A quotation from Jacques LeGoff 's The Medieval Imagination that Laura Ashe offers at the end of the introduction of Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 is emblematic of her project in this interesting book: “Times of marked social change are ideal for observing the relationship between material and imaginary realities” (27). Taking the Norman Conquest as its moment of “marked social change,” Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 argues for a stricter delineation between insular and continental forms during this period and for the emergence of distinctively “English” literary themes and forms that will be influential in determining the future course of medieval English literature. One innovation is the book's focus on the 1170s (approximately), which allows it to shift attention from the usual suspects (Geoffrey of Monmouth, William of Malmesbury, etc.) toward a new canon of less studied and, importantly, vernacular texts. Thus, authors such as Robert Wace, Jordan Fantosme, and Marie de France step into the spotlight as critical interpreters of English national identity in the Middle Ages.

The four chapters tend to pair two texts and to draw their analysis out of the comparison. Thus, chapter 1, “The Normans in England: A Question of Place,” opens with a discussion of what Ashe argues is the “unbiased” view of the Bayeux Tapestry that goes out of style by the end of the twelfth century, followed by a reading of Wace's Roman de Rou, which she argues likewise becomes unfashionable with its belated attempt to purvey an ideology of “Normanitas.” Ashe accounts for the perceived failure of this text by articulating the loss of a cultural context for such a vision of Normanitas in a new Anglo-Norman world. In chapter 2, “Normanitas” is replaced by “Nos Engleis,” as Ashe traces the development of an English identity. This chapter concentrates on Jordan Fantosme's Chronicle's articulation of a concept of “foreignness,” which implicitly and simultaneously creates a category of native and which Ashe connects to an incipient sense of nationalism. Foreignness here is articulated through the language of romance and epic, in the distinction between those who want to use the land correctly rather than to lay it waste—to “gaarder” rather than to “guaster” (98). In this chapter, as throughout the book, Ashe insistently emphasizes land as the most important aspect—and, indeed, the engine—of national identity in the long twelfth century. The third chapter, “Historical Romance: A Genre in the Making,” uses a comparison between Eneas and Horn to argue that the continental romance is ahistorical and fully fictional, whereas insular romance self-consciously retains a historical referentiality. Finally, a fourth chapter, “The English in Ireland: Ideologies of Race,” turns its glance outward. This chapter contrasts Gerald of Wales's Expugnatio Hibernica with The Song of Dermot and the Earl and H. de Saltrey's Tractatus de Purgatorio sancti Patricii with Marie de France's Espurgatoire Seint Patriz. In both of these pairings, one of the texts is the product of a monastic culture and the other of a lay, courtly culture, and Ashe argues that this makes all the difference, especially in terms of the texts’ ideological investments. It is worth quoting her thesis on this point: “Here, a pattern becomes discernable, as an ideology of racial superiority is replaced with one of shared courtly values in the process of vernacular translation. It is my contention that a divide may be observed within the self-conscious society of the Anglo-Irish, between a clerical ideology of conquest, and a secular culture of adaptation and assimilation, itself an ideological stance” (164).

In Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 rather large claims about the “precocity of English identity” (56) rest on the analysis of a small number of authors and texts; there were many more on which I would have liked to have had the author's opinion, namely, Guy d’Amiens, William of Poitiers, and more of Benoît de Sainte-Maure on the Normans and Gerald of Wales on the Welsh. However, it is perhaps unfair to ask for more, when the close readings offered here usefully illuminate lesser known texts, and the rich footnotes place these texts in their larger critical context and provide further evidence for the wealth of exciting and important work being done in this field. Twelfth-century British literature is an exciting space in medieval literary studies these days, as, in part, the insights of poststructural and postcolonial criticism have shaken old certainties about the relationship between a national language and a national literature. It is now de rigueur to insist that English literature might take place in French or in Latin or, given the multilingualism of the British Isles, in any number of other languages. This move has thrown into question just what “Englishness” might mean in this context, and it is into this question that Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 makes its timely intervention.