The inhabitants of early medieval Britain and Ireland shared the knowledge that the region held four peoples and the awareness that they must have originally come from 'elsewhere'. The Origin Legends of Early Medieval Britain and Ireland studies these peoples' origin stories, an important genre that has shaped national identity and collective history from the early medieval period to the present day. These multilingual texts share many common features that repay their study as a genre, but have previously been isolated as four disparate traditions and used to argue for the long roots of current nationalisms. Yet they were not written or read in isolation during the medieval period. Individual narratives were in constant development, written and rewritten to respond to other texts. This book argues that insular origin legends developed together to flesh out the history of the insular region as a whole.
Author(s): Lindy Brady
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 283
City: Cambridge
Cover
Half-title page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Framing History
The Anachronism of Nationalism
Intellectual Connections in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland and the Case for Comparative Study
Origin Legends and the Construction of Identities in the Early Medieval West
Sources, Legends, and Arguments
1 Textual Connections
Part I: Gildas’s De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae and the Origin Legend of the Anglo-Saxons
Part II: Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum and the Origins of the Picts
Part III: The Historia Brittonum and the Origins of the Irish and the British
Part IV: The Lebor Bretnach, the Lebor Gabála Érenn, and the Continuation of the Corpus
Conclusions
2 Exile
Part I: Exile in Classical, Biblical, and Late Antique Tradition
Part II: Exile in Law and History in the Insular Region
Part III: Exile in Insular Origin Narratives
Conclusions
3 Kin-Slaying
Part I: Kin-Slaying in Classical, Biblical, and Late Antique Tradition
Part II: Kin-Slaying in Law and History in the Insular Region
Part III: Kin-Slaying in Insular Origin Narratives
Conclusions
4 Intermarriage and Incest
Part I: Intermarriage and Incest in Biblical Tradition
Part II: Intermarriage and Incest in Their Insular Legal and Historical Contexts
Part III: Intermarriage in Insular Origin Narratives
Part IV: Incest in Insular Origin Narratives
Conclusions
5 Early Medieval Origin Legends in Early Modern Histories
Part I: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Growth of Origin Legends in the ‘Long Twelfth Century’
Part II: Origin Legends in the High Middle Ages
Part III: The Early Modern Sources
Part IV: Nationalism and Xenophobia
Part V: Defending the Validity of a Nation’s Own Past
Part VI: Questioning the Origins of Others
Conclusions
Conclusion: Origin Legends and Local History
Bibliography
Index
