Memory and Myths of the Norman Conquest

240 Pages·2013·9.521 MB·English

by  Siobhan Brownlie

MemoryMythsNormanConquest_PPC 26/03/2013 17:06 Page 1
MEDIEVALISM
Memory
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Myths
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O F T H E
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Norman
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he Norman Conquest is one of the most significant O
events in British history –but how is it actually F
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remembered and perceived today? This book offers
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a study of contemporary British memory of the Norman
E Siobhan Brownlie
Conquest, focussing on shared knowledge, attitudes and
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beliefs. A major source of evidence for its findings are
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references to the Norman Conquest in contemporary
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British newspaper articles: 807 articles containing
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references to the Conquest were collected from ten British
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newspapers, covering a recent three year period. A second
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important source of information is a quantitative survey

for which a representative sample of 2000 UK residents C
was questioned. These sources are supplemented by the o
study of contemporary books and film material, as n
well as medieval chronicles for comparative purposes. Q
The author draws on cultural theory to highlight the u
characteristics and functions of distant memory and e
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myth, and the investigation culminates in considering t
the potential impact of memory of the Norman Conquest
in Britain today.
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SIOBHAN BROWNLIEis a Lecturer in the School of Arts, ri
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Languages & Cultures at the University of Manchester. o
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Cover illustrations: Re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings at Battle
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Abbey, Battle, East Sussex on 9 October 2010. Photos taken by the author.
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COVER DESIGN: SIMON LOXLEY i
e
an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and
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Volume III
Memory and Myths of the Norman Conquest
ISSN 2043–8230
Series Editors
Karl Fugelso
Chris Jones
Medievalism aims to provide a forum for monographs and collections devoted to the
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festations of the Middle Ages – attitudes towards, and uses and meanings of, ‘the medieval’
– in all fields of culture, from politics and international relations, literature, history, archi-
tecture, and ceremonial ritual to film and the visual arts. It welcomes a wide range of topics,
from historiographical subjects to revivalism, with the emphasis always firmly on what the
idea of ‘the medieval’ has variously meant and continues to mean; it is founded on the belief
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both beyond and within the academic community of medievalists, and on the continuing
relevance and presence of ‘the medieval’ in the contemporary world.
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Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9
Woodbridge
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UK
Previous volumes in this series
I
Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination
edited by David Clark and Nicholas Perkins
II
Medievalist Enlightenment: From Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Alicia C. Montoya
Memory and Myths of the
Norman Conquest
Siobhan Brownlie
ThE BOYDELL PRESS
© Siobhan Brownlie 2013
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Siobhan Brownlie to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2013
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge
ISBN 978 1 84383 852 4
The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
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The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy
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Contents
List of Illustrations and Tables vi
Preface and Acknowledgements vii
1 Memory and Method 1
2 Knowledge, Symbolization and Tradition 23
3 Multiple Remediation 45
4 Presentism and Multidirectionality 61
5 Affective Mobility 77
6 Mythologization: A Founding Myth 95
7 A Time-honoured Myth 111
8 Contradictory Myths 131
9 Memorial and Mythic Functions 153
10 Significance of Distant Memory 173
Afterword 195
Appendix 1 197
Appendix 2 201
Bibliography 209
Index 219
Illustrations and Tables
Illustrations
1 Cartoon by Nicholas Garland from the Daily Telegraph, October 1984, 66
© Telegraph Media Group Limited 1984. Photo from the British
Cartoon Archive.
2 harold death scene from the Bayeux Tapestry, with special permission 98
from the City of Bayeux.
3 harold’s oath to William from the Bayeux Tapestry, with special 108
permission from the City of Bayeux.
4 The monument at the British War Cemetery in Bayeux, Normandy. 189
Photograph by author (March 2008).
Tables
1 Memory concepts: A basic chart 5
2 Number of newspaper articles with references to the Conquest 18
3 Neutral attitudes to the Conquest in newspapers 79
4 Positive attitudes to the Conquest in newspapers 82
5 humorous attitudes to the Conquest in newspapers 84
6 Negative attitudes to the Conquest in newspapers 85
7 Summary of attitudes in newspaper articles 87
8 Response to Q.7: Is your attitude positive or negative towards the 88
following?: The Norman Conquest of England in 1066
9 Response to Q.8: Is your attitude positive or negative towards the 88
following?: The heritage of the Norman Conquest (e.g. castles and
cathedrals)
10 Attitudes in newspaper references linking the Norman Conquest to 132
the French
Preface and Acknowledgements
In his book Theatres of Memory Raphael Samuel argues impressively that ‘history
is not the prerogative of the historian […] It is rather a social form of knowledge;
the work, in any given instance, of a thousand different hands.’1 Samuel wants us to
acknowledge the myriad ways in which the past is remembered and constructed
in the community, and the many different modes in which this is undertaken: in
novels, children’s books, comic strips, plays, films, television, folklore, songs, paint-
ings and drawings, photographs, children’s games, oral stories, debates, ceremo-
nies, museums, monuments, statues, architecture, maps, place-names and postage
stamps, among others. Although ‘memory’ has long been thought of as a cogni-
tive capacity of the individual, in the twentieth century the use of the term was
extended to cover social phenomena of shared memory in a community. The field
of Memory Studies, to which this book largely belongs, has contributed to opening
up the study of the construction of the past to envelop both the individual and the
social, and the multiple ways that memory of the past is kept alive in many different
media and genres in the broad community.
One of the modes of popular memory mentioned by Samuel is historical
re-enactment, or ‘living history’ whereby people today dress up as in the past
and act as historical personages, usually as guides in museums or as characters in
re-enactments of major historical events such as famous battles. ‘Living history’ is
powerful in that live interpretation can communicate with the audience by stimu-
lating all the senses and giving the illusion of travelling back in time.2 In a similar
vein Landsberg 3 talks of ‘prosthetic memory’ whereby the individual obtains
1 Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture. Vol.
1 (London, 1994), p. 8.
2 Beth Goodacre and Gavin Baldwin, Living the Past (London, 2002).
3 Alison Landsberg, ‘America, the holocaust, and the Mass Culture of Memory:
Towards a Radical Politics of Empathy’, New German Critique 71 (1997), 63–87.
viii Preface and Acknowledgements
memories of past events which he or she has not experienced personally through
a bodily and sensory experience in the present.
having experienced an annual re-enactment of the Battle of hastings at Battle
in Sussex on 9 October 2010, I would not go so far as to say that I now have a
prosthetic memory of this famous event. Sitting behind a tape barrier with young
children running around and occasionally rejoining their parents to ask for sweets
or drinks, was not conducive to total involvement in the battle. Nevertheless, when
the reconstructed one-hour battle (the original lasted all day) got under way, the
colourful costumed re-enactors – foot soldiers with axes and shields, archers, and
cavalry with beautiful well trained horses – all showed great skill and contagious
enthusiasm as they combated on the green grass slope of the battlefield. A commen-
tator recounted the background story to the battle then commented throughout on
the action itself with the aid of loud-speakers. he successfully got the audience
involved with his cries and inducements: ‘Wave your red and white flag for harold!’
‘Look at William Duke of Normandy advancing on his great black horse!’ Perhaps
the most interesting aspect of this audience engagement was that whereas at the
beginning of the battle most people were cheering for harold, king of the English,
who was defending his country by facing the nasty Norman invader, after one hour
at the conclusion of the battle people were cheering for the new king of the English,
William. The commentator had encouraged this shift by saying that after harold’s
death during the battle, England didn’t have a king and desperately needed one; in
other words, William came to the aid of the unhappy kingless country.
One may see this as a case of making history into a fairytale through fairground
manipulation, but the embodiments of memory (including those of historians) are
in fact always conditioned by the circumstances of the telling, albeit often in much
more subtle ways. The pragmatic shift engineered by the re-enactment commen-
tator probably mirrors what actually happened at the time in England after 1066:
in order to protect their personal situations and well-being as much as possible,
people rallied to the winner, even if they were not initially his partisans. The shift
may also reflect many people’s attitudes today: sympathy for harold, and dislike
of William as an invader but respect for him as king. The Norman Conquest is
an historical event which is a part of the identity of the English and British but,
it would seem, with some ambivalence of feeling in national memory, and this is
what makes it fascinating.
The aim of this monograph is to explore such issues in a thorough manner.
Using a variety of sources, it presents a study of contemporary British memory of
the Norman Conquest. Some memories, particularly of the distant past, may be
called myths, in the sense of stories which are widely believed and which harbour
an imaginary or magical element. The monograph will focus on aspects of memory
which are important for the memory of a famous long distant event, such as
symbolization, tradition, multiple reiteration, affective change, and mythologiza-
tion. The reasons why we keep talking about the famous event will be investigated;
in other words, the social function of memory and myths. Memories may concern
knowledge and beliefs about a past event, as well as attitudes towards the event
and its protagonists. I am interested in studying this affective and relational aspect,
because my investigation culminates in considering how memory might impact
Preface and Acknowledgements ix
on intercultural relations today. In sum, I ask whether memory of the distant past,
specifically of the Norman Conquest, matters today, and I conclude that it does,
sometimes in surprising ways.
I would like to acknowledge the support and assistance of the following institutions
and people in undertaking this monograph: David Bates, whose ongoing support
has been such that I consider him my mentor for the project; Andrew hoskins for
commenting on an early version of the monograph; Glenn Burgess for comments
on Chapter 7; the School of Languages, Linguistics & Cultures of the University of
Manchester for a small research support grant; Lucie Brione for research assistance
in the early stages; Yougov plc for their work on the survey; José Pina Sanchez for
help with statistics; the Bayeux Tapestry Museum and the British Cartoon Archive
for providing images; the staff of Boydell & Brewer for careful editing and produc-
tion; and my family and friends for their encouragement.