Article
Once and Future History: Textual Borrowings in an Account of the First War of Scottish Independence
Arthurian Literature
(2020)
Abstract
This article responds to findings and conclusions made by Laura Keeler in "The Historia Regum Britanniae and Four Mediaeval Chroniclers," Speculum 21(1946): 24-37. In the St. Albans chronicle segment known as "Annales Angliae et Scotiae, 1292-1299, " I have identified a dozen previously undetected borrowings from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britannie, William of Malmesbury's historical writings, Henry of Huntingdon's Historia Anglorum, and King Edgar's Oratio ad Dunstanum. Through source study and contextual analysis, I have deconstructed the St. Albans chronicler's practice of writing. I dispute Keeler's conclusion that the chronicler quietly borrowed from Geoffrey's Historia to conceal his ignorance about the events he described.
As I illustrate in this article, the chronicler made thoughtful and selective use of Geoffrey's Historia: he worked to harmonize the particular details of recent history with those of the more remote past. I argue that the monk's motivation for this manner of plagiarism was simultaneously stylistic and ideological. His choice of borrowings aligned with Edward I's use of pre-Conquest history as a precedent for English rule over Scotland c.1301-7. The chronicler's method of composition creates the effect of history (quite literally) repeating itself, with a post-Conquest king of England taking the place of his British and Anglo-Saxon forbears. The St. Albans chronicler used this typological linkage of "past" and present to counter a challenge made by the Scots in 1301 that Edward I had no legitimate basis for citing ancient British history as a precedent for English rule over Scotland.
Disciplines
Publication Date
June, 2020
Citation Information
Christopher M. Berard. "Once and Future History: Textual Borrowings in an Account of the First War of Scottish Independence" Arthurian Literature Vol. XXXV (2020) p. 44 - 116 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/christopher-berard/26/