Holding time in your hands: a medieval best-seller and its audiences
Center for Arthurian Studies 2024 Lectures
Abstract
Utilising Eelco Runia's theorising of concepts of historical time, this talk explores how the 'Brut' (the best-seller tradition of writing focused on the history of the land and its inhabitants in medieval Britain) provided opportunities to reflect on and engage with personal and collective experiences of time. This is a narrative that goes beyond history or literature by incorporating legends, miracles, prophecy, myth and more. The material formats in which the text survives speak of a desire to 'package' time in formats that suited different social classes, genders, and age groups. Its ownership and circulation further contributed, in a long-lasting way, to the development of the English language, English literary style, historiography and book history in ways that can no longer be ignored.