Charlemagne in England: The Matter of France in Middle English and Anglo-Norman Literature

The heroic literature of medieval England celebrates the acts of three groups of characters: English legendary heroes, King Arthur and his knights, and the Emperor Charlemagne and his peers. The first two groups have received major recent scholarly attention, but the twelve texts in the last group have been comparatively neglected, though a series of editions of the Middle English (ME) texts for the Early English Text Society in the late 19th century gave them a prominent identity as 'The English Charlemagne Romances'.

From the 14th to the 16th century, verse romances of Charlemagne were composed and copied, and Caxton printed a prose life of Charles the Great as well as the Morte Darthur, but while Arthurian themes persisted in English literature and culture, those of Charlemagne did not. This might seem explicable if he is viewed as the national hero of the French. Yet, to the puzzlement of critics, the production of most English Charlemagne texts coincided with the Hundred Years' War. Is it significant, therefore, that the original French texts already existed in Anglo-Norman (AN) form? In what sense might Charlemagne have had an established insular identity?

The aim of the Charlemagne in England project is to explore this insular literary tradition with equal focus on the AN and the ME texts, examining the textual relations between them and the correspondences in narrative form and generic expectations. It assesses the evidence for their audiences and reception in a multilingual society, and for their contemporary cultural and political significance. The central conflict represented, between Christians and Saracens, offers parallels to international crusading interests in the earlier AN period, and in the 14th and 15th centuries mirrors the perceived threat to western security from the Ottoman Turks. The prominence in so many of the texts of the motif of the chivalrous Saracen indicates, through the fantasy of conversion, a desire for engagement with the eastern Other. This complex reflection of cultural and political concerns in medieval England has some resonances for contemporary Britain.

Further investigation is needed of the religious element in the insular Charlemagne tradition. The emphasis in early French works on recaptured Passion relics, specifically related to pilgrimage sites, is modified in AN and ME texts for different purposes. The strong catechetical feature in many of the texts may relate to the concerns of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which combined a programme of pastoral reform and education with the promotion of crusade to retake Jerusalem, both reflected in Charlemagne texts. Aspects of piety in the ME texts have been attributed to 'clerical authorship', and this too needs investigation in relation to lay piety.

This is a timely project - it benefits from the work of the French of Medieval England programme (York) and the Multilingualism project (Bristol). It will stimulate fuller critical attention to the AN texts. Dr Ailes is completing an edition of the Egerton MS La Destruction de Rome and Fierenbras, and proposes that a PhD student edit the independent Hanover MS text. Equally, the project will encourage overdue new editions of the ME works, for while The Siege of Melayne and Rauf Coil3ear - both unique texts with no known source - have been edited more than once, the eight separate verse texts based on Fierabras, Otinel, and the Chanson de Roland await thorough scholarly attention. An indication of what can be done is provided by Mrs Hardman's study of the ME Roland fragment, informed by Duggan's recent critical edition of the French Roland corpus, and a PhD student will build on this work, investigating the tradition of Roncevaux in medieval Britain.

This is a considerable, coherent project in itself and also the exemplar for a larger collaborative project on an international scale to explore the tradition anew in other languages and cultures: 'Chalemagne in Europe'.