Writing Regional Identities in Medieval England: From the "Gesta Herwardi" to "Richard Coer de Lyon by Emily Dolmans

Abstract

Reviewed by: Writing Regional Identities in Medieval England: From the "Gesta Herwardi" to "Richard Coer de Lyon by Emily Dolmans Robert Rouse Emily Dolmans. Writing Regional Identities in Medieval England: From the "Gesta Herwardi" to "Richard Coer de Lyon". Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. xiv, 235. $95.00 cloth; $29.95 e-book. Scholarship on the articulation of English identity during the medieval period has been somewhat of a boom industry over the past twenty-five years. To a large extent initiated by the publication of Thorlac Turville-Petre's England the Nation in 1996, the subfield has borne forth a rich variety of monographs, articles, and conferences examining the development of Englishness, in its manifold theorized forms, from the arrival of the Early English through to the end of the Middle Ages. Many of these studies have sought to understand these nascent forms of English group identity (the concept of nation is problematic in a medieval context) by examining the way in which identity coalesces around the center, most often in the form of the elite community of the realm, the communitas regni. Emily Dolmans's much-needed 2020 study, Writing Regional Identities in Medieval England: From the "Gesta Herwardi" to "Richard Coer de Lyon," provides a timely nuancing of such a centralized model of identity, arguing convincingly that much medieval Englishness is determinedly local and regional in nature. Judiciously ranging across a wide span of multilingual literature set within, and on the borders of, medieval England, Dolmans's book makes a convincing case for a renewed examination of the myriad ways in which Englishness is imagined across a variety of locales during this period. The book comprises a framing introduction and five chapters, each of which forms a case study of a particular regional form or mode of English identity. The introduction, "These Englands: Regional Identities and Cultural Contacts," highlights two key aspects central to Dolmans's argument. First is the plural nature of the identity formations to be examined. Each construction of English identity performed in these texts is different, sometimes in nature, sometimes in degree, reminding us of the communal [End Page 395] fiction that lies at the heart of any sense of group identity. The many different Englands examined in Dolmans's book stand testament to the enduring value and importance of such an idea, while simultaneously reminding us of the inherent plurality of an idea repeatedly reimagined and redeployed in different geographical and political contexts. Second, the reader is reminded of the importance of the not-English in any formulation of English identity. As theorists of identity have reminded us for many decades, much of the heavy lifting of identity politics is performed by imagined and real cultural others. Here we find the Welsh, the French (in the guise of the Norman/Angevin kings), and the non-Christian others of the romance East examined for their role in the identity politics of the medieval English. Dolmans begins with the post-Conquest English identity crisis as articulated in the twelfth-century Gesta Herwardi. In this reading, the island cathedral city of Ely looms large, read here as an identity locus for the regional poetics of the text. A gesturing here toward a fractal kaleidoscope of local responses to the social and political upheaval of the Conquest reminds us of the fragile nature of the late pre-Conquest English state, a realm where regional identities were still palpable, as evident in the spatial politics of poems such as The Battle of Maldon. A retreat to long-held identity politics of the local is a natural strategy in the face of regnal displacement. After discussing Hereward, Dolmans moves us east to Lincolnshire, into the world of Gaimar's regional history, the Estoire des Engleis. Gaimar, writing in the deeply multicultural legacy of the east of England, weaves together narratives from Danish, English, and continental histories to create a sense of regional cultural identity that is simultaneously safely nostalgic and progressively integrative. The March of Wales has a history of complex and ever-changing landscapes of identity, as work in recent years by scholars such as Lindy Brady and Daniel Helbert has reminded us. Dolmans...