Creating a Database for the Medieval March of Wales.

Read our latest news article in the journal PRj vol. 23.

The phrase ‘The French of England’ was first developed some 15 years ago with the appearance of the influential volume of essays, Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c. 1100–c. 1500, edited by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne of Fordham University and her team of collaborators. The project website states that:

‘‘The French of England’ is a term originally designed to challenge easy equations of England with English and to create more attention to a large strand of England’s multilingual culture. … Our new term with its restriction to ‘England’ is designed to suggest that British Frenches cannot be adequately considered through English perspectives: if there is a French of England, there are also Frenches of Wales, Ireland, Scotland, each having its own distinctive history while also participating in the wider stories of French in medieval Europe.’ (https://frenchofengland.ace.fordham.edu)

For three days last week, we were delighted to welcome delegates from across the UK, Europe, and North America, joining both online and in person, to a gloriously sunny Bristol for The French of the Celtic Worlds Conference. Our aim was to bring together specialists in medieval Celtic and French studies in order to take up the invitation extended by The French of England project to think about what the Frenches of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and Cornwall would look like. What are their specific contexts, trajectories, and dynamics? What methodological challenges and opportunities are at stake in them? What might be their wider implications for the linguistic, cultural, and political histories of our modern nation states, sub-states, and regions?

We were privileged to open the conference with welcome addresses from Professor Helen Simpson, Associate Pro Vice Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at the University of Bristol and Dr Tristan Kay, Co-Director of the UoB Centre for Medieval Studies.

The first was Dr Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Honorary Fellow at University of Wales Trinity St Davids and formerly Head of Manuscripts and Visual Images, National Library of Wales. Dr Lloyd-Morgan’s lecture, ‘In Search of French Manuscripts in Medieval Wales’, took us on a fascinating tour of the French texts that were circulating in medieval Wales, as attested in various records and translations.

Our second keynote was delivered by Professor Keith Busby, Douglas Kelly Professor of Medieval French Emeritus, University of Wisconsin–Madison and Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. Professor Busby’s lecture, ‘French in Medieval Ireland and the Serendipity of Scholarship’, retraced the development of his work on what he famously termed ‘medieval Francophonia’ and, in particular, his interest in its Irish contexts. Professor Busby’s lecture was followed by the launch of a (second!) Festschrift in his honour, Medieval French on the Move, and we were delighted to be joined by contributors and friends, online and in person, to celebrate.

The conference organisers would like to express their sincerest thanks to all the speakers and attendees for their participation in the conference. We look forward to many more illuminating conversations in the future.

The French of the Celtic Worlds Conference was a joint output of ‘Mapping the March: Medieval Wales and England, c. 1282–1550’ (ERC–UKRI) and Dr Luciana Cordo Russo’s project ‘Charlemagne in Wales: The Transmission, Reception, and Translation of Charlemagne Narratives in Medieval Wales’ (British Academy Newton International Fellowship). For additional funding, we are grateful to the University of Bristol Faculty of Arts, Law, and Social Sciences, the Society for French Studies UK, and the International Courtly Literature Society (British & Irish Branch). The launch of Medieval French on the Move was organised in collaboration with Professor Leah Tether (University of Bristol) with the support of De Gruyter.

All photos © Matías Repetto Bonpland (https://www.mrbphotojournalist.com/)

‘Mapping the March’ is a major research project selected by the ERC and funded by UKRI. Each semester we invite speakers to present papers on topics related to borders and borderlands in medieval and early modern Europe.

17/02/2025 –The Surnames and other expressions of kin solidarity in the Anglo-Scottish Marches before 1498 by Professor Jackson Armstrong, University of Aberdeen.

The borderlands of England and Scotland in the later Middle Ages are deeply associated with a turbulent raiding culture. In the sixteenth century this became chiefly identified with the so-called Riding Surnames, the kin groups of the region who defied authority, lived by violent feuding, and identified closely with their relations on the opposite side of the border. First recorded in 1498, Surname groups appeared in the fifteenth century alongside other expressions of kinship ties among the higher peasantry and lesser landowners of the English far north. These phenomena reveal prominent social and cultural patterns which suggest the significance of kinship ties on the borderland was more nuanced than has been appreciated to date.

In 2025, we are holding a number of seminars in conjunction with the project.

Mapping the March is a major research project selected by the ERC and funded by UKRI. Each semester we invite speakers to present papers on topics related to borders and borderlands in medieval and early modern Europe. All welcome to attend the seminars in person or online, with in-person refreshments available after the papers.

Date- Monday 17 March, 1.30pm.
Venue- University of Bristol, 7 Woodland Road.
Research Space, 1.H020.

Title- Making Marcher Towns

Speaker- Professor Keith Lilley, Queens University Belfast

Towns provided Marcher lords with a system of encouraging settlement of their territories and lordships. This talk explores this spatial process through combining morphological analysis and mapping methods. Taking a comparative approach reveals similarities in the form of medieval Marcher towns in Wales and the Welsh borders across the late-eleventh to the early-fourteenth century. The historical and cultural significance of these ‘urban designs’ is explored, what they tell us about the processes involved in ‘making Marcher towns’.

Please email mapping-the-march@bristol.ac.uk to register your online or in person attendance.

We look forward to seeing you there!

‘Mapping the March’ is a major research project selected by the ERC and funded by UKRI. Each semester we invite speakers to present papers on topics related to borders and borderlands in medieval and early modern Europe.

18/11/2024 – ‘A Hippo in the March: An Early Medieval Centre on the Breiddin Hill and its Context in a Frontier Landscape’ by Dr Andy Seaman.

In this seminar, Dr Andy Seaman will present some preliminary results from on-going analysis of the previously unpublished excavations of a unique early medieval site on the Breiddin Hill known as New Pieces. He will also consider the landscape context of the site and its potential relationship to medieval literary traditions. 

Thursday 13 February, 16.00-17.15, Arts Complex, Lecture Room 8

Dr Rachael Harkes & Dr Matt Lampitt (Postdoctoral Research Associates, University of Bristol)

Mapping Literature and Society in the Late Medieval Welsh Marches

All welcome to attend!

Earlier this year, Matt Lampitt (Project PDRA) spoke at the Mortimer History Society’s Spring Conference on the topic of ‘Imagining Landscapes in Medieval Ludlow’. The talk is available on their Youtube channel here:

Abstract

From greenwood glades harbouring beastly outlaws to Welsh forest passes exploited by rebellious lords to seas that shelter castaway exiles, literary texts from the medieval Welsh Marches imagine worlds full of vibrant land- and seascapes. Ranging across texts in Latin, English, and French, this paper focusses on the works copied and rewritten by the so-called ‘Harley scribe’, an elusive figure active in and around Ludlow in the first half of the fourteenth century. In texts such as the Song of Trailbaston, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, and Kyng Horn, land- and seascapes are no mere backdrop to the main action; rather, they act on their narrative worlds in politically meaningful ways, often colluding with the heroes in their resistance to unjust foes. Situating these texts in their manuscript contexts, we will explore the agential environments that they imagine and consider further what it means for such texts to elaborate political ecologies that include, but are by no means limited to, the human.

CALL FOR PAPERS
University of Bristol, 9–11 April 2025
Organisers: Dr Luciana Cordo Russo and Dr Matthew Siôn Lampitt

In recent years, much scholarship has been devoted to exploring medieval francophonies outside of France, including across the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, in Flanders and the Low Countries, as well as in different regions of Outremer. As a region of early and prolific Francophone textual production, England has received especial attention, most recently under the rubric of the ‘French of England’.

Within and alongside this work, scholars have been increasingly exploring further francophonies, including in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Under the rubric of ‘The French of the Celtic Worlds’, this conference seeks to bring together and develop further these fields of research. Our aim is to (re)assess French-language works––whether administrative documents or literary texts––produced, circulated, or translated in Celtic-speaking territories, to consider various modes of cultural and linguistic contact, and to attend to the wider contexts and dynamics in which these processes are implicated. Possible questions for consideration include, but are not limited to:

• Which cultural and political actors are of relevance to ‘The French of the Celtic Worlds’? Which texts, manuscripts, authors, patrons, scribes, nobles, institutions, etc., could be framed or reframed in this way?
• What are the roles of translation, multilingualism, and other forms of literary or linguistic borrowing,interfacing, and exchange?
• How might we best identify and conceptualise spaces, vectors, and networks of contact? What are the politicaldynamics at work in these?
• What is the value of ‘The French of the Celtic Worlds’ as a heuristic category? What methodological challengesand opportunities are at stake in it? What might be its wider implications (intellectual, political, ethical, etc.)?

We invite abstracts (200 words) from researchers at all career stages for 20-minute papers to be submitted by Friday 1 November 2024 to french-of-celtic@bristol.ac.uk. Papers are encouraged to be presented in person, but may be presented online if necessary. We are delighted to announce that our keynote speakers will be:

Dr Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, FLSW

Honorary Fellow, University of Wales Trinity St David; formerly Head of Manuscripts and Visual Images, National Library of Wales

Professor Keith Busby

Douglas Kelly Professor of Medieval French Emeritus, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America

We are pleased to announce that a limited number of travel bursaries (up to £250) will be available for postgraduate, unwaged, or retired speakers. We would be grateful if you could indicate your intention to apply for these bursaries when submitting your abstract.This conference is organized by the projects ‘Mapping the March: Medieval Wales and England, c. 1282-1550’ (ERC– UKRI) and ‘Charlemagne in Wales: The Transmission, Reception, and Translation of Charlemagne Narratives in Medieval Wales’ (British Academy Newton International Fellowship).

Link to PRj Article Volume 20 (June, 2024)

The Medieval March of Wales, Mapping Literary Geography in a British Border Region (Pages 110-113)

‘Mapping the March’ is a major research project selected by the ERC and funded by UKRI. Each semester we invite speakers to present papers on topics related to borders and borderlands in medieval and early modern Europe.

13/05/2024 – ‘Ferlyes on Folde’: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Contemporary Imaginings of Alderley Edge talk by Dr Vicky Flood.

This paper draws on research undertaken as part of the AHRC-funded Invisible Worlds project, exploring the medieval legacies at work in twentieth and twenty-first-century popular understandings of mythic and legendary space at Alderley Edge, a non-built heritage site in NorthEast Cheshire. It explores postmedieval literary and creative conflations of the site with ‘Gawain country’, the Cheshire/Staffordshire locations some forty miles to the west of Alderley Edge, understood from the mid-twentieth century onwards to have fired the imagination of the fourteenth-century author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.