General Preface: Charlemagne: A European Icon

Summary

This series of volumes examining the reception of the Charlemagne myth in different linguistic cultures of medieval Europe springs from ‘Charlemagne in England’, a project supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to study the literary presence of the emperor in medieval England, an area where the historical Charlemagne had never set foot, let alone reigned.

The spread of Charlemagne’s myth after his death was even more extensive than was his empire during his life. This larger enterprise, therefore, an investigation of the appropriation of the matter of Charlemagne across Europe, required a network of specialists working on texts written in different languages and different geographical areas. Yet these languages were culturally interdependent: it was largely through the medium of French with its cultural hegemony that the legend of Charlemagne spread widely, though Latin was also an important vehicle for texts perceived as historical truth. Furthermore, the same geographical area could also be the ‘host’ for more than one language, the literatures of which would draw upon each other.

One particular challenge for the project was thus the question of overlap between geographical areas and cultural or linguistic zones. This is exemplified by the original project focused on Charlemagne in England, a multilingual land of overlapping cultural zones in one geographic area, with Latin, French, and English literary cultures and other languages operating in particular areas or social groups. The solution was to allow some overlap in coverage with, for example, French texts written in England covered from different perspectives in both Charlemagne in England and Charlemagne in Medieval Francophonia, and with awareness that texts in Latin were circulating at the same time and in the same geographic areas as the vernacular narrative. Given the variety of material in different languages and the varying amounts of research that have been produced, the volumes do not all follow the same pattern. Some areas, notably France, have been the object of more than a century of study. Others, such as the Celtic narratives, have received far less critical attention; indeed, one of the aims of the project has been to stimulate research in these under-studied areas.

The legends and myths of Charlemagne found expression in epics and romances, chronicles and pseudo-chronicles and were alluded to in political and ecclesiastical documents across medieval Europe.