IMC 2006: Sessions
Session 303: Who Am I?: Questions of Identity, Historical Writing, and Emotional Expression in Post-Conquest Writings
Monday 10 July 2006, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Liverpool |
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| Organiser: | Kirsten A. Fenton, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, University of Edinburgh |
| Moderator/Chair: | Pauline Stafford, School of History, University of Liverpool / Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds |
| Paper 303-a | The Posthumous Life of Edward the Confessor: Emotional Gesture to Ideological Stance (Language: English) Index terms: Hagiography, Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin, Mentalities |
| Paper 303-b | Orderic Vitalis's Recreation of his English Origins (unconfirmed) (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities |
| Paper 303-c | William of Malmesbury: Gender and Identity (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities |
| Abstract | This session seeks to consider how ideas of identity are constructed in post-Conquest historical writing. Questions of nation, people, and identity have been tackled by historians of England, and 1066 and the impact of the Norman conquest have been important in these discussions. Much of this research has focused on what nationalisms or identities existed in the pre-conquest past, and what the impact of 1066 was on these nationalisms or identities. How did contemporaries (English, Norman, and Anglo-Norman) react to the Conquest, and how was this reflected in their writings? To what extent do post-Conquest writings create and encode emotional communities? Can these communities be understood along national, racial, or gendered lines? Is identity itself a textual gesture? What can all this tell us about the process of English-Norman assimilation which recent historiography has stressed as being the key to understanding ideas of identity post-1066? |