Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England

295 Pages·1977·34.641 MB·English

by  Partner N.

SERIOUS
TER TAINMENTS
The Writing of History in
Twelfth-Century England
NANCY F. PARTNER
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO AND LONDON
,
"Come. Mls.<; Morland. let us leave him to meditate over our faults in
tM utmost propriety of diction, while we praise Udolpho in whate"er
t,rms we like best. It is a most interestin8 work. You arT! fond of that
kind of reading?"
"To say the tmlh, I do not much like any other."
"Indeed!"
"That is, (can read po4!try and plays, and things of that sort. and do
nor dislike trtroels. But history. real solemn history, 1c annot be interested
'n. Can your
"Yes, I am fond of history."
"} wish I were too. (read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothin8 that
tloes not either VeX or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with
wars and pestilences. in euery page; the men al/ so good for nothing,
mid hardly any women at Ill/-it is very tiresome; and yet I often think
il odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal 0/ it must be invention,
mid invention is what delights me in other books."
"Historians. you think," said Miss Tilney, "are not happy in their
flights of fancy. They display imagination without raising interest. 1 am
fond 0/ history- and am uery well contented to take the false witll the
true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in fanner
h/$tories and records, which may be as much depended on, I cone/udf!,
Itf any thing that does not actually pa5S under one's own observation;
and as for the little embellisllments you speak' of, they are embelfish
ments and I like them as such. If a speech be well drawn up. I read it
with pleasure, by whomsoever it may be made- lind probably with
much greater, if tile production 0/ Mr. Hume or Mr. Robertson. than if
the genuine words of Caractacu!>. Agricola. or Alfred the Great."
"You are fond of history!-and so are Mr. AUen and my father; and J
haw two brothers who do not dislike it. So nlllny instances within my
.mall circle of friemu is remarkable! At this rate, I shall not pity the
writers of history any longer. (f people like to read their baoks, it is all
'Very well, but to be at so much trouble in filling grellt volumes, which,
as 1 used to tllink, nobody would willingly ever look into. to be
labouring only for tile torment of little boys and girls, always struck me
as a hard fate; and though / know it is all very right and necessary, I
have often wonderlld at the person's courage that could sit down on
purpou 10 do it."
Conve,.,atiorz be/w"en Catherine Morland and Eleanor Tilney,
/rom /anll Austen's NOltTlfANCER kiEV
(composed 1798-1799; published 1818}
Contents
Acknowledgments _ _ ___ ___ ______ _ '"
Introduction: The Reading of Medieval History 1
PART I
HENRY OF HUNTINGDON
1 History and Contempt of the World _ ______ _ ll
PART II
W1LUAM OF NEWBURGH
2 The Scholarly Spirit'_____ ___ _____ 51
3 The Ecclesiastical World_ ____ _____ _ 69
4 The Secular Worlda.______ _______ 95
5 Another World 114
PAllT tIl
RICHARD OF DEVIZES
6 The Temporal WorldL_ _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ 143
PART IV
THE WRITING OF HISTORY IN
TWELFTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
7 The Question of Historical Evidence _ ___ _ _ _ 183
8 The Question of Literary Fonn _ ___ ___ _ 19'
9 The Question of Christian History _ _ _ _ _ _ 212
Notes _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ______ _ ____
231
Bihliography_ _ ____ _ ____ _____
269
Index ______ _______ ____
2B3

Acknowledgments
ALTHOUGH THIS BOOX, IN ITS :FIRST VnSION, WAS A DOCTORAL
dissertation for the Univt!fsity of California at Berkeley, it was
written almost entirely at the Newberry Library. Chicago, whose
Midwestern romanesque walls made a wonderfully hospitable
shelter for a twelfth-century endeavor. 1 would like the Newberry
.taff and its director, Mr. Lawrence Towner to know how much 1
f
have appreciated their efficiency and courtesy and generosity.
Awork composed, as this one was, from the "insidt'-out" like a
mosaic or a crossword puzzle whose eventual design remains,
long and perversdy. a s«ret known only to its author. had to pul
lome strain on the patience of those who consented to be its
mentors and guides. Professor Paul J. Alexander encountered the
odd pieces of text that descended on him at uncertain intervals
with imperturbable courtesy, and gave in return much excellent
advice and kind encouragement.
Though I cannot presume that the reader can discover it
without being told, this book was intended to be in the historical
style, of density and texture and "style" in the best sense, of my
dissertation director, Professor Robert Brentano.lt is meant to be
an exploration of style of thought and J"!fS()nality and expression.
It was written, in an important sense, for him to read, and if he
can do so with any pleasure it may be considered a success.

Introduction:
THE READING
OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY
IT 15 SAD TO THINK THAT RISTOR't, 'ilEAL SOLEMN HISTORY," WAS
not sufficiently "horrid" to compete for Catherine Morland's
attention with "Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont. Mysterious
Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight BelL
Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries" -her holiday
reading list. And yet, in spite of kings and popes and pestilences
I
(and a great deal of invention), Catherine was right; by the end
of the eighteenth century, history could not very well compete
with novels as popular entertainment, and during the next two
centuries, it was to develop into a kind of writing more "real"
and "solemn" than anything the heroine of Northal1ger Abbey
could ever have imagined.
Her friend Miss Tilney. with more refined taste and extensive
literary experience, defended history against the charge of being
both invented and duH by asserting that history books are
substantially true and thus edifying, and that where they are
false the superior taste of the modern age has probably improved
upon antique reality. She is easily and correctly imagined as the
reader to whom, a few years before her con versation with Miss
Morland, the author of a popular history of England (abridged
from Hume. Smollet, and others) addressed his prefatory
remarks:
It will be sufficient, therefore, to satisfy the writer's wishes,
if the present work be found a plain unaffected narrative of
facts, with just ornament enough to keep attention awake,
and with reflection barely sufficient to set the reader upon
thinking. Very moderate abilities were equal to such an
undertaking; and it is hoped the performance will satisfy
such as take up books to be infonned or amused.l
Those persons "such as take up books to be infonned or
amused" had, for centuries, taken up history books in expecta
tion of just those facts, ornaments, and reflections promised by
the modest historian <although any working historian may
object that keeping a reader awake and thinking is not such a 1
INTRODUCTION
Ages to the eighteenth century, there was throughout that span
of time (with various exceptions and developments) an essential
continuity of assumptions that could be brought to the reading
of history. By the eighteenth century, histories were more
orderly and less rambling than their venerable and, by then,
uncouth-sounding ancestors and saints and miracles had given
way before statesmen and parliaments. Nevertheless, the edu
cated Christian of the eighteenth century was not yet ready to
relinquish belief in the miraculous (however skeptical about
individual cases), and he could still read Alfred's speeches with
pleasure. By the end of the century, the change to modern rigor
and persevering inquiry was already well begun; it would soon
be ludicrous for an historian, like the self-effacing person quoted
above, to dismiss, for example, the Britons before the arrival of
the Romans with blithe contempt: "It is fortunate for mankind,
that those periods of history which are the least serviceable, are
the least known.'" That remark was made in 1771. Some 570
years earlier, William of Newburgh had been of much the same
opinion; one hundred years later, such an opinion would be held
in utter contempt.
We have simply lost contact, albeit willingly and rightly, with
everything that could allow us to approach medieval histories
naturally and directly. And yet those works have continued to
be read by scholars variously puzzled, bored, critical, and
intrigued, because they are the sources for information other
wise unavailable. They have been plumbed and sifted, often
brilliantly, for the nugget of truth in the swamp of "falseness,"
and that ruthless and methodical dissection of medieval histories
has been the first step of modern scholarship on its way to
rewriting the past in newly persuasive, dispassionate, and
verifiable modes. But even that austere undertaking, like any
other, contains the beginnings of its own special absurdity, as
shown by one intriguing study that compares eclipses noted in
medieval chronicles with modern astronomical charts and pro
poses establishing thereby a sort of correctness quotient with
which to evaluate the usefulness of medieval histories6-
harmless enough, or perhaps a small further hardening of
modern sensibilities to the past.
The older, longer tradition of history as serious entertainment
4 was a particularly rich one in England, as is most recently