Multi-ethnicity of literary culture in courtly circles of 12th century England

Abstract

Multi-ethnicity of literary culture in courtly circles of 12th century England The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the ambivalent attitude of writers attached to the Angevin court towards multi-ethnicity of that milieu. Both, biographies and writings of those courtier-clerics show the subversive nature of the blend of national identities. William of Malmesbury, who was of Anglo-Norman parentage, used a disquieting literary image of a deformed female body, symbolizing imminent collapse of the cross-channel realm. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Walter Map and Gerald of Wales, all of Welsh-Norman descent, expressed their anxiety through disturbing images of conflicting races, infernal regions producing chaos and epistemological uncertainty, or through a richly metaphoric journey image. Finally, despite internally experienced tensions, all writers embraced their native oral traditions. Geoffrey of Monmouth appropriated Arthurian legends into the clerical literary discourse. Walter Map used elements of Celtic folklore, including fairy beliefs, to provide cultural continuity with the past culture. Finally, Gerald of Wales expressed his ambivalent attitude towards complex Welsh-English relations by assimilating the supernatural into the historical. As a result, those authors managed to encompass in their writings at least two separate literary traditions: on the one hand, Latin literary culture, on the other, oral vernacular folklore. Thus, unwritten, vernacular myths gradually penetrated into the official written culture.