Research Seminar: The Critical Function of the Walking Dead in the Chronicle of Lanercost

Compiled from two earlier chronicles, the Chronicle of Lanercost (c.1346) is a prime source of information on the Wars of Scottish Independence. The first part of the chronicle (1201–97), composed by Richard of Durham, contains numerous exempla, designed to entertain as well as edify. While the exemplum concerning the revenant of an excommunicated monk that terrorised the household of Sir Duncan de Insula, killing his son, is well-known in scholarship on the supernatural, its exact critical function yet to be fully explored.  

The aim of this talk is to analyse the literary function and wider thematic relevance of this undead encounter. I argue that the ontological transgressions of the dead monk’s reappearance, the unstable nature of his post-mortem body, and the eventual death of Sir Duncan’s son, speak to the spiritual and social crises caused by sexual transgression. Taking into account the specific narrative placement of the exemplum, I further argue that the story’s allusions to sodomy, sexual sin, and the breakdown of natural order allegorise the moral and political fallout from the Scottish repudiation of the English crown in 1295. 

Stephen Gordon is lecturer in medieval literature in the School of English at Cardiff University. He previously worked at Royal Holloway and at Manchester (where he did his PhD). He is particularly interested in the literary articulations of the belief in the supernatural in the medieval world, with a specific focus on ghosts, demonology and the walking dead. His most recent book was Supernatural Encounters: Demons and the Restless Dead in Medieval England, c.1050-1450, and he also co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History (vol 48. 2022) on the vitality of the dead in medieval cultures