Nationalism in Barbour's Bruce

Nationalism in Barbour's Bruce Historians all too often assert that 'nationalism' originated in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries—in other words, that it is a purely modem phenomenon. According to some definitions of 'nationalism' and 'nation' this m a y well be true, but it is impossible to deny that in John Barbour's account of the campaigns andreignof Robert Bruce fourteenthcentury Scodand is presented as a nation or, to use Benedict Anderson's definition, an 'imagined political community'.1 In an important recent study of national identity, Andrew Hadfield points out that many writers of the English Renaissance perceived then aim as double-edged, insofar as they 'had to both fashion and authorise then o w n utterances as literature and imagine tbe national community they addressed'.2 Such writers defined then purpose partly by form and style, but also by constructing the national identity of then own audience. The same might be said of Barbour's Bruce? Although Barbour describes his poem as a romance (1.446), according to John Taylor's twentieth-century classification it is an historical chronicle.4 As Thorlac TurvUle-Petre notes, the chronicle is 'the most overtly polemical and political form of medieval writing'.5 Certainly the Bruce, written ca 1 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. edn, London, 1991, p. 6. On nationalism in the Middle Ages, see R. James Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland, London, 1993, especially, pp. 23-56; Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900-1300, Oxford, 1986, pp. 250-56; and Nationalism in the Middle Ages, ed. C. Leon Tipton, New York, 1972. 2 Andrew Hadfield, Literature, Politics and National Identity: Reformation to Renaissance, Cambridge, 1994, p. 1. 3 Barbour's Bruce: 'A Fredom is a Noble Thing!', ed. Matthew P. M . McDiarmid and James A. C. Stevenson, Scottish Text Society (STS) 12, 13, 15, Edinburgh, 1980-85. All references to the Bruce axe to the STS edition. For the purposes of this paper I have distinguished p and y, but both are printed as y in the STS edition. 4 John Taylor, English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth Century, Oxford, 1987, pp. 37-58. On romance tradition in the Bruce, see Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland, pp. 143^9. 5 Thorlac Turville-Petre, 'Politics and Poetry in the Early Fourteenth Century: The Case of Robert Manning's Chronicle', Review of English Studies ns 39 (1988), pp. 1-28: 3. P A R E R G O N ns 12.1 (July 1994) 90 D. Watt 1375, is concerned with national political events which took place in the recent past, that is, from the succession disputes following the death of Alexander II in 1249 up to the author's o w n time, concentrating particularly on the Anglo-Scottish conflicts of the reign of Robert I (1306-29). In this essay I would like to reconsider the political and literary context of the Bruce, for what reasons it was written, and to w h o m it was addressed. In his highly emotive reproach of his o w n people w h o allowed themselves to be deceived by the 'Hammer of the Scots', Barbour exclaims: A, fredome is a noble thing, Fredome mays man to haiff liking, Fredome all solace to man giffis, He levys at es bat frely levys. . . . he bat ay has levyt fre May nocht knaw weill pe propyrte Pe angyr na pe wrechyt dome Pat is cowplyt to foule thyrldome. (1.225-36) These lines, in which Barbour opposes individual freedom to the servitude of oppression, place the poem politically. The nationalist sentiment expressed is also found in the letter sent by the Scottish Barons to the Pope in 1320.6 This letter, the so-called Declaration of Arbroath, was written in response to papal opposition to Robert I in order to legitimize the Scottish king's authority. Although Barbour m a y not have known the Declaration, a relationship of shared ideology between the Bruce and the letter has been recognized by literary critic and historian alike.7 In both the poem and the letter w e...