Bibliography

Georgia
Henley

15 publications between 2012 and 2020 indexed
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Works edited

Smith, Joshua Byron, and Georgia Henley (eds), A companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Brill's Companions to European History, 22, Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2020. URL: <https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004410398>.
Guy, Ben, Georgia Henley, Owain Wyn Jones, and Rebecca Thomas (eds), The chronicles of medieval Wales and the March: new contexts, studies, and text, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 31, Brepols, 2020.  
abstract:
This book offers a collection of new studies on the chronicles of medieval Wales and the March, supported by synoptic pieces placing the tradition of chronicle writing in Wales within the context of historical writing on a broader scale. The volume is accompanied by five editions and translations of little-known texts written in Latin and Medieval Welsh.

The chronicles of medieval Wales are a rich body of source material offering an array of perspectives on historical developments in Wales and beyond. Preserving unique records of events from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, these chronicles form the essential narrative backbone of all modern accounts of medieval Welsh history. Most celebrated of all are the chronicles belonging to the Annales Cambriae and Brut y Tywysogyon families, which document the tumultuous struggles between the Welsh princes and their Norman and English neighbours for control over Wales.

Building on foundational studies of these chronicles by J. E. Lloyd, Thomas Jones, Kathleen Hughes, and others, this book seeks to enhance understanding of the texts by refining and complicating the ways in which they should be read as deliberate literary and historical productions. The studies in this volume make significant advances in this direction through fresh analyses of well-known texts, as well as through full studies, editions, and translations of five chronicles that had hitherto escaped notice.
abstract:
This book offers a collection of new studies on the chronicles of medieval Wales and the March, supported by synoptic pieces placing the tradition of chronicle writing in Wales within the context of historical writing on a broader scale. The volume is accompanied by five editions and translations of little-known texts written in Latin and Medieval Welsh.

The chronicles of medieval Wales are a rich body of source material offering an array of perspectives on historical developments in Wales and beyond. Preserving unique records of events from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, these chronicles form the essential narrative backbone of all modern accounts of medieval Welsh history. Most celebrated of all are the chronicles belonging to the Annales Cambriae and Brut y Tywysogyon families, which document the tumultuous struggles between the Welsh princes and their Norman and English neighbours for control over Wales.

Building on foundational studies of these chronicles by J. E. Lloyd, Thomas Jones, Kathleen Hughes, and others, this book seeks to enhance understanding of the texts by refining and complicating the ways in which they should be read as deliberate literary and historical productions. The studies in this volume make significant advances in this direction through fresh analyses of well-known texts, as well as through full studies, editions, and translations of five chronicles that had hitherto escaped notice.
Henley, Georgia, and A. Joseph McMullen (eds), Gerald of Wales: new perspectives on a medieval writer and critic, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018.  
abstract:
Gerald of Wales (c.1146–c.1223), widely recognised for his innovative ethnographic studies of Ireland and Wales, was the author of works that touch upon many aspects of twelfth-century life. Despite their valuable insights, the range of these works is vastly understudied, and the collection of essays in the present volume reassesses Gerald’s importance as a medieval Latin writer by focusing on the lesser-known works, and by providing a fuller context for his more popular writings.
abstract:
Gerald of Wales (c.1146–c.1223), widely recognised for his innovative ethnographic studies of Ireland and Wales, was the author of works that touch upon many aspects of twelfth-century life. Despite their valuable insights, the range of these works is vastly understudied, and the collection of essays in the present volume reassesses Gerald’s importance as a medieval Latin writer by focusing on the lesser-known works, and by providing a fuller context for his more popular writings.
Henley, Georgia, Paul Russell, and Joseph F. Eska (eds), Rhetoric and reality in medieval Celtic literature: studies in honor of Daniel F. Melia, CSANA Yearbook, 11-12, Hamilton, NY: Colgate University Press, 2014.

Contributions to journals

Henley, Georgia, “Transnational book traffic in the Irish Sea zone: a new witness to the First Variant version of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum”, North American Journal of Celtic Studies 4:2 (2020): 131–162.  
abstract:

This article examines Dublin, Trinity College 11500, a historical compilation dated to the fourteenth century containing the First Variant version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's De gestis Britonum, works by Gerald of Wales and Aristotle, and several poems including a prophetical text called ‘Song on the kings of Scotland’. Following a long period of private ownership, the manuscript was purchased by Trinity College in 2014. It brings to light important new textual evidence for Geoffrey's First Variant. This article examines the text's readings against the other extant manuscripts of the First Variant, establishes that it is the exemplar for Evan Evans' eighteenth-century extracts, and contextualizes the production of the manuscript within a network of transnational Irish Sea connections between Ireland, northeast Wales, and the Welsh Marches enabled by the Cistercian order.

abstract:

This article examines Dublin, Trinity College 11500, a historical compilation dated to the fourteenth century containing the First Variant version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's De gestis Britonum, works by Gerald of Wales and Aristotle, and several poems including a prophetical text called ‘Song on the kings of Scotland’. Following a long period of private ownership, the manuscript was purchased by Trinity College in 2014. It brings to light important new textual evidence for Geoffrey's First Variant. This article examines the text's readings against the other extant manuscripts of the First Variant, establishes that it is the exemplar for Evan Evans' eighteenth-century extracts, and contextualizes the production of the manuscript within a network of transnational Irish Sea connections between Ireland, northeast Wales, and the Welsh Marches enabled by the Cistercian order.

Henley, Georgia, “The intersection of ethnicity and material culture: manuscripts, book shrines and political realities in late medieval Gaelic Ireland”, Studia Celtica Fennica 12 (2015): 21–34.  
abstract:
This article approaches the material culture of late medieval Gaelic Ireland as an active locus for the negotiation and display of group identities. It works against assumptions about the failures of material and book culture to present, adequately, evidence of ethnic identity in the Middle Ages. Instead, it uses Florin Curta’s productive, valuable theories about ethnic markers in the archaeological record to analyze material objects, specifically the Book of Ballymote and various refurbished book shrines, for evidence of ethnic identity markers, generated by the external pressures of shifting power relations. Thematically, these objects are linked by deliberate associations with a perceived ancestral past, with the ultimate purpose of asserting claims over territory in times of dispute and change. This article argues that markers of group identity, and therefore ethnicity, are discernible in the contents and purposes of these objects, when analyzed in their appropriate historical contexts. The analysis of these objects is therefore a productive method of thinking about the function of ethnicity in late medieval Gaelic Ireland, with possible implications for other groups and periods across the Middle Ages.
Studia Celtica Fennica: <link>
abstract:
This article approaches the material culture of late medieval Gaelic Ireland as an active locus for the negotiation and display of group identities. It works against assumptions about the failures of material and book culture to present, adequately, evidence of ethnic identity in the Middle Ages. Instead, it uses Florin Curta’s productive, valuable theories about ethnic markers in the archaeological record to analyze material objects, specifically the Book of Ballymote and various refurbished book shrines, for evidence of ethnic identity markers, generated by the external pressures of shifting power relations. Thematically, these objects are linked by deliberate associations with a perceived ancestral past, with the ultimate purpose of asserting claims over territory in times of dispute and change. This article argues that markers of group identity, and therefore ethnicity, are discernible in the contents and purposes of these objects, when analyzed in their appropriate historical contexts. The analysis of these objects is therefore a productive method of thinking about the function of ethnicity in late medieval Gaelic Ireland, with possible implications for other groups and periods across the Middle Ages.
Henley, Georgia, “Quotation, revision, and narrative structure in Giraldus Cambrensis’s Itinerarium Kambriae”, The Journal of Medieval Latin 24 (2014): 1–52.  
abstract:
Giraldus Cambrensis is renowned for his historical and ethnographic works on Ireland and Wales. His sources for these texts are less clear, and the purpose of this article is to examine his usage of classical, biblical, and patristic texts as sources for quotations in the Itinerarium Kambriae, with reference to his other works when necessary. It argues that the quotations which appear in the text as altered from the original source are not the result of misquotation or faulty memory, as has been claimed previously, but of deliberate reworking to fit the context and the argument of the passage in which the quotation appears. This deft manipulation of quotations to support his argument reveals a level of rhetorical skill and awareness not previously acknowledged. The article also finds attribution for several quotations whose origins were previously unknown. As Giraldus was in the habit of adding quotations and self-quoted passages to his works over time, this discussion is followed by an examination of his revisions to the Itinerarium Kambriae and the implications of these revisions on the transmission of his work.
abstract:
Giraldus Cambrensis is renowned for his historical and ethnographic works on Ireland and Wales. His sources for these texts are less clear, and the purpose of this article is to examine his usage of classical, biblical, and patristic texts as sources for quotations in the Itinerarium Kambriae, with reference to his other works when necessary. It argues that the quotations which appear in the text as altered from the original source are not the result of misquotation or faulty memory, as has been claimed previously, but of deliberate reworking to fit the context and the argument of the passage in which the quotation appears. This deft manipulation of quotations to support his argument reveals a level of rhetorical skill and awareness not previously acknowledged. The article also finds attribution for several quotations whose origins were previously unknown. As Giraldus was in the habit of adding quotations and self-quoted passages to his works over time, this discussion is followed by an examination of his revisions to the Itinerarium Kambriae and the implications of these revisions on the transmission of his work.
Henley, Georgia, “Rhetoric, translation and historiography: the literary qualities of Brut y tywysogyon”, Quaestio Insularis 13 (2013): 94–123.

Contributions to edited collections or authored works

Henley, Georgia, “The Cardiff chronicle in London, British Library, MS Royal 6 B XI”, in: Ben Guy, Georgia Henley, Owain Wyn Jones, and Rebecca Thomas (eds), The chronicles of medieval Wales and the March: new contexts, studies, and text, 31, Brepols, 2020. 231–287.
Henley, Georgia, “Geoffrey of Monmouth and the conventions of history writing in early 12th-century England”, in: Joshua Byron Smith, and Georgia Henley (eds), A companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, 22, Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2020. 291–314.
McMullen, A. Joseph, and Georgia Henley, “Gerald of Wales: interpretation and innovation in medieval Britain”, in: Georgia Henley, and A. Joseph McMullen (eds), Gerald of Wales: new perspectives on a medieval writer and critic, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018. 1–15.
Henley, Georgia, “Gerald’s circulation and reception in Wales: the case of Claddedigaeth Arthur”, in: Georgia Henley, and A. Joseph McMullen (eds), Gerald of Wales: new perspectives on a medieval writer and critic, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2018. 223–242.
Henley, Georgia, “Through the ethnographer’s eyes: rhetoric, ethnicity, and quotation in the Welsh and Irish works of Gerald of Wales”, in: Georgia Henley, Paul Russell, and Joseph F. Eska (eds), Rhetoric and reality in medieval Celtic literature: studies in honor of Daniel F. Melia, 11-12, Hamilton, NY: Colgate University Press, 2014. 63–74.