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IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 709: National Identity and Medieval History Writing, III: Past and Present Histories

Tuesday 2 July 2019, 14.15-15.45

Organisers:Henry Marsh, Department of History, University of Exeter
Trevor Russell Smith, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Moderator/Chair:Tom Chadwick, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Exeter
Paper 709-aWhose National History?: Foreign and Native Sources in the Arthurian Defences of Elis Gruffydd, John Leland, and John Prise
(Language: English)
Mary Bateman, Department of English, University of Bristol
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Political Thought
Paper 709-bGeoffrey of Monmouth and Universal History
(Language: English)
Victoria Shirley, School of English, Communication & Philosophy, Cardiff University
Index terms: Genealogy and Prosopography, Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin, Political Thought
Paper 709-cNational Identity in John Strecche's Chronicle
(Language: English)
Henry Marsh, Department of History, University of Exeter
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin, Mentalities, Political Thought
Abstract

This series of four sessions examines the relationship between concepts of ethnic and national identity in the historical literature of the Middle Ages.

Papers in this session consider how historical writers engaged with and imagined national identity through histories of contemporary events as well as accounts of the past. The first paper explores how three writers, who identify variously as English, Welsh, and British, defended the Arthurian mythos against criticism. The paper questions how ideas of 'foreign' and 'native' sources were treated by authors, and in particular Welsh writers. The second paper examines how 13th-century universal chroniclers incorporated the events of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae into an international framework. The paper analyses the parallels between British and Old Testament history in the Westminster continuation of the Flores historiarum. The third paper considers how the Kenilworth canon John Strecche constructed a peculiar national narrative through the comparison of ancient and contemporary history in his early 15th-century chronicle.