Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Royal Mausolea in the Long Fourteenth Century (1272-1422)
- Legal Culture: Medieval Lawyers’ Aspirations and Pretensions
- Thomas of Lancaster’s First Quarrel with Edward II
- Bristol and the Crown, 1326-31: Local and National Politics in the Early Years of Edward III’s Reign
- Mapping Identity in John Trevisa’s English Polychronicon: Chester, Cornwall and the Translation of English National History
- Edward the Black Prince and East Anglia: An Unlikely Association
- William Wykeham and the Management of the Winchester Estate, 1366-1404
- A Lancastrian Polity? John of Gaunt, John Neville and the War with France, 1368-88
- ‘Hearts warped by passion’: The Percy-Gaunt, Dispute of 1381
- The Reasons for the Bishop of Norwich’s Attack of Flanders in 1383
- Loyalty, Honour and the Lancastrian Revolution: Sir Stephen Scrope of Castle Combe and his Kinsmen, c.1389-c.1408
- The Furnishing of Royal Closets and the Use of Small Devotional Images in the Reign of Richard II: The Setting of the Wilton Diptych Reconsidered
- ‘Weep thou for me in France’: French Views of the Deposition of Richard II
Mapping Identity in John Trevisa’s English Polychronicon: Chester, Cornwall and the Translation of English National History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Royal Mausolea in the Long Fourteenth Century (1272-1422)
- Legal Culture: Medieval Lawyers’ Aspirations and Pretensions
- Thomas of Lancaster’s First Quarrel with Edward II
- Bristol and the Crown, 1326-31: Local and National Politics in the Early Years of Edward III’s Reign
- Mapping Identity in John Trevisa’s English Polychronicon: Chester, Cornwall and the Translation of English National History
- Edward the Black Prince and East Anglia: An Unlikely Association
- William Wykeham and the Management of the Winchester Estate, 1366-1404
- A Lancastrian Polity? John of Gaunt, John Neville and the War with France, 1368-88
- ‘Hearts warped by passion’: The Percy-Gaunt, Dispute of 1381
- The Reasons for the Bishop of Norwich’s Attack of Flanders in 1383
- Loyalty, Honour and the Lancastrian Revolution: Sir Stephen Scrope of Castle Combe and his Kinsmen, c.1389-c.1408
- The Furnishing of Royal Closets and the Use of Small Devotional Images in the Reign of Richard II: The Setting of the Wilton Diptych Reconsidered
- ‘Weep thou for me in France’: French Views of the Deposition of Richard II
Summary
John Trevisa finished translating the Polychronicon, a universal history of the world compiled from Latin sources by Ranulf Higden, into English on 18 April 1387. The chronicle foregrounds geography in Book I, which Ranulf calls a mappamundi or a map of the world. The book begins at ‘Inde’ (a nice pun in Middle English) and concludes with England. In the course of the geographical description of England, Ranulf devotes a disproportionate number of words to describing his native city of Chester, thus revealing his loyalty to that place. In a similar manner, Trevisa reveals his loyalty to Cornwall in a series of interpolated notes. These additions make clear that both compiler and translator associate personal identity with place of origin. Their references to Chester and Cornwall respectively reveal a relationship between identity and geography, but because Ranulf and Trevisa are loyal to different places, a new narrative tension arises between Ranulf’s Chester and Trevisa’s Cornwall in the English Polychronicon.
On one side, Ranulf’s historical association with Chester, the acrostic he uses in the Latin Polychronicon, and his description of Chester from Book I of the Polychronicon give pride of place to Chester. Cornwall, though mentioned in passing by several authorities cited in Book I, receives no extended consideration from Ranulf. Trevisa responds to this silence by first acknowledging, then subverting, and finally criticising Ranulf’s connection to Chester. Within the same narrative space, Trevisa tells his own side of the geographical story, interpolating several notes on his native Cornwall. In order to put Cornwall on the map of England and of the world (at least as that map is imagined in Book I of the Polychronicon), Trevisa insists on Cornwall’s rightful place in the English nation, both as a shire and as a part of the see of Exeter, and on its contributions to English language instruction in grammar schools. Then in Book IV, following up on remarks he makes in Book I, he makes comments which can be construed as emphasising the Cornish or Celtic contribution to English national identity as embodied by King Arthur. As a result, the geographical loyalties of the compiler and the translator of the Polychronicon pull against one another, creating a dynamic tension in the English chronicle that was not present in the Latin one.
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- Fourteenth Century England III , pp. 67 - 82Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004