Thinking Wetly: Causeways and Communities in East Anglian Hagiography

Water defined the landscapes of medieval East Anglia. Hitherto scholarly attention has focussed on the physical geography of the region, with landscape archaeology and excavations revealing sites of international importance and speaking to the potency and ubiquity of water as a ritual element. Surprisingly, however, very little attention has been paid to the symbolic importance of water in medieval East Anglian literature, and this article addresses this scholarly lacuna. Water features prominently in the literature from the region, particularly in the lives and legends of the numerous saints venerated at its many cult centres. This article begins by outlining some of the key ways in which water signifies in these contexts, before discussing a case study from the Liber Eliensis which, at first reading, seems to confound the received notion of water’s symbolic resonances but which, on closer consideration, reveals an additional, previously unidentified aspect of this most fluid of metaphors

William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the kings of England. From the earliest period to the reign of King Stephen. With notes and illustrations.

A translation of his Gesta regum Anglorum, and Historia novella, based on the English version of Rev. J. Sharpe.Mode of access: Internet

Monstrous Words, Monstrous Bodies: Irony and the Walking Dead in Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium

This article analyses the function of the tales of the walking dead found in Distinction II of Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium (c.1182). Map's sole surviving work, the “Courtiers’ Trifles” is a collection of historical narratives, wonder stories, witty asides and anecdotes collated during his employment at Henry II's court. The satirical nature of the De Nugis has been noted by previous scholars; however, this has yet to be discussed specifically with regard to the tales of the undead. Following a discussion of the twelfth-century traditions of satirical literature and the ways in which medieval authors approached the trope of irony, the second part of the narrative will examine how Map, a master of the “art of lying”, deconstructed the conventions of wonder stories. It will be argued that as well as using these tales to satirise the historiographical function of mirabilia, they were also used to critique the reality of court life and, on a deeper level, the literary function of ambiguity itself. The inherent irony of the walking dead, the dissonance between physical form and metaphysical intent, meant that they could be inscribed with multiple, parallel meanings