Сontemporary Approaches to the Medieval Historical Writing

Abstract

The perception of insular historiography for a long time has been determined by the view outlined in the fundamental work by Antonia Gransden in the 1970s–1980s. Historiography as a whole, its distinct schools and movements are regarded as “passive” participants, whose functions were related to reflection of historical events. An opposing approach, which shifts the attention from the content of the narrative to its formal structure, is represented by such outstanding scholars as M. Clanchy and B. Guenée. They focused on the mechanisms of creating narratives, their genre specificity, inner structure, the role of historiography within intellectual space and its social functions. The collection “Medieval Historical Writing. Britain and Ireland, 500–1500” to a large extent follows the tradition of studying perceptions of the past across long historical periods, combining it with innovative approaches of participants of the projects. The novelty of the collection lies in the pan-British context of its approach to historiography. Thus “Medieval Historical Writing. Britain and Ireland, 500–1500” continues the contemporary trend of viewing the British Isles as a distinct historical and cultural region within which the combination of disintegrating factors (diversity of political forms, ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity, irregularity of continental influences) and unifying factors (ethnogenetic and dynastic myths, the concept of pan-British leadership, means of social and power interactions) determined the specificity of the development compared to the continental variant. The rejection of Anglocentric model of approaching the history and culture of the British Isles leads to the reconsideration of the British periphery.