Archive for November, 2009

I’ve been working all-hours for some weeks now on the Battle of Brunanburh book. It’s terrific stuff, and we’re making real progress. No NaNoWriMo for me, I’m doing Local Academic Editing Month (LoAcEdMo).

I don’t much talk about this part of my life, since it’s rather boring to most folks, but I simply must share today’s dreadful bout of frustration. The book, if you don’t recall, is intended to capture all extant medieval literary sources for study of the Battle of Brunanburh. One of the long-planned sources to be included is a Middle English poem called The Stanzaic Guy of Warwick. It’s a very cool poem in general, but we were planning to include only a few hundred lines of it: a section towards the end in which Guy (who, like this guy Guy has no last name) returns to England as a pilgrim and is forced to fight Colbrond, a giant from Africa, in a man-to-man combat to preserve England from the wicked Danes. He wins the victory, saving King Athelstan’s kingdom, before fading back into the country.

I spent the last couple of days feverishly working on the edition and the facing-page translation for this bit, and I completed it this afternoon. As luck would have it, about 5 minutes after I finished it occurred to me to wonder if we should really include this piece at all. It doesn’t have a lot to do with Brunanburh — Athelstan and fighting Danes are about the size of it — and we aren’t planning to include the other appearances of the Guy v. Colbrond fight, of which I can think of half a dozen just off the top of my head, some pre-dating the Stanzaic Guy version.

I’m thinking now that there’s no need to include all the versions, and I’m wondering further about whether to include the one I’ve already labored on. It might be better if that work goes for naught.

One of my long-term projects around here has been a “casebook” about the Battle of Brunanburh, which is bringing together scholars from around the globe. It’s in a somewhat advanced state at this point, and I’ve been working on my introductory chapter for the book as a result.

I’ve written similar chapters for my own work before, but having the added difficulty and excitement of introducing so many voices is quite enjoyable. Equally as fascinating, though, has been the fact that I’ve chosen to have a significant part of my intro focus on the historical background to the battle. Not a big deal, you might think, especially since most medievalists wouldn’t be worth a lick if they didn’t already have a rough idea of what was happening in England between Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror.

But that’s just it, you see: Most of us do know a bit about the history of England around 937. Yet the Battle of Brunanburh was an international battle, bringing together an array of England’s enemies against the fledgling kingdom. So I’m presenting the historical background of much more than England.

And I’m having a blast doing it.