Marginalia -- The Journal of the Medieval Reading Group at Cambridge

Since the 1970s historians and archaeologists including R.R. Davies, Edward James, Hugh Kearney and Barry Cunliffe have convincingly demonstrated the merits of a pan-insular or archipelagic approach to the history of the British Isles (defined as modern-day Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England along with smaller outlying islands such as the Isle of Man). Until recently, literary scholarship had, for the most part, been less willing to explore the medieval literatures of these islands collectively. Studies of medieval English literature generally looked to France for comparative material. This southward orientation has an obvious cultural and historical basis; however, the last ten years have seen considerable growth in the number of scholars probing the potential of a westward perspective for comparative literary studies.

Authority and Subjugation in Writing of Medieval Wales is a valuable contribution to this field, bringing together academics working in both Welsh and English medieval studies to produce an essay collection that showcases the merits of such interdisciplinarity. This volume gives as much prominence to medieval Welsh voices as English ones, resulting in a dual perspective that is all too rarely seen. The essays, for the most part, are developed versions of papers given at the summer symposia of the London Old and Middle English Research Seminar in 2004-05. The collection is broad in chronological, geographical and disciplinary scope. Articles cover material dating from the eighth century to early years of the seventeenth century and, although the focus is primarily literary, contributors also treat musicology, legal history and the history of the book.

William Marx’s opening essay sets the tone for the book’s exploration of boundaries, liminal spaces, cultural interpenetration, identity, political tension and artistic achievement. The paper considers the use and status of Middle English in medieval Wales, highlighting the work that still needs to be done in this intriguing area. Simon Meecham-Jones’ broad-ranging and stimulating essay “Where was Wales? The Erasure of Wales in Medieval English Culture” argues that the tendency of English writers to ignore Wales may be symptomatic of that fact that “those with the power. . . might have cause to fear literature’s ability to explain and reveal the insubstantial foundations of their authority” (p. 47). The two papers that focus on Middle English romance explore a genre of English writing where the Welsh were less apt to drop out of vision. Cory James Rushton contributes an article on the treatment of the Welsh in the Morte Darthur. One of this essay’s most interesting and fruitful innovations is to place this depiction within the context of Malory’s treatment of the non-English cultures of Britain and Ireland as a whole. Tony Davenport treats the broader subject of “Wales and Welshness in Middle English Romances”. Wales emerges from these texts as a location both wild and full of marvels, qualities that crop up repeatedly in the portrayal of both Scotland and Ireland in medieval English writing. These useful readings of English accounts of the Welsh are balanced by Helen Fulton’s contribution which explores of the depiction of the English in late-medieval Welsh poetry.

Scholars have long acknowledged the possibility of Welsh influence (direct or indirect) on medieval French literature, but the precise channels through which such cultural exchange might have been effected have proved difficult to pin down. Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan’s contribution addresses this problem and provides a welcome account of Welsh ties to French-speaking culture. Although the impact of Francophone culture was felt across Western Europe, Lloyd-Morgan suggests that “the degree of interpenetration that occurred in the Welsh case was unusually high” (p. 168). Sally Harper’s account of the medieval musical cultures of Wales and England is both engaging and accessible. David N. Klausner provides an illuminating exploration of Welsh drama, in particular the neglected early modern Troelus a Chresyd which, in his view, “comes as close as anything in early Welsh literature to the theatre of London” (p. 218) and numbers Chaucer and Henryson among its sources. Ronald Waldron’s contribution is a new edition of Trevisa’s translation of Higden’s verse account of Wales, itself derived from the work of Giraldus Cambrensis (a figure who one might expect to feature more prominently in this volume than he does).

Like many of the New Middle Ages volumes, this book is well-produced and edited. However, it is a pity that the illustrations from the Lichfield/Llandeilo Gospels that accompany Michelle P. Brown’s insightful article on the subject were not reproduced in higher quality.

One of the great challenges of interdisciplinary studies is to produce work accessible to non-specialists that is nonetheless rich in detail and in scholarly insight. Authority and Subjugation in Writing of Medieval Wales manages this delicate balance admirably and is a collection that will be of much interest to scholars working in the field of Celtic studies, medieval English studies and beyond. The quality and interest of this essay collection is a persuasive argument for the stimulating effects of this sort of interdisciplinary work and constitutes a valuable addition to an expanding field.

Aisling Byrne