History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain, 1100-1300 by Michelle R. Warren (review)

Abstract

REVIEWSIO7 these practices, are not fulfilled either. The theory of the absent narratives, as the repressed material ofthe textual unconscious that return and resignify in repetitions and substitutions, produces an application ofa set oftheoretical concerns to specific texts and their specific meanings in the case studies; it is not an all-embracing theory ofthe 'medieval discourse,' signification, and meaning production in general in late medieval England. But if poststructuralist thinking has taught us anything, it is that all-embracing theories are always suspect. One ofthe three spaces where the examination is situated, the manuscript context, is also somewhat less emphasized than one would expect from the Introduction. This is a book rather for the theorist and literary scholar than the codicologist. A wonderful exception is the chapter on Gower, where the manuscript's marginal Latin commentary (also its illustrations) is shown as an alternative discourse to the text: instead of limiting its meaning, this alternative discourse further elaborates it and contributes to the author/narrator figure's self-fictionalization. But the last chapter, on the 'Arthur function' (with terms and concepts borrowed from Foucault and Barthes) in Malory, returns to a more literary reading relating to the manuscript only as far as it offers an explanation—a relevant one, admittedly—for the continued critical anxiety about the Morte's 'unity' or plurality. Arthur, whose story is emphatically missing from amongst the innumerable stories of his knights, is the absent centre of Malory's textual world, a position which nevertheless shows signs ofinterdependence with the other signifying elements ofthe text. But that argument does not depend on details of the manuscript, or even manuscript textuality. This book presents a very interesting theoretical framework, which points out the 'medieval discourse' and specifically medieval signifying practices as a critical space open for further work and introduces concepts and conjunctions of critical fields which are very promising and useful in approaching medieval texts with the tools ofpoststructuralist theories. Its greatest interest therefore lies in its methodology, a way of reading and integrating such recent systems of thought, and its sensitive leadings in demonstration of the relevance of its governing principles. GERGELY NAGY Institute of English and American Studies, University ofSzeged, Hungary Michelle R warren, History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders ofBritain, 1100—1300. Medieval Cultures Vol. 22. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Pp. xiii, 302. isbn: 0-8166-3491-2. $34.92. Michelle Warren uses Excalibur as a metaphor for the writing ofArthurian history in 'border cultures' in the central Middle Ages. These areas ofBritain and France— the Welsh March, Champagne, Brittany—witnessed great military clashes in the period c.1100-1300, but the pen proved as mighty as the sword, for these regions also launched the literary careers ofArthurian writers like Geoffrey ofMonmouth and Wace. Warren explores the links between teal-world military struggles and those so vividly portrayed in Arthurian literature. The book is organized both chronologically and geographically, with six chapters devoted to the six border regions that produced consecutive Arthurian histories. io8arthuriana (Somewhat surprisingly, this book about geographical borders and border history has not a single map illustration to help the reader locate his or her self in the changing landscape oftwelfth- and thirteenth-century Britain and France: two poorly reproduced photos ofthirteenth-century maps offer little aid). After a discussion of methodology and theory in chapter one, Warren devotes the next chapter to Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae. Warren calls this work an 'historia in marchia,' for not only was Monmouth a border region harboring many cultures (Welsh, Breton, Norman, English), but Geoffrey's dedications show him deftly maneuvering between rival political factions in the civil war between Stephen and Matilda (and similarly maneuvering between rival historians in the epilog). While in the Historia Corineus and Brutus's sons divide Britain and thus create borders, Arthur uses Excalibur (Caliburnus) to break borders through conquest and territorial expansion. The restored unity ofBritain is, Warren points out, short-lived, and Arthur's doom serves for Geoffrey as a parable on the fragility of imperialist ambition. In chapter three Warren moves across the Severn to examine the reception ofGeoffrey's Historia among the Welsh in both Latin...