Laura Ashe: Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xii + 244. Cloth £ 50.00.

• Dennis Renevey

Ideologies about the land of England are at the heart of this book dealing with the challenging period that ran from the Norman conquest to the end of the twelfthcentury. The writings that serve for the making of the book’s main argument on the brevity and fate of what Ashe calls normanitas belong to the corpus of insular and Latin literature produced during that time period. The book lends much weight to Wormald’s unanimously accepted statement about the strength of pre-conquest English identity to argue for the quick assimilation of this notion by the ruling Normans. Following a careful assessment of the scholarship on the topic of Englishness, Ashe situates it in the specificity of French insular literature of the twelfth-century, contrary for example to Pearsall who sees it solidly associated with the triumph of the English language in the early modern period.

Seiten 180 - 181