Abstract
As noted in the introduction, scholars have consistently relegated female figures to the margins of their discussion of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae. A particularly striking example of this tendency, however, is medieval romance specialist Robert W. Hanning’s foundational study, The Vision of History in Early Britain: From Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth.1 Discussing the moment in Geoffrey’s account of the founding of Britain at which Brutus comforts his new wife Innogin as she mourns the loss of her homeland, Hanning positions both Geoffrey’s female figures and episodes in which warriors display emotional sensitivity outside the bounds of ‘history.’ He does so by defining Innogin as a romantic element marginal to what ‘history’ really is, an account of national origins and political freedom in which only male figures matter: “For a moment the issues of national birth and freedom are forgotten; history itself is forgotten, and attention is focused on the timeless problems of wives and lovers. This is but a momentary departure, however; Innogin is not spoken of again, except as the mother of Brutus’s children.”2 By treating this moment—despite its integration into the story of Britain’s first king—as a romantic anomaly that lacks a meaningful position within The History of the Kings of Britain, Hanning defines Galfridian females as incidental in, rather than integral to, the narrative of the past that Geoffrey constructs.
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Notes
Robert W. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain: From Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1966).
H. E. Salter, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and Oxford,” The English Historical Review 34 (1919): 383–85 [382–85].
Michael J. Curley, Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), p. 2. According to Salter, Geoffrey signed two of the extant charters as magister: one as “magistro Galfrido Artour [teacher Geoffrey Arthur]” and another as “mag. Gaufridus electus sancti Asaphi [teacher Geoffrey, bishop-elect of Saint Asaph],” “Geoffrey of Monmouth and Oxford,” 384.
J. S. P. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae and Its Early Vernacular Versions (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1950), p. 442. Archdeacon Walter is addressed as provost of St. George’s College in one of Pope Eugenius III’s bulls, Salter, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and Oxford,” 385.
Curley, Geoffrey of Monmouth, p. 5 citing Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869), 1:360. Robert of Torigni’s account of 1152 includes Geoffrey’s appointment as bishop, Chronica, 4:168.
Curley notes that “Geoffrey was the first to be called bishop of Saint Asaph, but it is unlikely that he ever traveled to North Wales to take up residence,” Geoffrey of Monmouth, p. 5 citing S. M. Harris, “Liturgical Commemorations of Welsh Saints (II), St. Asaph,” Journal of the Historical Society of the Church in Wales 6 (1956): 5–24.
O. J. Padel notes that “it is uncertain whether Geoffrey ever actually visited his see,” “Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Development of the Merlin Legend,” Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 51 (2006): 58 [37–65]
citing John Edward Lloyd: “It is not surprising to find no evidence that Geoffrey ever visited his episcopal seat,” “Geoffrey of Monmouth,” The English Historical Review 57 (1942): 465 [460–68].
Curley, Geoffrey of Monmouth, p. 5 citing Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum 1066–1154, in Regesta regis Stephani ac Mathildis impertaricis, ed. H. A. Cronne and R. H. C. Davis, vol. 3 of 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 3.272.97–99. Holt carefully distinguishes between the Treaty of Winchester agreed to on November 6, 1153 and the Westminster charter, which was “attested by the great men of both parties” and announced terms already agreed upon, “1153: The Treaty,” in The Anarchy, ed. King, pp. 295–96.
Paul Dalton, “The Topical Concerns of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britannie: History, Prophecy, Peacemaking, and English Identity in the Twelfth Century,” Journal of British Studies 44 (2005): 689 [688–712].
Hanning, The Vision of History, p. 42. For discussion of Dudo of Saint-Quentin, see Eleanor Searle, “Fact and Pattern in Heroic History: Dudo of Saint-Quentin,” Viator 15 (1984): 128 and 137 [119–37].
For Dudo’s history, see Dudo of Saint-Quentin, Gesta Normannorum, trans. Eric Christiansen (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 1998).
Wright, introduction to HRB Bern, p. xvi; Michael D. Reeve, “The Transmission of the Historia regum Britanniae,” Journal of Medieval Latin 1 (1991): 73 [73–117].
Wright’s edition of Geoffrey’s history supersedes both La légende arthurienne: études et documents, ed. Edmond Faral, 3 vols. (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1929) and The Historia regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth with Contributions to the Study of Its Place in Early British History by Acton Griscom, M.A., Together with a Literal Translation of the Welsh Manuscript No. LXI of Jesus College, Oxford by Robert Ellis Jones, S. T. D. (London and New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1929; Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1977). In the latter edition, Griscom argues for April 1136 as the initial publication date of Geoffrey’s history, part 1, p. 42 [3–216].
Dalton, “Eustace Fitz John,” 370–71 citing David Crouch, “The March and the Welsh Kings,” in The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign, ed. Edmund King (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 276 and n50 [255–77].
My translation of consul relies on R. E. Latham’s entry for the word in the Revised Medieval Latin Word-List: From British and Irish Sources (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 110. Wright, introduction to HRB Bern, p. xiv n20; Dumville refers to “the apostrophe of Earl Robert—as consul auguste, not by name” and asserts, “That consul cannot be a suitable appellation for King Stephen seems self-evident,” adding that the label is appropriate for the earl because “Robert is known as a patron of letters,” “An Early Text,” 19.
Thomson and Winterbottom, introduction to Gesta regum Anglorum, p. xli; Diana Greenway, introduction to Historia Anglorum, by Henry of Huntingdon, ed. and trans. Diana Greenway (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. lvii [xxiii–clxxiii].
Tolstoy, “Geoffrey of Monmouth,” 7. Scholars who view the double dedications as pleas for political unity include Wright, introduction to HRB Bern, p. xv and Walter F. Schirmer, Die frühen Darstellungen des Arthurstoffes (Cologne-Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1958), pp. 25–28. Dalton views the double dedications as reflecting the HRB’s “pacificatory purpose,” “The Topical Concerns,” 707. Warren notes how the HRB’s dedication “rearranges the doubleness of the patron-client relation, just as it rearranges names in the text” and figuratively “negotiates a settlement of the differences between political rivals and between empires past and present,” History on the Edge, p. 29. Curley interprets Geoffrey’s double dedications as “attempts by Geoffrey to curry favor with powerful and wealthy men in an effort to gain patronage and preferment,” Geoffrey of Monmouth, p. 9. Shichtman and Finke note that Geoffrey’s praise of Waleran in “exactly the same terms” as Robert must have made the “sincerity” of the document seem seriously “strained,” or at least “must have either seemed awkward or a way of his covering his bets,” “Profiting from the Past,” 15–17.
Wright notes that this dedication’s “place in the text-history of the Historia has yet to be established,” introduction to HRB Bern, p. xii n17. Jacob Hammer asserts that the blank dedication is Geoffrey’s work, “Remarks on the Sources and Textual History of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae,” Bulletin of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America 2 (1943/44): 529–30 [501–64].
Reeve, “The Transmission,” 76 citing Ernst Brugger, “Zu Galfrid von Monmouths Historia regum Britanniae,” Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 57 (1933): 271–76 [257–312].
Curley, Geoffrey of Monmouth, p. 9; Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, ed. and trans. Ian Short (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Dudo of Saint-Quentin had used legendary material to praise the Normans while William of Poitiers, the court historian of William the Conqueror, had written a laudatory biography of the Conqueror. See Dudo of Saint-Quentin, Gesta Normannorum; William of Poitiers, The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, trans. R. H. C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
For a discussion of these two historians, see Marjorie Chibnall, “Charter and Chronicle: The Use of Archive Sources by Norman Historians,” in Church and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to C. R. Cheney on His 70th Birthday, ed. C. N. L. Brooke, D. E. Luscombe, G. H. Martin, and Dorothy Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 4–5 [1–17].
Christopher Brooke, “Geoffrey of Monmouth as a Historian,” in Church and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to C. R. Cheney on His 70th Birthday, ed. C. N. L. Brooke, D. E. Luscombe, G. H. Martin, and Dorothy Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 85 [77–91].
Michael J. Curley notes that the Historia Brittonum contains both the battle of the red and white dragons and the boy-prophet’s alternating use of the terms vermes ‘worms’ and dracones ‘dragons/snakes’ for those creatures, “Animal Symbolism in the Prophecies of Merlin,” in Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages: The Bestiary and Its Legacy, ed. Willene B. Clark and Meradith T. McMunn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), p. 157 [151–63].
Echard, Arthurian Narrative, pp. 36–37; Flint, “Parody and Its Purpose,” 454 and 456; Hanning, The Vision of History, p. 124; Neil Wright, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and Bede,” Arthurian Literature 6 (1986): 27–59;
Neil Wright, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gildas,” Arthurian Literature 2 (1982): 1–40;
and Neil Wright, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gildas Revisited,” Arthurian Literature 4 (1985): 155–63.
HE 4.20, pp. 398–99, line 34. For more information about Saint Æthelthryth, see Virginia Blanton, Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St. Æthelthryth in Medieval England, 695–1615 (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State Press, 2007).
Peggy McCracken discusses the Old French text Jourdain de Blaye because it “offers a rare example of the representation of women’s blood, the blood of parturition, which is shown to be dangerous blood in this text” through the female character’s labeling of childbirth itself as a sin, “Engendering Sacrifice: Blood, Lineage, and Infanticide in Old French Literature,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 77 (2002): 71–74 [55–75]; Jourdain de Blaye, ed. Peter F. Dembowski, rev. ed., Les classiques français du moyen âge 112 (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1991). Cadden notes how, “by repeating Pliny’s warnings about the dangers of menstrual blood, Isidore [of Seville] gave later authors of treatises and sermons access to powerful material for their misogynistic warnings against the sexual lures of women,” Meanings of Sex Difference, p. 49. For other discussions of how medieval people conceived of and contained the supposed threat of women’s menstrual blood, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity,” in Women’s History and Ancient History, ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 273–99;
Dyan Elliott, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 2–7, 44, 115–16, 122, and 155;
and Charles T. Wood, “The Doctors’ Dilemma: Sin, Salvation, and the Menstrual Cycle in Medieval Thought,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 56 (1981): 710–27.
Malory, The Works, 1.313.1–5, 2.464.19–465.15, 2.497.1–9, 2.513.5–22, and 2.983.1–33; Fiona Tolhurst, “Why Every Knight Needs His Lady: Re-viewing Questions of Genre and ‘Cohesion’ in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur,” in Re-viewing Le Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes, ed. K. S. Whetter and Raluca L. Radulescu, Arthurian Studies 60 (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2005), pp. 139–45 [133–47].
Maureen Fries, “Gender and the Grail,” Arthuriana 8.1 (1998): 73 [67–79].
Jocelyn Catty, Writing Rape, Writing Women in Early Modern England: Unbridled Speech (Basingstoke, UK, and London: Macmillan Press Ltd.; New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1999), p. 9 citing Lynn A. Higgins and Brenda R. Silver, introduction to Rape and Representation, ed. Lynn A. Higgins and Brenda R. Silver, Gender and Culture Series (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 2–4 [1–11];
Kathryn Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), p. 31.
Entry for ‘puella (n.),’ A Latin Dictionary, ed. Charleton T. Lewis and Charles Short (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879 repr.), p. 1486.
Roberta Davidson argues that several female figures in Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur guide both the knights within the book and the book’s readers toward correct interpretations, “Reading Like a Woman in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Arthuriana 16.1 (2006): 29 [21–33].
Jenny M. Jochens, “The Politics of Reproduction: Medieval Norwegian Kingship,” The American Historical Review 92 (1987): 348 and 342 [327–49]; Roger of Howden, Chronica, p. 272. Katie Keene offers the possibility that the author of Le roman de Silence assigns Norway as the homeland of Eufeme, the evil queen, “deliberately…because of the generally negative perception of its royal line,” “‘Cherchez Eufeme’: The Evil Queen in Le roman de Silence,” Arthuriana 14.3 (2004): 11 [3–22].
Carolyne Larrington, “The Enchantress, the Knight, and the Cleric: Authorial Surrogates in Arthurian Romance,” Arthurian Literature 25 (2008): 45–46 [43–65].
Bartlett, “Cracking the Penile Code,” 70–71; Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Critical Edition, ed. Mary Hamel (New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1984), lines 3250–393.
Lesley Johnson, “Return to Albion,” Arthurian Literature 13 (1995): 20 [19–40];
Des grantz geanz: An Anglo-Norman Poem, ed. Georgine E. Brereton, Medium Ævum Monographs 2 (Oxford: Published for the Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature by Basil Blackwell Publishing, 1937).
Giovanni Boccaccio, Famous Women [De mulieribus claris], ed. and trans. Virginia Brown (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), p. 234. Shichtman and Finke categorize Cordeilla as a dutiful daughter, “Profiting from the Past,” 23.
Tatlock concludes that “Geoffrey could hardly end with an air of more contemptuous detachment from the Welsh,” The Legendary History, p. 400. Brynley F. Roberts interprets Geoffrey’s “scant respect” for the Welsh later in their history as indirect evidence of his possibly Breton ethnicity, “Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britanniae and Brut y Brenhinedd,” in The Arthur of the Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature, ed. Rachel Bromwich, A. O. H. Jarman, and Brynley F. Roberts (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991), p. 98 [97–116].
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© 2013 Fiona Tolhurst
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Tolhurst, F. (2013). Geoffrey’s History as Preparation for a Female King. In: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship. Arthurian and Courtly Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137329264_3
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