IMC 2019: Sessions
Session 809: National Identity and Medieval History Writing, IV: Patriotism and War
Tuesday 2 July 2019, 16.30-18.00
| Organisers: | Henry Marsh, Department of History, University of Exeter Trevor Russell Smith, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Andy King, Department of History, University of Southampton |
| Paper 809-a | Revisiting Minot: Nationalist versus Poet (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Middle English, Mentalities, Political Thought |
| Paper 809-b | National Behaviour on the Battlefield: Insights into the Identity Discourse of Chroniclers, 1100-1500 (Language: English) Index terms: Mentalities, Military History, Political Thought |
| Paper 809-c | Arms, Armour, and Poet: National Identity in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Language: English) Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Middle English, Mentalities, Military History |
| 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 explore how medieval historical writers addressed national identity in the varied contexts of warfare and conflict. The first paper challenges how historians have criticised the English poet Laurence Minot for his nationalism, which itself has often been said to be an impossibility in his 14th-century contexts, and offers new conclusions about Minot's place in the later Richardian efflorescence. The second paper explores the common topoi of nationhood in chroniclers' narratives of battle, both those of chroniclers' own nations and those of other nations, to better understand the rhetoric of war. The final paper offers a consideration of how the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tapped into the nationalist impulses of the present, especially in its depictions of arms and armour. |