IMC 2012: Sessions
Session 718: Ways of Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World
Tuesday 10 July 2012, 14.15-15.45
| Sponsor: | Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies / Haskins Society for Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Angevin & Viking History |
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| Organiser: | Chris Lewis, Department of History, King's College London / Institute of Historical Research, University of London |
| Moderator/Chair: | Chris Lewis, Department of History, King's College London / Institute of Historical Research, University of London |
| Paper 718-a | Rewriting Invasion Narratives in 12th-Century England (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin, Political Thought |
| Paper 718-b | The Construction of the Historia Ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin, Monasticism |
| Paper 718-c | 'The Dreamer and the Dream': Royal Dreams and their Context in the Chronicle of John of Worcester (Language: English) Index terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography, Monasticism, Religious Life |
| Abstract | Our understanding of narrative sources written in the Anglo-Norman world has been doubly transformed in recent years: by the continuing publication programme of the Oxford Medieval Texts series, and by increasingly interdisciplinary approaches. This session offers papers by three scholars (one established, two advanced postgraduates) which are very much in the interdisciplinary tradition. They focus on how authors writing in Latin thought of what they were doing as history, and how consequently they shaped their histories. The first considers how invasion, central to many authors' understanding of their own historical era, was played out in their rewriting of earlier invasions of England. The second shows how an author gave coherence to a particularly long work of history by weaving recurrent narrative threads through his thirteen books. The third is concerned with how another 12th-century historian made use of dreams. The three papers together will open up a discussion of the norms of historical writing in the 12th century. |