tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post3999027422508535840..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Albina Myth: Standard ReadingCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-3826941928557333852012-09-06T20:02:34.640-04:002012-09-06T20:02:34.640-04:00Ruth, nope, not a word, unless you count facebook....Ruth, nope, not a word, unless you count facebook. I have some ideas for a paragraph or two for book #2, and enough stuff to say about genealogy and parthenogenesis for an article if I could ever find the time to write it. recent fb comment, which sort of echoes my DGG post on ITM was:<br />""(cool! I've thought for a long time that the Des Grantz Geanz story -- i.e., the Albina legend -- comes about in part because of the increasing tendency towards primogeniture in England further down the aristocratic scale. It's a narrative, in part, about the oldest sibling laying claim to an entire land, and then being supplanted by another dominant sibling (i.e., Brutus), and its incest/parthenogenesis model of genealogy is the perfect primogeniturist fantasy of the oldest sibling just repeating him/herself identically in perpetuity. that's what I said at Medieval Academy in Seattle in, like, 2004?)""<br />thanks for the heads-up on your article, which I'll certainly dig into before I teach the tale againmedievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-41618042068253012002012-09-06T13:00:03.939-04:002012-09-06T13:00:03.939-04:00A very late comment (2 actually):
Karl, have you p...A very late comment (2 actually):<br />Karl, have you published anything on the Albina legend?<br />I have also published this: Evans, Ruth. “The Devil in Disguise: Perverse Female Origins of the Nation.” Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetites in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Ed. Teresa Walters and Elizabeth Herbert McAvoy. Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2002. 180-95.Ruth Evansnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-23131317642967622072008-03-24T20:28:00.000-04:002008-03-24T20:28:00.000-04:00My Med Academy Paper reading, which I do want to f...My Med Academy Paper reading, which I do want to flesh out into something more substantial someday, argues for something more specific than "English origins," although Bernau's approach sounds sympathetic to mine. I had linked the development of the Albina myth to the tensions between exogamy (predatory kinship, if using this phrase in the 1310s or so isn't anachronistic) and the endogamous imperative to keep land in the family, an imperative whose most perfect expression is incest. If I can hack it, I'd like to link this, somehow, to the spread of primogeniture among the English nobility of the early 14th c....Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-45622863068875265502008-03-24T18:23:00.000-04:002008-03-24T18:23:00.000-04:00More recently, Anke Bernau discusses the myths of ...More recently, Anke Bernau discusses the myths of Albina and Boudica and their C16 reception in "Myths of origin and the struggle over nationhood" in <I>Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England </I>, ed David Matthews and Gordon McMullan (Cambridge). Here's a quote:<BR/><BR/>If, as Cohen argues, the figure of the monster in medieval thought, 'living at the margins of the world', has the power to challenge 'traditional methods of organizing knowledge and human experience', then it is perhaps not Albina and her sisters or Boudica and her Britons who represent that 'monstrous error'. Perhaps it is the question of English origins itself. <BR/><BR/>She concludes that 'exploring national origin through female figures arguably allowed historiographers to articulate - however inadvertently - the ambiguities and fearful uncertainties of writing such histories'; that myths of English origin are haunted by division and the discovery of disunity.This old world is a new worldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-6678874576874225512008-03-23T18:47:00.000-04:002008-03-23T18:47:00.000-04:00Thanks, Eileen and Karl. It wasn't that I was look...Thanks, Eileen and Karl. It wasn't that I was looking to be cited (although it's always nice to have work noticed); I was just remarking -- to myself, mostly -- that it feels weird to have become an old reading. <BR/><BR/>That's inevitable of course, and in a way it is really pleasing to be surpassed: what more can a scholar wish for than to have worked at a topic in its youth (I was writing the dissertation out of which Of Giants sprang c.1991-92), and to see that work change as others move it towards its adolescence.<BR/><BR/>Though I also take Eileen's point: the Albina story is so great, and so popular, it is truly strange not to have more attention paid to it.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-4701570774789413822008-03-22T20:00:00.000-04:002008-03-22T20:00:00.000-04:00That standard reading would be, um, mineOops, sorr...<I>That standard reading would be, um, mine</I><BR/><BR/>Oops, sorry! I didn't say it was a <I>bad</I> reading (thank goodness!). And lord knows my reading of DGG (Des granz geanz), which stresses similarity rather than difference, certainly has been propelled by JJC's material on extimite from Giants....<BR/><BR/> I was thinking of Lesley Johnson, ‘Return to Albion', Arthurian Literature 13 (1995), 19-40, which is, along with JJC's Giants book (which, back in the day, I also read for my seminar paper on Albina) is listed <A HREF="http://www.fordham.edu/frenchofengland/albina.html" REL="nofollow">here.</A> As far as my knowledge c. 2002 goes, the Johnson's the best stand-alone article on Albina, although I haven't yet seen the Baswell (but I expect it's probably excellent).<BR/><BR/>Back to boxes!Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-61970718450455642702008-03-22T17:27:00.000-04:002008-03-22T17:27:00.000-04:00And I would like to add that I gave credit already...And I would like to add that I gave credit already to Jeffrey for this reading when I gave my talk at the Newberry Library last winter on the giant women of the Anglo-Latin "Wonders" text and the myth of the Danaides [which we should remember is always connected, on some level, to the Albina/Albion myths], and then again when I shared this talk here on In The Middle, and again I cited this chapter oh so copiously in the essay I wrote for JJC's "Infinite Realms" collection. Triple-dunk!<BR/><BR/>Interestingly, in her analysis [in her book "Heterosyncracies"] of Amazons in medieval literature, such as "Mandeville's Travels" [and which Amazons are, of course, rooted in classical literature: Alexander legends, the Aeneid, etc.], Karma Lochrie does not discuss the medieval English Albina tradition, although she does discuss Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" and "Man of Law's Tale" [in which she traces the "disappearance of female masculinity"--and that is maybe something Karl might want to read in relation to his thought's on the "Wife of Bath's Tale"]. I'm somewhat surprised, though, given Lochrie's focus on her book, that the second chapter of JJC's "Of Giants" doesn't show up at all.<BR/><BR/>Also, in a book that srj recommended to me not too long ago, "Freedom of Movement in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the 2003 Harlaxton Medieval Symposium" [ed. Peregrine Horden] Christopher Baswell has a chapter, "Albyne Sails for Albion: Gender, Motion, and Foundation in the English Imperial Imagination," which if I recall correctly does not cite the chapter JJC shares here [but I have to double-check that as the book is in my school office].Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.com