Beginning with Albina: Remembering the Nation

This essay discusses the "new" fourteenth-century English origin myth of Albina in relation to medieval theories of memory and of secular historiography. Few scholars have discussed this puzzling prequel to the hugely popular Brutus foundation narrative; and those few tend to do so in relation to contemporary Anglo-Scottish hostilities. This essay focuses instead on examining the ways in which the Albina story offered its audiences a pleasurable as well as memorable entry-point into national history. Arguing that the Albina story draws on learned as well as popular mnemonic devices, the essay suggests that its relationship to history is necessarily but potently ambivalent. In its examination of various versions of the narrative, it looks closely at the roles that gender, names, authority and, particularly, place, play in foregrounding this narrative as one that grapples with the difficult question of how national community can be thought, written and remembered.