Spatial Memory, Historiographic Fantasy, and the Touch of the Past in St. Erkenwald
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9307192 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Cynthia Turner Camp (0000-0002-6411-5814, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 471-491 |
| Publication date | 2013-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Literary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0028-6087 • E-ISSN: 1080-661X |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/nlh.2013.0023 |
| OpenAlex | W2042992118 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 5 |
This article reads the anonymous Middle English alliterative poem St. Erkenwald as a historiographic exemplum germane to contemporary scholars' concerns about the mandate to "always historicize." The poem stages upon London's polytemporal cityscape a physical encounter between the present—conversion-era Anglo-Saxon London—and an unfamiliar pagan British past embodied in the undecayed (and eventually revivified) corpse of a long-buried judge. Using Maurice Halbwach's theories of collective identity and Michel de Certeau's insights on historiography, I consider the poem's critique of the processes of recuperating, erasing, and incorporating the civic past. This reading lays out interrelations among the operations of memory, desire, and malleable corporate identity that are relevant to contemporary discussions about historicism, revealing the limitations of different historiographic and commemorative processes while insisting upon their necessity, and their potential, for (re)constituting both civic identity and scholarly endeavor
Aesthetics · Art · Fantasy · Historicism · Historiography · Identity (music · Linguistics · Literature · Poetry · Reading (process · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Irish and British Studies · Philippine History and Culture · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,08 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2013 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |