| Abstract | Paper -a:
This paper shall address the ideals of kingship put forward by Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1139AD). Written during a period of civil war in England, the Historia provides an account of the reigns of successive kings in pre-Saxon Britain, and through various historiographical tools, demonstrates for Geoffrey's contemporaries certain examples from the past of what to emulate and what to eschew, and in doing so provided a clear illustration of classical and Christian ideals of kingship which are revealed through Geoffrey's focus on the actions of individual rulers and their direct impact upon the state of the nation as a whole.
Paper -b:
This paper explores the English adoption and modification of Scottish prophetic expectations in Als Y Yod, a Northumberland political prophecy in ballad form, found in the early14th-century BL MS Cotton Julius A.v. It provides an early analogue to the English prophecies attributed to the Scottish border-prophet Thomas of Erceldoune. A work of political pessimism, it is concerned with the detrimental effect on the northern English counties of the competing Scottish and English claims in the region during the early years of the reign of Robert I. I argue that the prophecy is representative of a strain of English political pessimism which incorporates the threatening discourse of anti-English prophecies in circulation in Scotland and Wales as an essential part of its programme. This is a pronounced feature of later Erceldoune material: such inclusions demonstrate perceived threats to, and anxieties about, the stability of English borders. Analysis of the regional and national influences at work in Als Y Yod evidences the complex interpenetration of Scottish, English, and vestigial British (Welsh prophetic figures transmitted through Geoffrey of Monmouth) nationalist strategies of address in circulation on the Anglo-Scottish border during this period.
Paper -c:
The purpose of my paper is to analyse the influence of medieval European literature on the composition of the well-known Hávamál. The literary production in medieval Iceland becomes especially important when an antimonarchical, anti-courtly faction of intellectuals appears on the mostly monarchical European stage. The search for a cultural identity has a fundamental effect on the world of literary creation.
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