition of Political Prophecy
LESLEY COOTE and TIM THORNTON
Pleading, Pragmatism, and Permissible Hypocrisy: The 'Colours' of Legal Discourse in Late Medieval England
JAMES H. LANDMAN
The Knight of the Tower and the Queen in Sanctuary: Elizabeth Woodville's Use of Meaningful Silence and Absence
THERESA D. KEMP
Gender and Politics in Osbern Bokenham's Legendary
CARROLL HILLES
Bulldozing the Middle Ages: The Case of 'John Lydgate'
JAMES SIMPSON
Analytical Survey 4: Middle English Manuscripts and the Study of Literature
RALPH HANNA III