Christopher Harper-Bill starts the volume with a survey of recent publications of primary sources relating to East Anglia and of recent secondary studies in a range of disciplines relating to medieval East Anglia, mostly by British scholars, many of whom have been associated with the Centre for East Anglian Studies at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. The remaining essays are then divided into five sections without further comment.
The first section on landscape is marked by contrasting approaches. Tom Williamson, in a concise reprise of his brilliant book Shaping Medieval Landscapes, argues for the importance of appreciating agricultural practicality, that is the relationship between farming practice and the natural environment, in the production of regionally diverse landscapes rather than the influence of power relations, ethnicity or other "vague cultural matters." Robert Liddiard, in a study of the siting of castles within designed landscapes, acknowledges that Norman castles were often located on traditional sites of power, but seems more tempted to take account of cultural factors, particularly a growing element of deliberate fantasy, in their adaptation from the mid twelfth century. Philippa Maddern is the most inclined to a cultural understanding of landscape. In an innovative paper she compares the representation of East Anglian landscapes in literary and legal sources from the late middle ages and argues for a kind of "landscape nostalgia--an intense, and possibly wilful, refusal to acknowledge that landscape change [after 1340] was not confined to the effects of individual and temporary actions."
The focus on material culture and the debate over its interpretation continues in the section on "The Urban Scene." Brian Ayers deftly combines a survey of theoretical developments in Archaeology, especially in post-processualism, with a survey of the rich archaeology of the city of Norwich. He ends with a call for more interdisciplinary work to understand the processes of urban change, in which archaeology can be used to set the agenda for understanding the past and not used as a mere adornment to the work of history. The potential is illustrated by several of the remaining papers in this section by historians who have important things to say about the built environment but have not studied it. Penny Dunn bases her paper on an intensive study of a particular record, the surviving cartulary of the corporation of Norwich compiled in 1396, and uses it to explore the financial reforms undertaken by the corporation in the post plague decades which were based on investment in shops, houses and land in the city, particularly in the market place, but the archaeological record of that investment, including the rather stunning civic buildings which still survive, is not mentioned. Finally Carole Rawcliffe, in a beautifully written and subtly argued essay on "Health and Safety at Work," explores textual evidence for concern about regulating the body and the built environment in a number of East Anglian towns. Although she traces the physical contexts and events which might trigger such concern from a very wide range of sources, Rawcliffe nevertheless concludes that such matters were addressed primarily within the cultural context of dominant Christian morality rather than from a pragmatic concern about hygiene. This paper, like Ayers', is impressively wide ranging and thought provoking and offers the most potential for the interdisciplinary collaboration he imagines.
Two further papers in this section are more concerned with civic administration than the material culture of the town. Elizabeth Rutledge has written a rich archival study of secular clerks and lawyers in Norwich in which she traces their changing status in the city, concluding modestly that the real change may be in their choice of title as more successful clerks started using the term "attorney" to describe themselves rather than clerk. (I wonder if the influence of London practice is significant?) Kate Parker develops the theme of financial crises but turns to King's Lynn to explore the ways in which local and national political causes became intertwined in disputes over the government of the town in the early years of the reign of Henry IV.
In the section on Government and Politics the great East Anglian James Campbell uses his deep understanding of the tradition of English administrative history dating back to the time of Maitland to produce a deceptively simple and clear account of the problems of understanding the evolution of administrative landscapes in a paper that is of more importance to the history of shire government than its regional brief might suggest. The theme of the local impact of royal government is also the subject of Lucy Marten's careful study of the regional impact of the rebellion of 1075. She argues that historians who have followed Lanfranc in understanding the suppression of the rebellion within a framework of individual ethnicity have misunderstood the colder political calculations that were made about the usefulness of different political actors irrespective of their ethnic origin, and thus misunderstood the very nature of William I's new regime in the region. Leaping ahead to the 1950s Colin Richmond, in a fantastically richmondesque piece which you will have to read for yourself, starts by reminiscing about his unrequited love for Audrey Brewster in 1956 and continues via Kant to bring us up to date with his latest old new thoughts on the Pastons. Colin woke up recently and instantly knew what John Fastolf felt like in 1450:"the feelings are those of an elderly man watching impotently as his country goes to the dogs." He ends, I think, with an optimistic note for us all; the restoration of good government by the earl of Oxford after the well-managed and predictable death of Richard III. May we all look forward to it.
On to "Religion." Terrie Colk positively reappraises East Anglian Augustinian canons and their engagement with the new learning to dispel Southern's assessment that they were the "sparrows of English towns," rather he concludes that they were, perhaps, "song thrushes." In "Leave my virginity alone" Carole Hill explores the cult of St Margaret, particularly in relation to child-bearing women, from a number of wall and panel paintings of the saint surviving in Norfolk churches. T. A. Heslop combines architectural analysis and documentary research to explore the role of the community in rebuilding the nave and west tower of Swaffam Church in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. His conclusions resonate with those of Kate Parker: local artisans and traders could provide the drive and the resources to sustain the rebuilding but the use of new "Perpendicular" features in the design came from the non-local contacts and knowledge of aristocrats well-versed in the latest fashions at court.
The last section is on Literary Culture. The first three essays all take historicist approaches to literary texts. Andrea Oliver suggests that the martial career of the late fourteenth century Bishop Despenser of Norwich provides a context in which to read the middle English romance The Sege of Melayne. Theresa Coletti explores St Paul's hospital in Norwich, the only one which catered to pregnant women, as a possible context for the Digby Mary Magdalene, and Penny Granger sets the N-Town play in the context of the liturgical culture of East Anglia. In the last essay in the volume Sarah Salih departs from historicism to employ a more anthropological reading of the "self and the other" in two East Anglian travellers' tales, the Book of Margery Kempe and the Solace of Pilgrimes by John Capgrave, and compares their reading of Rome. She concludes that although their different readings were conditioned by gender and education, both could not escape their East Anglian roots and their two Romes each had a little bit of home in them.
The reader can only be impressed by the range of material in the volume. All the writers are in love with this corner of England, all are fascinated by its landscapes and its people, and all are rightly convinced that East Anglia, with its wealth of medieval cultures, should take its place in our hearts and studies too. But despite their common love, the diverse approaches taken by the individual authors to the study of the past is mesmerising, provoking and bewildering by turn. Most of these authors are very conscious of the methodological frameworks within which they have chosen to position themselves, and that they have chosen such different positions both illustrates the dynamism and barely tapped potential of local studies and, at the same time, their fragmentation as a sub discipline. It is probably right that no overview is given or attempted in the volume, although that may also be an opportunity missed. The papers included in the volume were all given at a conference held at the Centre for East Anglian Studies in 2003. We are lucky that they chose to publish the papers even if we cannot have the conversations that stitched them together.