The preceding chapters have focused on the role of the cardinal points within particular genres of literature and how, up to the twelfth century, they came to serve as significant categories within exegetical, geographical and historical literature. With this foundation in place, we are in a position to consider how authors made use of this vocabulary to make sense of their place in the world within the massive social and cultural upheaval that characterised the first half of the twelfth century. Western Europe was turning outwards in a decisive fashion. This period stands at a key axis in the double process of physical expansion – in the north, in Spain and in the Eastern Mediterranean – and the cultural interconnection that Robert Bartlett describes as ‘the Europeanisation of Europe’. It likewise coincides with a growing awareness of Eastern Christianity and the place of Islam in the Mediterranean world that had been developing from the mid-eleventh century. This expanding perception of the world, and coordinate development of colonial structures of centre and periphery along side it, spurred the development not only of categories of alterity, as Bartlett emphasises, but also necessitated a renegotiation of still dominant post-Carolingian conceptions of space and identity. The following chapters will extend and complicate this idea of renegotiating these late antique and Carolingian conceptions through a series of case studies that highlight the changing spatial categories in the first half of the twelfth century.

Though the study of identity has seen significant advances since the mid-twentieth century, this work has concentrated above all on ethnic identity, especially in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

9.1 Introduction

If church-raiding was all but abandoned in the era of Amlaíb and Ímar, with the implication that the regime had access to more regular revenues, the last quarter of the century saw some reversion to raiding. Church-raiding is recorded mostly in the central eastern region in the later ninth century. As shown, this reflects two factors, textual and historical. From about 850 to about 890, there was a marked contraction in annalistic coverage of ecclesiastical affairs generally. A south midlands Clonmacnoise-focused strand disappears from the extant annals for more than a generation, re-emerging only about 890. Allowing for this text-internal factor, Viking church-raiding in reality was probably more restricted in range and, after about 850, it all but ceases in the south midlands and is confined, where it occurs at all, to the central east. This is certain from about 890, when a resurgence in Viking church-raiding affects only the central east, despite restoration of the south midlands Clonmacnoise-focused strand in the ecclesiastical record. It seems likely, but is not demonstrable, that church-raiding was similarly restricted in range for much of the period after 850.

As we will see, Viking activity generally, after the era of Amlaíb and Ímar, was largely confined to the central eastern region. This is an indicator that the fortunes of the Vikings in Ireland, and in Dublin, in particular, were probably in decline in the last quarter of the ninth century.

An enquiry into how a text of Beowulf could have reached the authors of Grettis saga in Iceland must begin by defining the date, provenance and political aim of the Beowulf manuscript in England in the early eleventh century. First the early English reputation, then the surviving manuscript, of the poem will be discussed here towards this end. As many as five surviving allusions to the legend and poem of Beowulf may be used to locate the transmission of this eponymous poem in Winchester and York and to suppose a knowledge of its leading characters in Durham. On this basis it may be deduced that the poem existed in more than one copy by the early eleventh century, and that a copy was preserved in a manuscript in an archive in Winchester from the time of King Æthelwulf (839–58). The corollary is that King Cnut Sweinsson (1016–35), having won England from Kings Æthelred II (978–1016) and Edmund II Ironside (1016), was introduced to Beowulf in Winchester in the first few years of his reign. Thereafter I shall argue that the poem's sole extant manuscript, BL, Cotton MS Vitellius A.XV, was copied near the heart of the former kingdom of Mercia, in Lichfield, in the year that followed his victory in 1016. My argument follows Kevin Kiernan's conclusion that the ‘Laurence Nowell’ who inscribed his name on the eponymous Nowell Codex in 1563 was not the antiquarian of that name but, rather, his cousin, the dean of this diocese in 1560–76. The lurid style of the manuscript's monsters, particularly in The Wonders of the East, along with that of a gold-glamorous heathen warlord in the Old English Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, will be read as evidence that Beowulf and the texts before it were commissioned for one of Cnut's commanders.

This series of volumes examining the reception of the Charlemagne myth in different linguistic cultures of medieval Europe springs from ‘Charlemagne in England’, a project supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to study the literary presence of the emperor in medieval England, an area where the historical Charlemagne had never set foot, let alone reigned.

The spread of Charlemagne's myth after his death was even more extensive than was his empire during his life. This larger enterprise, therefore, an investigation of the appropriation of the matter of Charlemagne across Europe, required a network of specialists working on texts written in different languages and different geographical areas. Yet these languages were not culturally independent, but rather interdependent: it was largely through the medium of French, with its cultural hegemony, that the legend of Charlemagne spread widely, though Latin was also an important vehicle for texts perceived as historical truth. Furthermore, the same geographical area could be the ‘host’ for more than one language, the literatures of which would draw upon each other.

One particular challenge for the project was the question of overlap between geographical areas and cultural or linguistic zones. This is exemplified by the original project focused on Charlemagne in England, a multilingual land of overlapping cultural zones in one geographic area, with Latin, French and English literary cultures and other languages operating in particular areas or social groups.

During the final two decades of the eleventh century, Western Christendom was engulfed by a fiercely contested schism. On the one side was Clement III (1080– 1100), who was elected pope at the Synod of Brixen on the 15 June 1080 and consecrated in Rome on the 24 March 1084. On the other was Gregory VII (1073–85) and his successors, Victor III (1086–7), Urban II (1088–99), and Paschal II (1099–1118). Despite outliving three of his opponents and spending much of his pontificate in Rome, Clement ended up the defeated party, being condemned as a schismatic and heresiarch. Following Clement's death on 8 September 1100, Paschal led an aggressive campaign against Clement's memory. Paschal had Clement's body disinterred from its tomb and tossed into the Tiber, before seeking to destroy all traces of his defeated opponent's existence in a thorough campaign of damnatio memoriae.

Anglo-Norman England has traditionally been seen as remaining neutral during this schism following the death of Gregory VII in 1085, with no pope recognized in England until William Rufus sided with Urban II in 1095. Some, such as Frank Barlow, have interpreted this decade of neutrality rather cynically, viewing William the Conqueror and William Rufus as having no intention of recognizing Clement III and instead exploiting the schism to avoid papal interference in England.

This chapter sketches the political behaviour of the principal noble Catholic families in the aftermath of the failed ‘alterations’ of 1569–71 and foregrounds the continuing role of the Stanleys as the major surviving Catholic or crypto-Catholic affnity.

Cecil and his allies were able to manipulate the ‘Ridolf Plot’ to immobilise the Catholic party in court and council and achieve a complete political recovery. Cecil, who in 1570 had prepared for fight, was reinforced in the queen's confdence as her principal minister and ennobled as Lord Burghley in February 1571. The defeated party's 1571 Treatise of Treasons provided, as Peter Lake illustrates, an ‘extraordinarily plausible account’ of the crisis now over. The ‘returning clique of Edwardian Protestant insiders, ‘the crew and band of the party Protestant’, led by the two ‘Catilines’, the ‘English machiavels’, Cecil and Bacon, had turned the tables and triumphed over the Catholic noble coalition which in 1569 and 1570 had attempted to unseat them.1 The Elizabethan regime, though shaken, was confrmed in its Protestant stance. Catholic magnates adjusted to political defeat and the balance in the council moved further to the left. As Cecil later put it, in ‘cankered humour’ and ‘rash and malicious mockery’ his political ascendancy came to be termed the Regnum Cecilianum.

What does the future hold for Black people when the past is burdened with pain and trauma? This question lies at the core of Afrofuturism, rooted in African-American culture, and Africanfuturism, rooted in African culture. Both frameworks grapple with a fundamental dilemma from different geographies: Is the future shaped by the creation of new worlds or identities, as seen in the modern Africanfuturist work of Nnedi Okorafor's Binti Trilogy? Or is it forged through the reclamation of things denied, merging past and future in a cyclical return to a fuller understanding of self, as exemplified in Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself? Could the future look like Binti's world in Okorafor's fictional work: a move to different galaxies as Binti navigates space to find new ways for herself and her people to assimilate in a society that has long ago cast them out? Or could the future be informed by Douglass’ real-life narrative – one shaped by the brutal realities of enslavement? To focus on Douglass: Born to an enslaved mother, likely raped by her white enslaver – a common act of sexual violence that fed both lust and profit (338), as children inherited their mother's bondage – Douglass was torn from his mother at birth. He saw her only rarely, when she risked traveling twelve miles between plantations at night, returning before sunrise to avoid brutal whippings – violence he witnessed repeatedly from overseers throughout his childhood. He called such brutality ‘the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery’ (339), a terror seared into him when he saw his Aunt Hester ‘tied up to a joist, and whip[ped] upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood’ (339).

A career assessed

Lowell Ragatz dedicated one of his own books to Sir William Young, describing him in the dedication as an ‘enlightened proprietor’ of his West Indian estates, an ‘able leader’ of the West Indian interest in Britain and a ‘brilliant administrator’ as the governor of the colony of Tobago. Ragatz's high scholarly reputation entitles his verdicts about the Caribbean aspects of Young's career to be treated with respect, but the findings of this book raise problems about all of them and suggest that they need to be qualified.

Setting aside for the moment the question of whether Young can be called an ‘enlightened proprietor’, he was certainly not a successful one. Most studies of individuals or of families involved in the Caribbean in this period, from Richard Pares's classic work on the Pinneys to fine recent studies of William Beckford, the Lascelles of Harewood House, Simon Taylor, the Hibbert family and Edward Long, are accounts of the accumulation and transmission to Britain of substantial and in some cases very great wealth. In contrast, this book tells of the dissipation of a rich inheritance. It is a reminder that there were snakes in the West Indies as well as ladders. In order to provide for his family and to finance his own extrava-gant lifestyle in Britain Young had added to the mortgages already on his Caribbean estates to an extent that made his hold on them very vulnerable in adverse economic conditions at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The Sentinels of Britain

With the torpedo having been highly effectual, and attacks on British ships, merchant shipping and troop transports nearly disastrous, destroyers quickly demonstrated their value during the First World War. Their utility and reputation in meeting these challenges fed into a specific narrative of the conflict in which patriotism and self-sacrifice defined Britain's wartime naval identity. The suffering and endurance of sailors, especially those serving on ‘small ships’ in efforts to protect Britain and its citizens, contributed to the powerful imagery and narrative of the destroyers’ role in the conflict, evoking ideals of sacrificial bravery and heroism.

This was undoubtedly dangerous work. Destroyers were, to a great extent, expendable pawns that could be sacrificed in efforts to protect other ships. Utilising their speed and weaponry enabled them to inflict great damage; thus, they were sometimes nicknamed the cavalry of the seas. From a handbook of German Fleet orders compiled in 1915, it appeared to be an idea universally understood that ‘the main duty of all destroyers is to damage the enemy as effectively as possible, whenever a favourable opportunity occurs, regardless of their own safety. The first essentials of success are readiness to accept responsibility, daring determination, and well-considered vigorous action on the part of leaders and commanding officers.’

Beethoven's first set of Violin Sonatas undoubtedly owe a debt to Mozart's mature Violin Sonatas, as many commentators have pointed out. Mozart's chamber music would have been on the shelf of every musician in Vienna in the 1790s, and we know that the young Beethoven copied out works of Mozart as a learning tool, even chiding himself for accidentally quoting one of Mozart's Piano Quartets in an early sketch for the finale of the ‘Spring’ Sonata, Op. 24. This chapter will argue, however, that Beethoven's three Op. 12 Sonatas already show striking innovation in the genre for their formal subversion and Romantic irony, as well as their consistent use of humour as an intrinsic element of each of the three works. Having set out my position as a pianist-analyst in the Introduction, discussion of the Sonata in D, Op. 12 No. 1 begins with a close reading of a section of the opening movement, which serves as a methodological illustration and reveals a formal process that could never have been undertaken by Mozart. The second of the set, in A, is the most overtly comic in nature; for this reason, it is reserved for its own case study in Chapter 2. The Sonata in E♭, Op. 12 No. 3, is a mini concerto for two instruments, where Beethoven's pianistic and compositional styles collide and intertwine to mesmerising effect.

The three Op. 12 Sonatas were composed quickly; both the initial sketches and publication are traceable to 1798, as well as a potential first performance. The Sonatas all have three movements (fast-slow-fast) and are in major keys.