Hybridity, Identity, and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles

The New Middle Ages

by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain examines an island made turbulent by conquest and civil war. Focusing upon history writing, ethnography, and saints' lives, this book details how community was imagined in the twelfth century; what role the monsterization of the Welsh, Irish and Jews played in bringing about English unity; and how writers who found the blood of two peoples mixed in their bodies struggled to find a vocabulary to express their identity. Its chapters explores the function and origin of myths like the unity and separateness of the English, the barbarism of the Celtic Fringe, the innate desire of Jews to murder Christian children as part of their Pesach ritual. Populated by wonders like a tempest formed of blood, a Saracen pope, strange creatures suspended between the animal and the human, and corpses animated with uncanny life, Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain maps how collective identities form through violent exclusions, and details the price paid by those who find themselves denied the possibility of belonging.

Genres: History, Literary Criticism, Medieval

264 pages, Hardcover

First published May 27, 2006

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Would've made a better journal article. Good argument, but not enough evidence to stretch into a book.

[M F]

Based on the other books and articles I've read by Cohen, I was expecting this to be a more literary treatment, but it's actually primarily historical. That isn't to say it wasn't interesting, but it wasn't nearly as relevant to my particular interests as I might have hoped.