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Making Contact: Postcolonial Perspectives through Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia regum

Britannie"
Author(s): MICHELLE R. WARREN
Source: Arthuriana, Vol. 8, No. 4, THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH
(WINTER 1998), pp. 115-134
Published by: Scriptorium Press
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Postcolonial

Contact:

Making

Perspectives through Geoffrey of


Monmouth's Historia
regum Britannie
R. WARREN

MICHELLE
The HRB

presents

between
linguistic,

an ambivalent

powers
unequal
and erotic desire.

establish

encounters
fantasy, wherein
domination
through topographic,

colonial

(MRW)

as
'postcolonial studies
interpretive methods known collectively
to zssess the
out
of
of
efforts
enduring repercussions
developed

The

studies have
Subsequently, postcolonial
nineteenth-century colonialisms.
embraced colonialisms back to the sixteenth century, but continue to draw a
boundary limit this side of theMiddle Ages. The maintenance of this boundary,

however, assumes a pre-colonial ontology antithetical to postcolonial analysis.


Recently, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Sara Suleri have deconstructed the
sacred alterity of pre-colonial unities (and chronological reckoning itself) in
African and Indian colonialisms; Patricia Clare Ingham has argued that this
also displaces the myth of a pre-colonial European Middle
Ages (10-15). Of course, the frequently political engagements of postcolonial
criticism reasonably demand
and technological
cultural, historical,
deconstruction

can occlude vital


comparisons
contingencies,
and
recolonize
the subjects of history.
homogenize
global experience,
the long history of colonial experience presents numerous
Nevertheless,
continuities that quantify and qualify differences. Fantasies of empire, for
as
as the nineteenth even
example, dominate the twelfth century much
though
some of the techniques of domination differ.Thus, when
Vijay Mishra and
is really a splinter in the side of the
Bob Hodge suggest that 'the postcolonial
colonial itself (411), they unlatch a window that opens into any time or place
where one social group dominates another?a window through which theory
differentiation. Analogical

can

travel.

Ifmedieval

studies can seem untouchable

defining postcolonial

to postcolonial

studies, the reverse


anachronism, the difficulty of
studies themselves impedes communication across the

is also true. In addition

to anxieties about

ARTHURIANA
115

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8.4(1998)

u6

ARTHURIANA

and Hodge
offer lucid critiques of the
disciplinary boundaries. Mishra
as does
controversies surrounding themeaning
colonial,
ofpost(-)
Appiah. These
critics, and a host of others, emphasize that postcolonial perspectives cannot
a
be consolidated into a single, unified gaze; instead,
they set kaleidoscope of
contentious fragments inmotion. Inmost cases, however, the
fragments share
anxieties about coercive cultural encounters;
their motions deconstruct

conventional narratives about relationships between centers of power and their


peripheries. Postcolonial analysis thus foregrounds the dynamics of edges?
the literal and figurai boundaries between spaces,
peoples, languages, and times.

Boundaries

of all kinds mark radical differences along the lines ofmost intimate
contact. By
on the limits of difference and resemblance,
focusing
postcolonial
studies situate paradox, ambivalence,
and irony in relation to cultural

representations. Rather than containing a neutral zone, the postcolonial border


encompasses multiple contingencies.
Geoffrey ofMonmouth's HRB presents a particularly cogent example of
the fantasy of empire and the ambivalence of colonial desire because itportrays
the forgotten empire of amarginalized
people in reaction to an urgently present
colonial dynamic.1 Formed by colonial experience, Geoffreys HRB equivocates

between admiration and condemnation

of the history of conquest. The HRB


crosses boundaries, confuses
own
categories, and engenders its
indeterminacy
as a discursive strategyof power and resistance.
between
Mediating
postcolonial

tells the history of imperial desire to an


imaginations, theHRB
of colonizers in a voice that ironically claims power by disavowing

and colonial
audience

authority. Although Geoffrey writes to remember the founding scenes of


in order to
cultural domination, he must also forget his own domination
write at all. The twin effects of memory and amnesia in the history of the
(conquered conquerors) keep theHRB on the edge.
Postcolonial contact with Geoffrey's HRB
identifies a history of cultural

Britons

enacted through strategic resemblances and differences. For


dominations,
as author, the
Geoffrey
topographic epithetMonmouth mobilizes ethnic and
linguistic identifications imposed by colonial experience. The relationship

patrons empowers him to overturn that


but
the
experience discursively,
history he translates for them returns inexorably
s
to scenes of colonization?the
description of the island, Brutus arrival there,

Geoffrey

claims

to his Norman

the Britons' conquest ofArmorica, and the Saxons' conquest of Britannia (to
a
encounter establishes domination
identify only few). Each
through spatial,
and
erotic
each encounter reconfigures the results of strategic
desire;
linguistic,
resemblance. The variable consequences of coercive contact demonstrate that

no

single model

can

explain patterns of domination:

the results only look

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POSTCOLONIAL

PERSPECTIVES

"7

predictable retrospectively. As Brutus surveys the fecund land, or Corineus


embraces Goemagog's
shoulders, or Arthur dons a coat of human beards, or
mouths
his
first Saxon words, we witness scenes of colonial
Vortigern
that touch (and can be touched by) postcolonial
cultural domination.
ambivalence

theories of

When Geoffrey identifies himself asMonemutensis


(72;Wright 3:2), he
fixes his origin in a space of cultural multiplicity. Monmouth
lies on the banks
of the riverWye, just to the west of the Severn river. In theHUB,
Geoffrey
represents the Severn as the boundary between Loegria and Kambria.
thus lies inWales according to the legendary topography of the
Monmouth

HRB, while inGeoffreys time its castle had been held alternately by Breton
and Norman
conquerors
(Courtney 307?09). The textual references and
charters that corroborate Geoffreys claim to place (Tatlock 68-77, 44?) thus
tie him to a site of international contacts.

Scholars have often identified


as a member of one of these groups, either Breton (Tatlock 396?402,
Geoffrey
or Norman,
(Padel 4), Welsh
443), Cornish
(Gillingham 100-03, 106-10),
on the basis of
the
biases
toward
The
group.
usually
identity politics
percieved
of a colonial culture like twelfth-centuryMonmouthshire,
however, militate
or blood
against the deduction of ethnicity from politics
relationships.

For a colonial subject, a politics of strategic difference and resemblance


constitutes an itinerant ethnicity. Homi Bhabha, for example, underscores
the partiality of ethnic identification in borders, where presence is never total

and being?'the
overlap and displacement of domains of difference' (2)?
crosses contradictory limits.The in-between subject splits between
perpetually
here and there, between j^and
other. Likewise, forMary Louise Pratt, the
zones where powers and cultures
are
encounters
colonial
of
spaces
decentering
form in contact

this perspective, identity is


('Criticism' 88?89). Through
'interactive' and 'improvisational' (Imperial j). The performative multiplicity
of border livesmeans thatwe cannot reason Norman blood from a Norman

blood from a perceived political bias toward theWelsh?and


that biological parentage works as only one identifying element jostled among
many partial contacts. After 1066, Monmouth would have harbored multiple
cultures (Welsh, Breton, Norman, probably English), actively communicating
in several languages. Monmouthshire
thus encompasses a contact zone, where
name, orWelsh

people lived interactive, improvised border lives of transient identities.With


or without evidence
our
name
of
beyond the
understanding
Gaufridus,
must
remain
in
of
the
Monemutensis.
Geoffrey
multiplicities
caught
Geoffrey fixed his origin inMonmouth while working in themetropolitan
center ofOxford (on the banks of theThames, which flows to London) between

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ii8

ARTHURIANA

1129 and 1151 (Salter), probably as a secular canon at the college of St. George
(Lloyd 464). Geoffreys epithet from the periphery thus penetrates the center,
demonstrating that border identitymatters most urgently in them?tropole.
was
Geoffreys colonial itinerary does not end inOxford, however, since he
to
in
elected
theWelsh
1151.Modern
bishopric of St. Asaph's
catalogues

maintain Geoffreys

and St. Asaph's by using his


identity between Monmouth
in
with
his
ecclesiastical
title. Although
epithet
conjunction

topographic
was consecrated as
never traveled to northeastern Wales
Geoffrey
bishop, he
to occupy his seat because theWelsh
access to the
prevented
region (Lloyd
The
literal impossibility of Geoffrey's arrival at the scene of
460-66).
colonization

testifies to the successful enforcement by theWelsh


their colonial periphery and the colonizing

between

of a new

desire of

boundary
intimate yet antagonistic dynamics of colonial
powers. The
metropolitan
contact arrest
in
the
border: every aspect of colonial identity remains
identity
transient, although no one really leaves them?tropole. Suspended inOxford,
Geoffrey's colonial

itinerary remains haunted by the ghost of the St. Asaphs

episcopacy.

power in motion by
keeps his relationship to metropolitan
at least three different ways. Scholars have used the
the
in
HRB
dedicating
dedications to date different recensions of the text on the assumption that
Robert of Gloucester,
theymust address allies rather than antagonists?and
Waleran ofMeulan, and Stephen of Blois spentmost of the 1130s and 1140s in
Geoffrey

open hostilities. Scholars have also argued that the dedications, in conjunction
with the presumed propagandistic value of theHRB,
represent Geoffrey's
allegiances to themonarchy. However, taken as a group of statements conceived
over time
by Geoffrey himself (asNeil Wright shows they probably were [xii
xvi]), the dedications witness a subtle negotiation of multiplicity
supports and resists superior powers. At different moments,

that both

Geoffrey
three
different
relations
between
his text,
himself,
rulers,
improvised
powerful
and the Briton imperial past.2 By alternately
and
claiming
disavowing his
textual authority, Geoffrey unsettles the
of
domination
used to
paradigms

subjugate colonized peoples.


With the firstdedication, Geoffrey improvises a discursive relation between
Robert and a glorious Briton past,
partly in interaction with Roberts own

Welsh
improvised alliance with theWelsh. Gillingham has shown that after the
an
claimed
the kingship ofGlamorgan, Robert
alliance
prince Morgan
forged
with theWelsh
in common cause against
Stephen (114-15). Gillingham argues
further that theHRB provides a venerable
in order to
history for theWelsh
legitimate Robert's otherwise unseemly alliance with barbarians (115-16). From

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POSTCOLONIAL

PERSPECTIVES

119

a
over territorial
this perspective, the HRB
originates in military conflict
control, and proceeds to redraw historical limits in interaction with newly

imagined present boundaries.


new relation
Geoffrey makes this
literally interactivewhen he invitesRobert
to correct
text so that it no
to come from
longer appears
(corrigatur) the
one descended
but
rather
from
from
Henry 1, 'illustris
Geoffrey
(generami)

rex
['illustrious king of the English'] (72;Wright xiii, col. 1). In
Anglorum'
effect,Geoffrey asks that Robert, as a semblance of his royal father (alterum
Henricum),
incorporate Geoffrey's genealogy of kings into the contemporary

royal genealogy. By encouraging Robert to efface the appearance of Geoffrey's


anterior authority, Geoffrey hands him the discursive power of colonization.
Geoffrey subverts the power relation, however, by providing the original text;
he becomes the textual patron and Robert the correcting' client. In the
a
asymmetrical relations of power that obtain in colonial contact zone, Geoffrey
a
that
empowers him as the originator of the text
counter-symmetry
proposes
that he claims he hopes to disown. He thus asserts a didactic authority that
turns theHRB's narrative of violent transgressions into an erroneous precedent.
Robert's correction of the bloody implications of Briton history could imply
a
political resolution of present civil discord.
The double dedication toRobert andWaleran

improvises evenmore audaciously.


Neil Wright has shown that this dedication dates from a period when the two
men
supported opposite sides in the civil conflict that ensued when Stephen took
the throne fromHenry's daughter Matilda (xv). Since Stephen made Waleran earl
ofWorcester in 1138(Crouch 38?41), thededication thatpresentsWaleran as 'altera
regni nostra columpna ['our other pillar of the realm'] (Wright xiii, col. 2) casts
thewarring neighbors as twin supports of the realm in an ironic inversion of their

twin destruction of the Severn rivervalley. The dedication makes Waleran not
a descendent of
and the
only the realm's second support, but
Charlemagne

embodiment(likeRobert)ofphilosophyjoinedtomilitaryprowess(Wright
xiii,

a
again, Geoffrey includes specific appeal to the patron's power of
to
take thework 'sub tutela tua ['under your tutelage'].
correction, askingWaleran
col. 2). Once

Geoffrey disowns the very origin of the textwhen he asks for protection under
Waleran's tree so as tomake music on the reed-pipe 'musae tue' [ofyour muse'].
toWaleran, Geoffrey
By ascribing the inspiration of theHRB
implies that the
was
civil
discord
indeed inspiredby contemporary strifeand that
Waleran
history of
is responsible formuch of it (he had not, after all, honored his oath toHenry 1 to
supportMatilda).
and Robert the opportunity to correct the
Geoffrey offers both Waleran
work (to make it different) as semblances (altera) of each other, while also

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120

ARTHURIANA

accuses the
responsibility from them. He subtly
pillars of the
withholding
realm bymanipulating the logic of patron-client relationships. In their analysis
of the patronage dynamics of this dedication, Martin Shichtman and Laurie
Finke have argued that Geoffreys discursive strategy replicates Merlin's
performance in theHRB itself: 'thefigure of a powerful, yetmarginal, outsider

who allows himself to become the client of great men without ceding any of
his own power' (29). They argue further that, by addressing the text to rivals,
Geoffrey seeks to profit from their competition; the great inequalities between

patron and client necessitate this antagonistic strategy (19?20). Shichtman


and Finke conclude that the eventual offer of the episcopacy of St. Asaph's
constitutes thematerial capital ofGeoffrey's symbolic exchange (20). Geoffrey
each make the text
requests specifically, however, that Robert and Waleran
their own, thereby overturning the inequalities of patron-client relationships
(akin to those of colonial relationships in some ways). His disavowal of power
exploits the hybrid dynamics that Bhabha identifies as colonial relations (110

17).Through postcolonial perspectives, these relations are always already more


contaminated than Shichtman and Finke suggest when they claim that the
dedication erases politics (19). The double dedication exposes themalleability
of relations of domination

by conflating textual authority with political


uses
to turn the differences between himself
the
dedication
authority. Geoffrey
and his patrons, and between
the patrons themselves, into powerful
resemblances.

Geoffrey reconfigures thisplay of resemblance in the thirddedication by naming


to
text
Stephen in the textpreviously addressed Robert, and Robert in the
previously
addressed toWaleran. Stephen is now invited to correct the text and, as king, to
now bur other
incorporate itsgenealogy into the royal line;Robert is
pillar.'Geoffrey

mobilizes Stephen and Robert's genealogical resemblance by reminding them that


as their
they both descend fromHenry I and that theypossess his venerable past
a
own. At the same time,
maintains
in
himself
When
difference.
Geoffrey
slight
he asks for protection under Roberts tree, he refers to muse mee' [my muse']
rather thanmusae tue [yourmuse] (Wrightxiv, col. 3). By retaining the inspiration
for himself, Geoffrey takes full responsibility for the text but asks Robert (in
Stephens hearing) to take responsibility for his person. Just as this dedication

rearranges the names in the text, it rearranges the doubleness of the patron-client
relation. The configuration of multiple responsibilities for theHRB between
a
Geoffrey, Stephen, Robert, and Henry negotiates settlementof differencesbetween
and
rivals
and
between
present. In a sense,Geoffrey authors
political
empires past
when Stephen
(and authorizes) the reconciliation thathe eventuallywitnessed in 1153
as his heir (Lloyd 465-66).
recognized Henry's grandson

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POSTCOLONIAL

PERSPECTIVES

121

new relations of semblance and difference


Geoffreys willingness to improvise
among himself, political powers, and the Briton past indicates that theHRB
is less a personal matter than a medium of cultural contact. And indeed,
sees a strongly and
singularly vested
alongside the tradition of criticism that

interest in Geoffreys project runs a current that judges Geoffreys


and impartial (influentially represented byWalter
politics non-partisan
Schirmer and Robert Hanning, and recently reaffirmed by Monika Otter).
political

perspectives, however, displace the binary opposition between


partisan and non-partisan in favor of multiple relationalities. Geoffrey thus
as Shichtman and Finke suggest (35) and
eases the anxieties of the
ruling class

Postcolonial

Welsh as Gillingham proposes and insults them;


inflames them; he glorifies the
he engages serious objectives through parody, as Valerie Flint argues, and
indulges in utter frivolity.Through postcolonial perspectives, this heterogeneity
(or hybridity) works broadly to resist the dynamics of colonial power. This
indeterminacy does not make the undertaking less politically engaged, but
rather testifies to an ambivalent colonial politics. The multiplicity of the border
unsettles

politics

postcolonial

as defined

perspectives,

center.
Through
through the logic of the
the effect of impartiality emerges from multiple

partisanships.
In all of these ethnic and political relations, language actively shapes and
as much as a means
reflects the colonial dynamic?a
sign of power relations
like
of their communication.
Language practices,
political claims, do not

identities. Rather, postcolonial


perspectives on
status of
from
the
factual
Geoffreys
language
linguistic
(Crawford) and source claims (Ashe) to the deployment of
competencies
relations of unequal power.
translation as a technique for negotiating

constitute

homogenous
shift attention

as it shuttles between
actively engages the boundaries of identity
differences and near-resemblances. On one side, translation can enhance power

Translation

Eric
that support domination.
reinforce the boundaries
at
and
translation
colonization
for
that
coincide:
Cheyfitz argues,
example,
the very heart of every imperial fiction.. .isa fiction of translation (15).Tejaswini
a strategy of containment in
Niranjana also shows how translation becomes
the colonial context' (36). Through this perspective, Geoffreys translation of
differences

and

the 'britannici sermonis

Briton

librum vetustissimum'
becomes

[Very ancient book in the


a 'fiction of translation that

(71;Wright 2:3-4)
language]
serves the
readers. As purported translator,
imperial fantasies of theHRB's
an
Geoffrey practices
aggressive discourse of linguistic possession, rendering
theHRB what Francis Ingledew calls 'a vast act of spatial as well as temporal
colonization
(687). Like the island itself, the story of the past is a cultural

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122

ARTHURIANA

space to be possessed. In this space, multilingual contact involves various


forms of what Walter Mignolo
calls 'linguistic dismissal' (186) as colonizing
powers struggle to unify language by eradicating linguistic difference through
military and political action. Indeed, successive Saxon, Danish, and Norman
to Geoffrey's source?a
language attributed
process completed by Geoffrey himself when he claims to displace the Briton
source with the
language of the dominant power.
conquests dismissed

the Briton

In the contact zone, however, strategies of difference turn easily into


is the linguistic manifestation of what Bhabha
resemblance. Multilingualism
as
name
theorizes
for the strategic reversal of the process of
hybridity, 'the

(112), which can undermine (rather than


through disavowal'
the
cultures in contact. Emily Hicks, for
boundaries
between
reinforce)
a strategy of translation rather than
asserts that
example,
'by choosing
representation, border writers ultimately undermine the distinction between
as Samia Mehrez
original and alien culture' (xxiii). Postcolonial bilingualism,
can
a
where
the
'subversive
argues,
blurring of boundaries
shape
poetics'
undermines hierarchies and so challenges the basic structures of power (260).

domination

Geoffrey's translation thus makes the Britons more like his Larin-literare
readers?that is,more like everybody with an official interest inwritten history.
the Briton cultural experience, Latin breaks down the
By universalizing
discursive barrier between theBritons' past and present?the barrier that stands
between them and present cultural legitimacy. Although Geoffrey produces a

text (which does not


monolingual
openly challenge the linguistic culture of
the reader), he repeatedly displays multilingual transference in his onomastic
histories. These representations of translation subvert the hegemony of the
linguistic power that dominates the colonized.
Translation, then, can enact or resist colonialist success, or both.While the
embodies the Britons' loss of history as well as their loss of
it
resists
also
their colonization by remembering their past. Because
language,
translation makes the past available to both the powerful and the powerless, it

HRB

as a whole

to

remains bound

paradox and ambivalence. For both theNormans and the


is always already written in another language, one that
thus
and re-presents their origin. Multilingualism
repeatedly displaces
accommodates
(and challenges) the differences between contending claims

Welsh,

the past

to
originary power. Geoffrey's descriptions of translation capture the linguistic
drama lived through colonization, where translation maps shifting orders of
knowledge of the past and becomes
colonial technology.

the postcolonial

splinter in the side of

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POSTCOLONIAL

PERSPECTIVES

123

technology of translation enables memory and facilitates forgetting.


Geoffrey -statesexplicitly that his historiographie project seeks to remember
the forgotten history of the conquered Britons (71;Wright 1), pointing to the
erasure of the Britons from a history written by the Saxons. The loss of this
The

the shape of the past; Geoffrey claims to restore the


as reliable as written records (71;
original shape, preserved in oral memories
the
and
however,
HRB>
1-2). Throughout
Wright
conflicting memories
the
linear
undermine
of
the
difference
progress
history bymerging
forgettings
memory

has changed

into resemblance. Already in this opening justification, the naming of the


disturbs the unity of the narrative because their history is not part

Normans

Geoffrey then refers to the submission of the Britons to


the Picts and the Saxons, he effectively opens the narrative by recalling the
memory of those responsible for forgetting the Britons. Geoffreys text thus
a double-time between memory and amnesia: it remembers the
occupies
a
imperial past of
colonizing people who became the indigenous Other of
of theHRB. When

later conquerors. In thisdouble-time, inBhabhas formulation, narrative creates


collective identification (the performative function) by explaining it (the
constructs the Briton past indouble
pedagogical function) (139?52). Geoffrey
time because he creates the experience of collective identity as he imparts its
history. Postcolonial perspectives focus attention on his portrayal of colonial
encounters as scenes of improvised contact that establish cultural and territorial
domination.

Geoffrey himself makes the firstcontact when he describes the contemporary


landscape of Britain through what Pratt calls 'imperial eyes/ presenting the
island as an aestheticized space, 'insularam optima and 'amoeno situ ['the
best of islands,' 'a pleasant site'] (73;
Wright 5: 1, 10). Yet colonial cataracts
as he sees the land
trouble
vision,
immediately
Geoffrey's
retrospectively
and
as theorized
its
describes
conquered
crumbling cities. Landscapes,
by

Jonathan Smith, usually present static synchronies that sustain fantasies of


domination. Geoffrey's introduction of temporal effects,however, transgresses
these generic and ideological expectations. The decrepit cities deconstruct the

myth of metropolitan power and the fantasy of durable empire. Geoffrey's


narrative encounter with the
landscape thus simultaneously exemplifies and
deconstructs the aesthetics of colonial domination.

Brutus arrives at the island with his band ofTrojan exiles,


Geoffrey
the land as an amoeno situ.Now, seeing
identifies
again
through Brutus's eyes,
Geoffrey forgets the crumbled cities his own eyes have seen.With the removal
When

of the shadow of imperialisms decayed future, erotic desire enters the colonial
dynamic. In this second descriptio, Otter has argued (74), Geoffrey signals a

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ARTHURIANA

124

shift from objective evaluation to subjective valuation by substituting affectus


to characterize
for aptus. The affection Brutus feels has led Richard Waswo
the land as feminized

(283). Indeed, the primordial colonial encounter has


van der Straet's
conventionally engendered allegories of heteroerotic desire. Jan
famous image ofAmerigo Vespucci's encounter with the nearly-naked female

new continent, for


body of the
example, provides the paradigm of conquering
Peter Hulme,
and Anne
de Certeau,
power in the studies of Michel

While
Brutus does desire the land as complacent space, the
of
that
space remains indeterminate at the origin of Britannia,
gendering
suggesting that coercive contact does not always generate heterosexual

McClinrock.

metaphors.

Brutus exemplifies Pratt's confident 'monarch-of-all-I-see'


Although
he
{Imperial 204?05), Geoffrey's historical amnesia proves fleeting, and
in every colonizing
gesture. Most
subsequently
implies ambivalence
not deserted (as
is
the
island
inhabited
but
by giants.
importantly,
prophesied)

fact of precendence immediately blurs Brutus's imperializing gaze; he is


not the originator of Insular civilization but an (at least) second-comer. Brutus
and his Trojan companions establish a provisional boundary between the
civilized here and the unruly elsewhere by driving the native giants into

The

caves (90;
21: 1-7). This solution to colonial contact, as
Wright
notes
unstable.
The boundary between the ruled and
also
Otter
(82), proves
the unruly collapses violently when the giants return and kill a number of
mountain

(91;Wright 21: 23-27). Brutus reestablishes the desired difference by


saves for a wrestling
slaughtering all the giants except Goemagog, whom he
cum
modum
aestuabat' ['who
talibus
ultra
with
match
Corineus, qui
congredi
21:
a
burned beyond measure for such fight'] (91;Wright
28-29). Geoffrey has
with
relations
intimate
Corineus's
established
giants by comparing
already
Britons

the Trojans first meet him (85;Wright


17: 18-19) an(J
their
of
his
lands
because
he
chose
large population of giants,
explaining that
which he delights {delectabat) inwrestling (91;Wright 21: 18-20). Corineus's
excessive desire to touch indigenous bodies expresses a colonial desire to
resemble the native. In the history ofmodern English contacts with Indians,
Suleri identifies this colonial intimacy as specifically homoerotic (23,133?37).
Corineus's particular desire to wrestle the native body exposes the violent
antagonism of this desire for the almost-same.
him

to one when

Corineus wrestles the power of his difference from the play of his similarity
giants, demonstrating how colonizers generate domination by forcefully
the
Corineus
approaches
exacting differences from near-resemblances.
encounter 'maximo gaudio,' 'abjectis armis' ['with the greatest joy,' 'casting
to

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POSTCOLONIAL

PERSPECTIVES

125

down his arms'] (91;Wright 21: 29-30). Thus with great pleasure, Corineus
divests himself of the signs of his civilized difference from giants, and prepares
to engage in intimate bodily contact with the native. The contest begins with
their locked embrace:
afflatibus aera vexant

et alter alterum vinculis brachiorum

adnectus crebris

[and each binding the other by fastening his arms,


shake
the air with their breath'] (91;Wright 21: 31-32).
pressing together, they
breaks three of Corineus's ribs, Corineus heaves him onto
After Goemagog

his shoulders and carries him some distance before throwing him over a cliff:
ille, per abrupta saxorum cadens, inmille frusta proiectus dilaceratus est et
fluctus sanguine maculavit
['There, by falling onto broken rocks, he is torn
21:
a
waves with his blood'] (92;
to thousand
pieces and he stained the
Wright
37?39). The fragmentation of the indigenous body on the shore performs the
fatalmultiplicity of differences in the border; the stain of giant-blood on the
water that conveyed the
only briefly?the
colonizing settlers marks?but
At

of colonial power. Geoffrey's own mixing of present and past


tenses casts the event into double-time, witnessing the
split-subjectivity of
colonial experience.
as the
By figuring colonial desire
pleasure of naked violence, Geoffrey opens
theHRB with a powerful statement of the force of resemblance as a strategy
contamination

of absolute differentiation. This pleasure shadows the long history of Insular


s
colonial domination. Timothy Jones has argued, for example, that
Goemagog
a demon) returns in the thirteenth century as the
body (possessed by
sign of
the unfinished colonial business of aNorman family (235?45). The
primordial
encounter with the native continued to haunt the
center of
metropolitan
colonial power in the sixteenth century when
of
Corineus
and
images
the
monarchs entering London
(Fairholt 28-29). And
Goemagog
greeted
Walter
has
shown
in
how
civic
the seventeenth and
pageants
Stephens
as
eighteenth centuries used giants
symbols of political cohesion (39?41). Statues
of Corineus and Goemagog
(pillars of the realm' as emblems of founding
in the nineteenth
antagonism) adorned the chambers of London's Guildhall

century (Clark 148),where they looked over the shoulders of the civic architects
of imperial expansion. Today, their replicas still greet
intrepid postcolonial
tourists.

The wrestling match, like the description of the desirable


landscape, portrays
the force of colonial desire. Moreover,
the homoerotic dynamic between
Corineus and Goemagog
exposes a strategic difference between Geoffrey's
vision of resemblance
and conventional
of domination.
paradigms

McClintocks

analysis ofVan der Straet's image ofVespucci's encounter with


the natives, for example, focuses on the female
figures in order to underscore

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126

ARTHURIANA

just out
ofVespucci's visual range, Geoffrey's giants threaten the conqueror's ability to
take possession of the land. In both the image and theHRB,
the encounter
takes place at the shore, a liminal space between land and water where
the ambivalence

that inheres in conquest. Like the female cannibals

'boundary figures' (McClintock 26) meet those who would cross over. The
calls catastrophic boundary loss'
wrestling match performs what McClintock
in an intimate encounter that concludes with the affirmation of absolute

'boundary order' (29). Disposing of the giants body with inhuman strength,
Corineus turns his 'fantasies of unlimited power into reality.The entire episode
draws out of
stages the ambivalence of cultural conquest thatMcClintock

Van der Straet's image, but by containing the relation between twomale figures,
is able to destroy the boundary disturber on the jagged rocks of the
theHRB
boundary itself.Vespucci, by contrast, must live alongside
in perpetual fear of consumption, or abandon the land.

female cannibals

when
Paradoxically, then, colonizers lose the power of absolute difference
as
encounter
rhe coercive encounter is gendered heteroerotically. The colonial
the sexual encounter ofmen and women installs ambivalence rather than joy

{maximo gaudio) because the implied offspring embody the memory of an


undeniable difference that now closely resembles the colonizing (or colonized)
father. Female figures compromise colonial power by establishing a genealogical

relation with time; they suspend the lines of difference in ambivalence. The
encounter, by contrast, forecloses the future and eradicates
at
difference
the firstoverpowering touch. Suleri's argument that the figuration
of colonial
as rape derives from a metaphoric
avoidance
of conquest
homoerotics (17) thusmakes the encounter of man-giant and giant-man the
homoerotic

this metaphoric
scene of domination.
The HRB manifests
more
more
if
toward the
comfortable,
risky, dynamics of
displacement
son
as
shuns
Locrinus
Brutus's
heterosexual desire almost immediately,
Corineus s daughter Gwendolyn in favor of a captured foreigner (94-95;Wright
24). Tellingly, Gwendolyn eventually resolves the conflict by having the foreign
woman and her daughter drowned. This homosocial murder illustrates again
the normalization of domination though the destruction of near-resemblances.
Somewhat later, ambivalent relations with the native women shadow the
primordial

discovers a
Britons' colonization of Armorica. Across thewater, Maximianus
new
a
of the
in
the
mouth
e
second locus amo nus, and Geoffrey offers
descriptio
conqueror, addressed

to Conan:

'Ne pigeat igiturte regnumBritanniae insulae cessissemihi, licetspem possidendi


eum spem habuisses, quia, quicquid in ilia amisisti, tibi inhac patria restaurabo:
te in regem regnihujus, et erithaec altera Britannia, et earn
promovebo etenim

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POSTCOLONIAL

PERSPECTIVES

127

ex genere nostro, expulsis


indigenis, repleamus. Patria namque fertilis est
segetibus,

et flumina

piscosa

sunt, nemora

perpulchra,

et saltus

ubique

nec est uspiam meo judicio gratior tellus.' (160;


Wright 84: 16-22)

amoeni,

['Do not therefore grieve that the rule of the island of Britain has been ceded to me,
to possess it
when you had
hopes
lawfully yourself, because whatever you have lost there,
Iwill restore to you in this
I will promote you to the
patria, because
kingship of this
realm, and itwill be another Britain, and out of our own people, after expelling the
we will
it. For this patria
is fertile with corn, and the rivers with
indigenes,
repopulate
are very beautiful and the forests
fish; the woodlands
my judgment no land
pleasant?in
ismore

agreeable.']

From the verbal description (which casts the fertile ground as compliant,
with shades of grateful ingratior) to the dismissal of the natives, Maximianus
replicates the founding of Britannia. He takes the narrative of colonization

into the heterosexual dimension, however, when he identifies the imperative


to procreate ex genere nostro. By proposing to recreate the
original land, and
a
the
Maximianus
procreate
original people,
imagines
perfect semblance
time.
extended through space and

The Britons do expel theArmorican natives, killing many of themen in


the process. To complete the colonization ex genere nostro, Conan
requests
women from Britannia:
voluit
sibi cessisset victoria,
Cumque
terram
eis nascerentur
heredes,
qui
commixtionem

cum

Gallis

facerent,

commilitonibus

suis

illam

dare, ut ex
conjuges
Et ut nullam

perpetuo
possiderent.
ut ex Britannia
decrevit

insula mulieres

venirent, quae ipsismaritarentur. (162;Wright 86: 17-21)


to
to his fellow warriors, so
[Once victory had been ceded to him, he wanted
give wives
that heirs would be born to them who would possess the land in perpetuity. And so that

not
they would
commingle with any of the Gauls,
to be married
to them.]
from Britannia

he decided

that women

should

come

iterates the arguments of his distant ancestor Membritius, who advised


Brutus not to remain 'immixti' ('immingled') with the Greeks because they

Conan
would

never

forget that theTrojans had killed their people (81;Wright 14: 25).
By maintaining the boundary between theBritons and the native Other, Conan
envisions a stable possession of the land. Like the caves that harbored the
giants, the endogamous marriages promise tomaintain the difference between
the Britons and the natives. Nevertheless, the threat of illicit sexual mingling

here there is no definitive solution


remains, as did the giants?and
to the
more
women
wrestling match. Even
troubling, the 71,000
Britannia never reach altera Britannia: a storm destroys the ships,
who do not drown are raped and killed on the shores of Germany

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analogous
sent from
and those
(all potent

128

ARTHURIANA

as
statement of the
boundary figures). Conans
performances of their failure
imperative, then, is followed immediately by the silenced
endogamous
that
the Britons must have married Armorican women (carefully
suggestion
massacre of themen). Commixti, theArmorican Britons
the
preserved from
a
no Briton ever mentions. The invisible
embody
genealogical rupture that
encounter of Briton men and Armorican women

hides the sexual heritage of


land
and the female native: the
ambivalence
toward
the
feminized
imperial
women
not
Armorican
be cannibals, but they are hardly desirable either.
may
The danger of colonial sexual compromise invades altera Britannia several
generations laterwhen a giant abducts Hoel's daughter Helen and her nurse
and his
165). The giants sexual desire for the women,
(255-57;Wright

cannibalistic consumption of themen who try to rescue them, represent the


menace of heterosexual rape that
Geoffrey passes over when the Britons first
colonize Armorica. The land is now feminized as the virgin Helen, while rhe
forces of defilement and redemption are both male. Helen herself dies of
at
fright the very thought of rape, and the giant violates the old woman instead.
The substitution ensures that therewill be no offspring of native aggression.
Arthur's encounter with the giant overHelen's dead body enacts themetaphoric
passage from conquest as heterosexual rape to a homoerotics of colonial desire.
Arthur's repeated stabbings of the giant with the phallus of his sword exemplify
Suleri's argument that the primordial desire of domination
is homoerotic.
Arthur s triumph over near-resemblance leads him to the same joy as Corineus,
for themutilated giant-body inspires his
laughter (in risum). Arthur casts the
boundary between men and giants back into doubt, however, when he
celebrates his victory by narrating his encounter with another giant, Ritho
resembles Arthur in that he wears a royal
beards of themen he has conquered?declares
his
Ritho demanded Arthur's beard to complete his colonial

(257;Wright
165: 62-74).
coat, but itsmaterial?the
difference. When

Ritho

fetish,Arthur refused and theymet in battle: the victor would win the coat
and the other man's beard. Geoffrey does not
specifywhether theywrestled or
on
coat
when
but
Arthur
takes
the
made of human beards, he looks
dueled,

like the figure of the cannibal. The coat itself represents the
of
the resemblance that contaminates the difference between men
portability
and giants, and that bolsters Arthur's power to dominate the
dangerous native.
The Britons' initial encounters with the Saxons portray resemblance as a
troublingly

threat to power rather than a tool to create it.These

encounters stage all of


the strategies of colonial power thatwill eventually install the Saxons as rulers
and dispossess theBritons, beginning with cartographic surveillance and
ending
with the consummation of colonial desire. Long before the Saxons
complete
a
theirmilitary conquest, theypossess the land
through manipulation

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of space.

PERSPECTIVES

POSTCOLONIAL

129

After Vortigern refuses to give Hengist a title to go with his agricultural lands,
a
to
Hengist proposes
quantify defensive space instead:
'Concede,'

inquit, mihi,

servo

tuo, quantum

une

corrigia

possiet

ambiri

infra

terramquam dedisti, ut ibidem promuntorium aedificem quo me, si opus fuerit,


recipiam.' (178;Wright 99: 23-26)
he asked, to me, your servant, as much as a thong can encompass within
[Concede,
land you have given, so that I can build a fortress to receive me if trouble comes...']

the

a line on a map
uses the
Vortigern agrees, Hengist
thong like
a
vast
and
scale
the
of
encompass
territory:
manipulate
topography

Once

to

[C]epitHengistus corium tauri,atque ipsum inunam corrigiam redegit.Exinde

saxosum

locum,

quod

maxima

cautela

elegerat,

circuivit

cum

corrigia

et infra

spatium metatum castellum aedificare incepit,quod ut aedificatum fuit, traxit

nomen

ex

britannice

corrigia,

quia

Kaercarrei,

cum

saxonice

ea metatum

fuerat: dictum

vero Thaneccastre,

quod

namque
Latino

fuit postmodum
sermone Castrum

Corrigiae appellamus. (178;Wright 99: 30-36)


[ThenHengist took thehide of a bull and renderedita singlethong.Then he encircled

the thong a rocky place, which he selected with great care, and within the measured
itwas built, derived its name from the
space he began to build a castle, which, when
it had been measured with one: thus itwas called afterwards in the Briton
thong since
in the Saxon Thanecastre, which we call in the Latin
language Kaercarrei,
language Castle

with

oftheThong.]

the figure of the colonial cartographer, defines his space


an
through
no
concrete
to
or
nature
relation
imagined boundary with
history: he does
not claim the land between two rivers, or the land of his ancestors, as others

Hengist,

The rawhide thong represents a new technology of conquest,


a new kind of conqueror in the
a land surveyor (a
image of
course
The rocky site is of
'monarch-ofall-I-survey).
strategically prudent

do in theHRB.
and Hengist

(cautela), but the space itself is not defined by the shape of the rocks. Hengist
new space
literally creates
through spatial measurement
(spatium metatum).
of
land
represents a mode of colonization without an
Hengist's acquisition
aestheticized imperial gaze: instead of discovering a locus amoenus, Hengist
creates a saxosum locum (which
slyly suggests a Saxonum locum), building his
colonial headquarters on the rockymaterial that destroyed
Goemagog
(abrupta
saxorum). Geoffreys concluding trilingual naming of the fortification moves
through the translation process of conquest right into the collective present
tense of Latin dominance.
The

continues with increased


representation of Saxon colonization
to
and
with
desire
assimilate
the foreign culture,
settlement,
Vortigern's
and
sexually. At the feast celebrating the completion of theCastle
linguistically

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ARTHURIANA

130

a cup
daughter Ronwen approaches Vortigern with
100: 4-16). She toasts him in Saxon; he burns for her
more
immediarely (incaluit), just as Corineus burned (somewhat
aggresively)
for Goemagog
the instructions of his interpreter,
(aestuabat). Following
Vortigern gives the appropriate reply in Saxon; afterRonwen drinks, Vortigern
kisses her and drinks. By mimicking the Saxon custom, Vortigern dismisses
of theThong, Hengists
ofwine (178-79; Wright

his own cultural precedence, which would dictate that the new settlers follow
the custom of the indigenous king. Born of his desire for the foreign woman,
a
Vortigerns mimicry makes him
partial colonial subject, and creates
the
colonial
of
the
Saxons: although he is king, he plays
power
discursively

native (which he is, from Hengists perspective). As


and Hengist
take power from
culture, Ronwen
attracrion. Bhabha argues that mimicry, as a strategy of the

the role of the colonized

the bearers of desirable


Vortigerns
colonized,

an ironic difference that envisions power through


performs
sameness; it disrupts the authority of colonial discourse as it repeats it (86
88). Like Corineus and Arthur with the giants, Vortigerns imitation creates

classificatory confusion (Bhabha 91). For Bhabha, the near-resemblance of


menace to the colonizer; inVortigerns
mimicry makes the colonized a terrifying
case, resemblance intoxicates both sides.Whereas Corineus and Arthur turn
to
the menace of near-resemblance
against the natives, Vortigerns desire
resemble the Saxons overthrows him. Geoffrey thus articulates the founding
scene of Saxon colonization through spatial, linguistic, and alcoholic contact.

He views the Saxon arrival in the double-time of retrospection and prospection,


an enduring drinking custom
reporting thatVortigerns mimicry originated
100:
the Saxons later conquered
because
(178-79; Wright
16-19)?enduring
a
thus
the Britons. Mimicry
represents dangerous strategy of containment by
assimilation that can overpower any of the contenders.
All of these colonial encounters display the dynamics of the contact zone.
can re-form in surprising and even fatal ways once multiple
Boundaries
reaches a similar
identifications engage on common ground. R.R. Davies
a
conclusion (from different vantage point) in analyzing the historical conquest

into domination?or
could stumble
dependence?
odds
the
almost
(5). In Geoffreys own time, military
against
unexpectedly,
and cultural struggle kept improvised identities inmotion; theHRB charts a
of empty
history of this motion. Brutus's experience of the false prophecy
land exposes themythology of colonial space, and the impossibility of a first
encounrers with giants, Corineus
and Arthur exploit
coming. In their
of Wales:

'One

resemblance in order to establish the power of theirdifference, while Vortigern


finds himself overpowered by the same play of semblance. The Briton

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PERSPECTIVES

POSTCOLONIAL

131

or dead from the


to the violent
thought of rape, fall prey
daughters, raped
the anonymous
erotics of colonial desire, while
(and unmentionable)
Armorican women bear the children of colonial amnesia. And Ronwen,
ultimately childless and homocidal, incarnates the sterile lure of power through
resemble each
assimilation. These scenes of Briton and Saxon domination
other strategically,while revealing vital differences in the dynamics of spatial,
contact could
linguistic, and erotic desire. The postcolonial analysis of coercive
to
Locrinus
HRB
and
the
extend throughout
Estrildis, the Roman
encompass
conquests, Geoffrey's own silence about Guenivere and Mordred, Cadwallo

and Brian, and many other encounters over land, language, and lust. The
thus demonstrates didactically what Suleri has called the ghostly mobility'
of colonial facts (3).Multiple strategies form power, and the forms themselves
are unstable because they play on the shifting dynamics of resemblance and
of Insular contacts reconfigure
difference. Geoffrey's
representations
resemblances and keep differences on themove.
are in some ways unavoidable
for
Postcolonial perspectives on theHRB
studies
scholars trained by the pedagogy of post- everything: postcolonial
a bounded
se
than
rather
disciplinary field.
permeate perspective per
forming
formations in the
as
of
colonial
medieval
If,
representations
Ingham observes,
more
recent
then
Insular histories
fantasies
British Isles haunt
(27),
imperial

HRB

like Geoffrey's are historical

splinters in the side of the subsequent British


theHRB
represents a history of
Empire. Through postcolonial perspectives,
colonial experience fraught with postcolonial anxieties. By attending to the
across themedieval border can encounter
mobility of colonial facts, travelers
the ephemeral juncture of difference and resemblance as an inspiration for
the future, rather than as a dismissal of the past. Moreover, to formulate another

encounters of disciplines through thewindow opened


of pre-colonial
subjects identify powerful cultural
that define vital differences in the long history of colonial
continuities
contact with a postcolonial
most
importantly, establishing
experience. Perhaps
can vivify this contentious history for students and colleagues whose
HRB
the literatures of modern
reading strategies have inevitably been shaped by
colonialisms.
metaphor, the specular
by the deconstruction

OF

UNIVERSITY
Michelle

R. Warren

(formerly Wright)

is assistant

professor

of French

MIAMI
at the

on
UniversityofMiami (CoralGables, FL). She has published Dante and theFrench

Arthurian

prose

cycle,

and

has

recently

completed

a book

on Arthurian

History on theEdge: Excalibur and theBordersof


provisionallytitled
historiography

Britain

(1100-1300).

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ARTHURIANA

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Rebecca
E. Biron and Patricia Clare
Ingham for inspirational
conversation
and vigorous commentary
the
of this article; I am
preparation
during
indebted to Patricia for generously
work.
especially
sharing her unpublished
NOTES

1 Iwill cite fromEdmond Faral's edition of theHistoria, even


thoughNeil Wrights
edition of Bern MS. 568 has vecome a more common reference (and is used
throughout this volume). According toWright's own analysis, the Bern text
a version

represents

of

Geoffrey's

Historia

marked

by

a Norman

reception

(xxxv

xliii, liv-lix); David Dumville has argued further that the text probably only
circulated inNormandy. Although philologists have yet to establish an oldest
version of theHRB from theover two hundred extant
manuscripts,Michael Reeve
has argued thatEdmond Faral's edition currentlyoffersthe closest representation
of such a text.Since in thisarticle I emphasize thecultural conditions that
generated
theHistoria, Faral's textprovides themost solid basis of an argument;
Wright's
edition,

by

contrast

can best

sustain

arguments

about

the HRB's

Normanitas.

For

the convenience of the reader,paragraph and line referencesto


Wright will follow
2

page

references

to Farai.

Although Briton is not generally used as an adjective, I will use it here to refer
specifically to themedieval ethnic construct and to avoid confusion with the
inclusive connotation ofBritish inmodern usage
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