Creating and curating an archive: Bury St Edmunds and its Anglo-Saxon past

This contribution explores the mechanisms by which the Benedictine foundation of Bury St Edmunds sought to legitimise and preserve their spurious pre-Conquest privileges and holdings throughout the Middle Ages. The archive is extraordinary in terms of the large number of surviving registers and cartularies which contain copies of Anglo-Saxon charters, many of which are wholly or partly in Old English. The essay charts the changing use to which these ancient documents were put in response to threats to the foundation's continued enjoyment of its liberties. The focus throughout the essay is to demonstrate how pragmatic considerations at every stage affects the development of the archive and the ways in which these linguistically challenging texts were presented, re-presented, and represented during the Abbey’s history

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pp. 199-20

The “Dark Welsh” as Slaves and Slave Traders in Exeter Book Riddles 52 and 72

The imagery of captivity found within Exeter Book Riddles 52 and 72 has been understood to link Welsh slaves with the cattle they herd, for each riddle features an ethnically distinct “dark Welsh” figure performing agricultural work. This article argues that key details suggest that these captives can also be read as humans, alluding to the historical roles of the Welsh as both slaves and slave traders in Anglo-Saxon England. While scholars have long realised that these riddles call attention to ethnic and class difference by linking racially distinct Welsh servitude to hard manual labour, particularly to oxen, the Welsh were also active slave raiders of their own people. In their portrayals of ethnically distinct Welsh who control bound captives, this article argues that these riddles also allude to the role of the Welsh in the slave trade as brokers of human merchandise. These riddles, then, reveal the complexities of the period by illuminating the contradictory identity of the Welsh as both victims and perpetrators of the slave trade in Anglo-Saxon England

Gildas

International audienceGildas est le premier auteur britannique à témoigner des événements postérieurs au départ des légions romaines. C'est par l'analyse de ses modèles, principalement bibliques, et de ses buts que son récit historique allusif, si frustrant, peut être compris et interprété comme un témoignage de premier plan

Tall tales from the archive

The administrative documents preserved in archives tell stories which are shaped by their institutional and governmental context, and are as deceptive and full of invention as more self-consciously literary works. Medieval archives contain a vast repository of historical narratives which, despite their fictional components and bureaucratic manipulation, nevertheless provide vivid insights into everyday life. The rhetorical conventions of such bureaucratic documents as pardons, petitions and appeals represent forms of historical literature which are cultural productions of equal significance to the chronicle or the epic poem. But, unlike court poetry or chronicles, the archives tell us a great deal about the life of ordinary people. In the wake of the discussion of the archive by Foucault and Derrida, the archive has been seen as a symbol of power and a means of control, but often the archive is the chief means by which non-elite groups find their voice