Essays exploring a wide range of topics, from castle-building and mortuary scroll compositions to the development of institutional queenship.


This volume continues the Society's commitment to historical and interdisciplinary research from the early and central Middle Ages. It likewise demonstrates its belief that the close interrogation of primary documents and manuscript evidence offer important, new insights into the period. The volume opens with a focused comparison of Widukind of Corvey's Res gestae Saxonicae and the Latin heroic epic Waltharius, exploring larger questions of the interplay of "literature" and "history" in tenth-century Germany. This is followed by a close examination of the changing nature of queenship in England during the tenth century, and a study of the vital, yet neglected, maritime dimensions of William fitzOsbern's castle-building and commercial interests in the southern Welsh March. Further essays examine mortuary rolls to explore women's literacy and the role of authority in its expression; the scope and dramatic impact of Henry of Blois' contribution to the monastic library at Glastonbury; the changing nature of written administration in Gloucester during the rule of Earl Amaury IV; skepticism about the Galfridian narrative of early Britain in Pseudo-William Godel's Libellus de Recordatione Temporum; and the roles and responsibilities fulfilled by women who lived in or ventured into medieval royal forests. The volume's final essay reflects on the ways in which Cold War policies and politics in the United States contributed in complex ways not only to the making of a medieval historian, but to the making of medieval historical studies in later twentieth-century.