Authority and Language in the Encomium Emmae Reginae

ABSTRACT

This article resuscitates the agency of Queen Emma through examining signs of her influence in the creation of the Encomium Emmae Reginae. While she was not the author of the text, she was more than a patron and seems to have directed and influenced the composition of the text in ways that were intended to cultivate greater power and even authority at court. References to her first husband, King Æthelred, are suppressed, leading at times to the implication that Alfred, Edward, and Harthacnut all have the same father. At the same time, the Encomium clearly draws a line between her children and Harold Harefoot, Cnut’s son from a prior relationship. Emma’s efforts at crafting a literary legacy for her family seem to have been emulated by Edith in the Vita Ædwardi, and this influence shows how relationships between women can affect literary culture and production.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See, for example, Tyler, England in Europe, 9.

2 The main narrative (after the poetic exchange with the muse) opens with Cnut’s conquest; see Barlow, 8–15.

3 Tyler, England in Europe, 149–60, esp. 151 and 157; Tyler, “Wings Incarnadine,” 94–7.

4 Keynes and Love, 197.

5 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 12.

6 For a description of the manuscript and a transcription of the “Edwardian” ending, see Bolton, “A Newly Emergent Mediaeval Manuscript.”

7 Tyler, England in Europe, 85–91; see also Tyler, “The Eyes of the Beholders,” 260–5; Orchard, 160–6; and Tyler, “Fictions of Family,” 171–4.

8 Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 28–9; Campbell, ciii–cv, also interprets the Encomium as being directed by Emma, though I disagree with some aspects of his reading of her influence on the text. See also Tyler, England in Europe, 121–34.

9 Campbell, II.16; all quotations and translations from Campbell’s edition of the Encomium are cited by book and chapter.

10 See, for example, Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 33–4, on the delay of Emma’s appearance. By contrast with Semiramis, where Emma’s independence reads as “feminine wickedness and testimony to her brothers’ weakness”, the Encomium celebrates her independence.

11 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 192–3; see also page 125 on Emma’s role in Suffolk after Thorkell’s exile.

12 See, most recently, Tyler, England in Europe, 110; for more on the date of Emma’s birth, see Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 211–12.

13 McCash, 16, notes that the Norman dukes were becoming a “major political force with the concomitant expectation of cultural patronage” during the reign of Emma’s father, Richard I.

14 See the lengthy discussion in Tyler, England in Europe, 105–17.

15 Campbell, III.14.

16 Duff, I.92. The translation is my own. For more on the Encomiast’s use of Lucan, see Tyler, England in Europe, 61 and 157; and Campbell, [cxiv].

17 Tyler, England in Europe, 60–1.

18 Orchard, 162–5.

19 Keynes and Love, 213–18. See also Tyler, England in Europe, 149–60; and Tyler, “Wings Incarnadine.”

20 Campbell, II.15.

21 Parker.

22 Campbell, II.16.

23 Campbell, [xxii].

24 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 99–100.

25 The text from –ne to uoluntas regis appears in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS Fonds Lat 6235, but the leaf once containing it in London, British Library, MS Add. 33241 is missing.

26 Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 36.

27 Campbell, III.8.

28 Ibid., II.24.

29 Ibid., III.7.

30 See McCash, 18–25, for more discussions of the varied and complex reasons why women became patrons.

31 Stafford, “Portrayal of Royal Women,” 143–7.

32 Ibid., 164.

33 Treharne, 9–12.

34 Ibid., 89–90, refers to these acts of “gathering, writing and testifying with such urgency” as “the noise that responds insistently against the Conquest, but also vocalizes, through text, the desperation of the cognizant”.

35 Keynes, 79.

36 Tyler, England in Europe, 73, refers to “the truth of fiction,” but see also van Houts, Memory and Gender, 83.

37 Campbell, II.18.

38 Ibid., III.3.

39 For the Encomiast’s avoidance of Æthelred, see Keynes, [lxvi]–[lxxi]. The reintroduction of Æthelred into the ending of the “Edwardian” recension is discussed by Keynes and Love, 196–8.

40 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 67–8; see also 99.

41 Bolton, “Ælfgifu of Northampton,” 253–8.

42 Campbell, II.17.

43 Ferrante, 68–106, esp. 106.

44 McCash, 25–7.

45 Tyler, “Crossing Conquests,” 173; see also Tyler, England in Europe, 109–17.

46 Barlow, I.2; see also Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 7.

47 Tyler, “Crossing Conquests,” 183–4.

48 Hobson, 289.

49 Tyler, England in Europe, 116; citing Townend, 269–75.

50 Tyler, “From Old English to Old French,” 171–2.

51 van Houts, “Flemish Contribution,” 119.

52 Keynes and Love, 197.

53 Orchard, 161, counts nine instances when Emma is referred to by name, by contrast with Cnut’s thirty instances.

54 Lawson, 161.

55 McCash, 14.

56 Stafford, “Eleventh-Century Queens,” 104–5.