This chapter discusses the question of the plurality of historical genres practiced by historians, and their function as a galvanizer of the classics. I proceed first (‘Taxonomies’) by analyzing the theories, definitions, and taxonomies of historical genres developed by ancient scholars such as Cicero and Dionysius to the modern taxonomical project by twentieth century scholars. In the second section (‘Developments’), I provide a brief history of the development of historical genres over time, focusing especially on the moment of their emergence, from ancient and medieval ethnographies, biographies, genealogies, and chronicles to modern monographs and papers. In the last section (‘Reappraisals’), I combine the premodern and modern approaches described in the first two sections, assuming postmodern theories to apply them to the discernment of the classic and the canon in history/historiography. To conclude, I propose an ethical purpose that make historians more attentive to the new developments and possibilities of historical genres, to better adapt the historical form to its content, making it compatible with respect and appreciation for the classics of the discipline. A more comprehensive and flexible approach to historical genres may facilitate the task of those who envisage a more creative and innovative historical writing and production.

Chapter 4 examines in detail the early medieval evidence for godlings in Britain, from both Brittonic and Old English sources, dealing in turn with the main categories of folkloric beings such as fauns, elves, the various categories of supernatural women, pygmies and giants. The chapter stresses the interaction between folk belief and learned commentary, identifying biblical commentary and the work of Church Fathers such as Isidore of Seville as the main source of discussions about godlings and, perhaps, as the source of much of the folklore itself. It is the argument of the chapter that by the time of the Norman Conquest, the various elements of fairy lore were present in British popular belief but had yet to be brought together into a single synthesis. These elements included a belief in wild ‘men of the woods’ gifted with prophetic powers; belief in elves; belief in supernatural women, often in a triad, governing the fates of human beings; belief in diminutive otherworlders, sometimes living beneath the earth and belief in heroes who have somehow become supernatural beings.

This chapter first explores how early medieval writers, and especially Isidore and Bede, made fundamental contributions to a new understanding of the natural world and its workings. They both quarried classical works for factual information and empirical observations, and placed these within a Christian cosmological model. An outline is given of the monastic science of ‘computus’, which was fundamental for teaching on natural philosophy and for theories about the weather in particular. Summaries of introductory works by both Isidore and Bede demonstrate their respective meteorological models; Bede’s views on the powers of the planets are covered in detail. Special attention is given to Bede’s The Reckoning of Time and the complex information on astronomy and meteorology which it expounds. An important conclusion is that Bede produced an understanding of weather as the intelligible and predictable result of astronomical and climatic factors. Overall, the chapter argues that classically derived natural philosophy and Christian cosmology were successfully integrated, and that the two together provided the basis for a new approach to weather and its prediction.

Chaucer’s God considers how characters invoke God, both in terms of the everyday language of late medieval England and in the ways that the idea of God is reflected in Chaucer’s fiction. Conventional, non-theological utterances of the names for God by Chaucer’s characters as part of their, by turns, outwardly pious and unthinkingly impious phraseologies are discussed in the opening section, God Woot – ‘God knows’. Under the heading God Forwoot – ‘God foreknows’, some of the more challenging invocations of God are considered, such as the implications of divine foreknowledge and predestination on human free will in the Knight’s Tale, the Nun’s Priest’s Tale and Troilus and Criseyde. The concluding section, God in a Cruel World, asks whether in the Clerk’s Tale and the Franklin’s Tale, if Chaucer allowed his tales to reflect, and characters to reflect upon, the heretical notion of a God lacking in compassion for humanity.

Animals are to be found in many places and modes in Chaucer’s work. They feature as similes (Palamon and Arcite in the Knight’s Tale are compared to lion, tiger and boar), star in fables (the Nun’s Priest’s Tale) or are simply themselves, like the cow of the lyric Truth, or the spider of the Treatise on the Astrolable. Heeding Lisa Kiser’s caution that animals in literature risk being absorbed into the human mindset, this essay explores some of the animals (and insects) found in Chaucer, and, by reading them alongside Isidore of Seville’s definition of ‘beast’, seeks to demonstrate how they resist such absorption and instead steer our attention to aspects of daily life or concepts we are liable to overlook. Animals may act as vehicles for our thoughts, but sometimes they carry us to places we did not consciously intend.