Talk:Historians in England during the Middle Ages

Before the nationalists see this
Not all these were Englishmen nor did they all write in Englsih. I suggest a more diplomatic title for a valuable page. (RJP 16:29, 15 October 2005 (UTC))


 * Titles of pages are not to be taken literarly, they are simply placeholders for the content, a matter of convience that help the reader find and understand generally what the article is about. Nationalistic POV concerns have no place on Wikipedia. The text of the article explains in detail what the article is about. Stbalbach 17:31, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that the additions I made are a "modern pov." Rather, I would argue that the implied de-valuing of histories that extensively borrowed and translated from predecessors is a modern imposition of ideas about originality, rather than a medieval conception. Consider, for example, how common the practice was, and how little comment in warranted. Second, Florence of Worcester's text doesn't survive - the Chronicon ex Chronicii was re-written in precisely the copy/translate/edit model under discussion by the twelfth century John of Worcester. The text is edited in the Oxford Medieval Text series in three volumes by McGurk, Darlington, and Bray. Lutefish 14:39, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * "the implied de-valuing of histories" - does it really do that? If it did, that would be a modern value judgement, which would not be appropriate for the article. We can discuss the facts without implying a modern value judgement. If theres some unintended hidden meaning that devalues histories, then we need to change it. In the case of John, it's probably more appropriate to list who the work is attributed to originally, than who we have extant manuscripts from. --Stbalbach 16:34, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


 * "Another characteristic of the histories of the period is that they borrowed heavily from other writers, often directly copying entire works as their own." My argument here is that "borrowed heavily" and "directly copying" are not just neutral modern descriptions of processes of composition.  Rather, the types of composition being described are fundamental medieval methods of composition, and don't bear the modern stigma and implied lack of originality suggested by "borrowing" and "copying."  The majority of medieval history texts "borrow" heavily from other sources: the borrowing doesn't affect the originality of these works in the same way that it would, say, a modern history text book that "directly copied" from a source.  As far as John/Florence, Florence's text doesn't survive. What we have is a complete re-write by John of Worcester of a non-surviving original by Florence.  Thus to attribute the work to Florence is to pretend to have something we don't, to privilege a non-extant and purely hypothetical "original" over a distinct and different text that does survive. Lutefish 17:30, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Nennius
In other wikipedias Nennius is not English and did not write in English. Guess who is wrong.


 * See footnote #1 -- Stbalbach 17:44, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Title should be changed
Many of these "historians" (Geoffrey of Monmouth isn't even a historian but a writer of fiction) are English some are Welsh and many did not even write in or know the English language...thus the title should be changed. You can't call this "English historians in the Middle Ages" and then include those that aren't English as Wikipedia claims to be an encyclopædia and that is far from (like a lot of things that get written on this site) encyclopædic. Sigurd Dragon Slayer (talk) 17:17, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

This is very true, and this dragon ain't dead.Harrypotter (talk) 10:05, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

History is written by the victors?
Full disclosure: non-historian, neither Welsh nor English. I note the remarks regarding Geoffrey of Monmouth being called a liar by William of Newburgh, but the wikipedia entry on William notes that he is of "Anglo-Saxon descent", that is, the opposing side in the wars the two authors are describing. Shouldn't that be noted here?. When even this talk page seems to be so very much influenced by the national ancestry of the commenters (1000+ years later!), I can't help wondering whether the evaluation of the medieval writers depends on the team jersey....alacarte (talk) 13:46, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Late Middle Ages
Nobody doing a Late Middle Ages section? 92.25.254.137 (talk) 18:46, 19 December 2022 (UTC)