2 - Saracens and Other Saxons: Using, Misusing, and Confusing Names in Gui de Warewic and Guy of Warwick

Summary

In a genre not known for its faithful representation of reality, including geographic reality, the Middle English and, even more, Anglo-Norman versions of the romance of Guy of Warwick stand out for their surprising fidelity to verifiable geographical fact. This is not to say that there would be any point in trying to recreate the hero's itinerary as he wanders over large parts of Britain, Europe, and the Middle East, for it would soon become obvious that the distances are impossible and the spatial relationships between the numerous places mentioned in the text often confused. But many of these places bear the names of actual geographical locations, and if their exact coordinates are sometimes hard to determine they are at least situated in the correct part of the world, which is more than can be said of many other texts in the same genre.

The earliest version of this popular narrative, Gui de Warewic (hereafter Gui), is a late product in the development of Anglo-Norman romance whose author deftly constructs a vast and realistic theatre of action for his hero by means of prodigal, yet often well-informed, geographical name-dropping. The toponyms and ethnonyms he uses are culled from a variety of sources, both popular (chansons de geste, other romances) and learned (historical and pseudo-historical writings of different kinds); and while the role of significant names can be merely decorative, there are times when they are exploited with a specific agenda in mind.