The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland by Roy James Goldstein (review)

Abstract

288ARTHURIANA and kinship; moreover, it serves to establish mindset similar to the one which provided the basis for nationalist ideologies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By the time one arrives at chapter 9, a paradigm shift has occured. To explain Blind Haty's displacement ofhistorical 'suthfastnes' with racial mythology, symbolism, and romance elements, Goldstein has gradually augmented the importance ofcontemporary psychoanalytic theory for his study. In a bold (and fairly unproblematized) analogy Goldstein transposes Harold Bloom's theory ofpoetic revisionism (usually confined to post-Enlightenment poets) to Hary's replacement of 'misprision' of sources/masters/ fathers' readings ofScottish history. Thus, Wallace's transgression against king Bruce, just like Hary's transgression(s) against the authority ofhistory, emerges as an antithetical completion ofa precursor/father's work. Goldstein's study obviously follows in the wake ofrecent historicizing investigations in medieval studies. It is immensely learned and employs a concise and lucid language. In addition, it avoids - Pattersonian-style - the danger of applying 'absolutizing, totalizing schemes' to arrive at its social readings (L. Patterson, Chaucerandthe Subject ofHistory. Madison, WI: U. ofWisconsin Press, 1991: 425). Despite a few typos (e.g., Ranke's 'wie es eigentlich gewesen' p. 9, 'Vees[l]er' p. 291, 'Wolfenbüt[t]el' p. 312, 'Geschic[h]te' p. 320), the book is also a fine example of scholarly and editorial exactitude. Mote importantly, it should bear testimony to the quality oftheory-driven readings of medieval texts. RICHARD J . UTZ University of Northern Iowa ROY james Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Pp. 386; index, bibliography, end-notes, illustrations, map. isbn: 0-8032-2144-4. $40.00. Professor Goldstein's difficult but rewarding book is an attempt to explain an explanation. Medieval Scotland, ever The Other to England, deliberately set out to set itself apatt from its neighbor to the south by a series of 'historical' or 'myth-historical' narratives called upon to justify its claimed status as a separate nation within a feudal setting where its independence was repeatedly in conflict with claims to homage by the English crown. The dispute even reached as far as the Pope in Rome, being memorialized in the lines from Dante's Paradiso xix 121-23 which form the epigraph for this book: 'Le si vedra la superbia ch'assetajchefa Io Scotto e l'Inghilesefollejsi che non puo soffrir dentro a sua meta.' (trans Singleton ...'There shall be seen the pride that quickens thirst, which makes the Scot and the Englishman mad, so that neither can keep within his own bounds.) The 'Historical Narrative' of the title, then, refers to these acts of prideful self-definition, brandished in the scriptorial war of words and used as rallying cries in the all-too-real battles which ensued. 'Freedom,' cried John Barbour, author of the Bruce, 'is a noble thing!' Never mind the pun inside the slogan; Scotsmen ofall ranks fought alongside the nobles for this perhaps illusory birthright, and when the Wats of REVIEWS289 Independence were over, took it to heart as their own invention, causing no end of proud trouble to the present day, leading directly from Bannockburn to Flodden Field to Bonnie Prince Charlie to the quarrel over North Sea oil. The original texts ate, ofcourse, obscure to all but the specialist in Old or Middle Scots, and Prof. Goldstein does an admirable job of elucidating and paraphrasing them, placing them in context with one another and with the historical events they were intended to illuminate or define. Here, of course, his confessedly neo-Marxist critical vocabulary may prove something ofa stumbling block for readers reared on the Plain Style. Faced down, however, the difficulties resolve themselves into unfamiliar jargon that becomes at least potentially useful in rethinking, in necessarily different terms, the problems an earlier generation of scholars had left at the margins. Learning to translate this terminology quickly repays itself in a deeper understanding of the ideology and the power relationships in the borders between Scotland and England. Admittedly, sometimes this vocabulary and the conceptual structures it reflects can be heavy going for the unwary or the lightly-armed. The 'semiotic rectangle' deployed to illustrate the...