Broken Lines

Abstract

Ralucca L. Radulescu & Edward Donald Kennedy, eds. Broken Lines: Genealogical Literature in Medieval Britain and France. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. 295 pp. Why does medieval genealogical literature matter? The establishing of lineage gave the past authority in the present and helped to shape written forms of historical narrative. At their most basic level their authority derived from the diagrammatic, from the tables of descent of particular figures that gives credibility to their claims to power and wealth. In more complex ways, they shaped versions of history, explaining and justifying the nature of inheritance. This collection of thirteen essays examines different aspects of such writings in the medieval period. In spite of the title there is only one essay on France as well as single ones on Scotland and Wales and several on Anglo-Norman texts; the remaining essays all deal primarily with English materials. The approaches in the essays vary markedly. Some chapters are concerned less with genealogy than with history and/or politics. For example, Sarah Peverley examines John Hardyng's verse Chronicle "to address the way in which Hardyng reshaped the later version of his Chronicle to reflect and comment on the fractured political period in which he lived" (260). Such aims subordinate genealogy to these other elements in a discussion that barely gets beyond the opening pages of Hardyng's work. Ralucca Radulescu conflates genealogy with a more general sense of kingship and nationhood in a rather unfocused survey that lacks much specificity (there is only a single quotation from a romance). Other essays situate genealogical literature within geographical and/or linguistic boundaries, with greater degrees of success. E. D. Kennedy usefully summarizes the relevant aspects of Scottish chronicles and their interrelationship. Nia W H. Powell offers a very detailed account of Welsh genealogical materials. She notes in passing that the "total amount of pre- 1300 recorded genealogical narrative is relatively low for Wales, however in comparison with Ireland" (192) which makes one wonder why there is no chapter here on Irish genealogy. Marigold Norbye discusses genealogical diagrams in manuscripts in medieval France, but there is no wider discussion elsewhere of genealogical issues in other works there. Some essays have a narrower focus. John Spence offers an account of several Anglo-Norman manuscript genealogies that is informative as to their content but avoids any discussion the material forms in which they appear. In contrast, Oliver de La Borderie, who also looks at Anglo Norman texts of this kind, identifies what he feels is a new form of representation in which the text is presented in a roll format set 'around a central - and often illustrated - genealogical diagram' (46). …