The Peterborough Version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Rewriting Post-Conquest History by Malasree Home (review)

The Peterborough Chronicle (PC), otherwise known as the E-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC), is traditionally viewed as an oddity. This vernacular chronicle seems out of place in the Latin world of twelfth-century English historiography. Malasree Home reassesses this view of the PC as an outlier, arguing that it occupies a more complex position in medieval historiography, helping to legitimize Peterborough’s local history while simultaneously participating in a wider community of historical texts. The use of the PC by prominent Latin historians shows that the vernacular tradition was alive and well in post-Conquest England.

Home organizes her book into manageable methodological chunks. Chapter 1 discusses how to read the interpolations in the received text of the ASC, which Home labels the proto-E text. Chapter 2 discusses how the two continuations were written and fit into the overall structure of the proto-E text. Chapter 3 discusses how the PC was received and how the utility of the text overrode any concern for genre or structure. Chapter 4 discusses the broader place of the PC in medieval English historiography. In all four chapters, Home focuses on the “cultural status of the text” and how the PC “interacts with post-Conquest historiographic culture” (19). Most importantly, she argues that the relationship between the two scribes of the PC and the proto-E text shows an awareness of and an active participation in the medieval English historical tradition, both vernacular and Latin. Furthermore, the use of the ASC, and the PC in particular, by other twelfth- century English historians in local histories, hagiographies, and national histories, demonstrates that medieval writers could use historical texts to suit their particular needs, and that historical genres are flexible enough to meet those needs.

Home contends that scholarship on the ASC should offer more than a stem-matic analysis of its origins, transmission, and general cultural impact. She claims that the later versions of the ASC, and the PC in particular, have been often overlooked or relegated to secondary status because they were seen as derivative or as part of a collective unit. She advocates a more pluralistic use of textual criticism and editing that incorporates interdisciplinary ideas from fields such as cultural theory and memory studies. Though this strategy has become fairly common in the study of later twelfth- and thirteenth-century histories, it has often been ignored in the study of the ASC. In this regard, her volume usefully supplements existing projects such as Susan Irvine’s definitive edition of the PC in Boydell & Brewer’s The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Adding to Irvine’s more purely paleographic treatment, Home provides cultural and literary context, arguments for authorial intent, a breakdown of how the scribes were influenced by other texts, and a description of how the PC participated in various communities.

The received proto-E text contained annals up to 1121, though the PC itself was written from scratch, perhaps to replace a copy of the ASC lost in a fire in 1116. The major additions the PC contributes to the proto-E text are interposed documents and entries up to 1121, a continuation of the annals up to 1131 written contemporaneously in the same hand as the interpolations, and a second continuation covering 1132–1154 written by a second hand, perhaps about twenty years later. Home places the PC alongside other historical works of the twelfth century that used archival materials (including forged documents) to protect rights and privileges in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest and during the anarchy of King Stephen. What unites the administrative documents and narrative entries in the interposed material of the PC is the attempt to ensure the survival of the Peterborough community by re-validating its Anglo-Saxon past. In particular she notes that the use of first person and present tense in many of these documents represents the authority of oral customs, which...