Matthew Firth – författare

This book offers a comprehensive, biography-led examination of queenship in England between 850 and 1000, tracing the development of the queen’s role from bed companion to institutional office.The period 850–1000 is critical to the development of English queenship. In the aftermath of viking invasion, the kings of Wessex expanded their hegemony over neighbouring regions, gradually establishing themselves as the kings of England. Parallel to this broad narrative of political change is the lesser-known story, told in this book, of the royal women who took part in it. The lives of three remarkable women – Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and the West Saxon consorts Eadgifu and Ælfthryth – are central to the story, here retold through the careful analysis and reappraisal of source documents. These biographies set the stage for detailed study of the agency and advocacy of all women who held queenly office in England between 850 and 1000, as well as their legacies and reception by later generations.Early English Queens, 850–1000 gives important insights into the role women played in the first 150 years of the West Saxon dynasty, offering a compelling narrative that will appeal to students and scholars of early medieval England and royal studies.

This book offers a comprehensive, biography-led examination of queenship in England between 850 and 1000, tracing the development of the queen’s role from bed companion to institutional office.The period 850–1000 is critical to the development of English queenship. In the aftermath of viking invasion, the kings of Wessex expanded their hegemony over neighbouring regions, gradually establishing themselves as the kings of England. Parallel to this broad narrative of political change is the lesser-known story, told in this book, of the royal women who took part in it. The lives of three remarkable women – Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and the West Saxon consorts Eadgifu and Ælfthryth – are central to the story, here retold through the careful analysis and reappraisal of source documents. These biographies set the stage for detailed study of the agency and advocacy of all women who held queenly office in England between 850 and 1000, as well as their legacies and reception by later generations.Early English Queens, 850–1000 gives important insights into the role women played in the first 150 years of the West Saxon dynasty, offering a compelling narrative that will appeal to students and scholars of early medieval England and royal studies.

This book provides an in-depth study of depictions of England in the Saga of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur), examining their utility as sources for the history of Viking Age Anglo-Scandinavian cultural contact.The Íslendingasögur present themselves as histories, but they are difficult historical sources. Their setting is the Saga Age, a period that begins with the settlement of Iceland in the late ninth century and ends along with the Viking Age in the late eleventh century–however, the saga texts are disconnected from this setting, having first been written down in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This book traces the transmission and development of Icelandic cultural memory of Saga Age England across this distance of centuries. It offers case study analyses of how historical time, place, cultures, and events are adapted and conceptualised in the Íslendingasögur and suggests methodological approaches to their study as historical literature.Remembering England is an interdisciplinary book that will appeal to scholars and students of the history of pre-Norman England, the Icelandic sagas, medieval literature, and cultural memory.

This book provides an in-depth study of depictions of England in the Saga of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur), examining their utility as sources for the history of Viking Age Anglo-Scandinavian cultural contact.The Íslendingasögur present themselves as histories, but they are difficult historical sources. Their setting is the Saga Age, a period that begins with the settlement of Iceland in the late ninth century and ends along with the Viking Age in the late eleventh century–however, the saga texts are disconnected from this setting, having first been written down in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This book traces the transmission and development of Icelandic cultural memory of Saga Age England across this distance of centuries. It offers case study analyses of how historical time, place, cultures, and events are adapted and conceptualised in the Íslendingasögur and suggests methodological approaches to their study as historical literature.Remembering England is an interdisciplinary book that will appeal to scholars and students of the history of pre-Norman England, the Icelandic sagas, medieval literature, and cultural memory.

Asking for Directions is open and accessible debut collection. This book is a happy hour of poetry that blurs the lines between straight-up realism, goofy weirdness, linear narrative, dreamscape, lovestruck awe, wonder and joy. Poetry for Firth is under every rock. Poetry is the handyman who should be tiling a kitchen backsplash but instead relives lost dreams of hockey glory. Poetry is a creepy and distracted high school geography teacher. Poetry is snowmobilers on a patio drinking beer next to a thawing, late-March lake. Poetry is impending heart surgery, birds, the dead, skinny strippers, euchre parties, funerals, graffiti, Sunday morning hotel rooms, ashtrays, blue flowers, desiccated chipmunk carcasses, and, of course, sex, love, and laundry. There's all this and more in this bold, beautiful, and ballsy collection of new poems from a writer who has shifted over from short fiction without missing a beat. Come on it; read it and feel what it's like to have faith in "warm touch/at the altar/of your hips."

'Suburban Pornography' is contemporary literature, which documents Canadian urban life in a raw and naked manner. The prose is stripped-minimalist, direct, urgent, unflinching. The stories revolve around ordinary characters and problems-people stuck in bad relationships or jobs. Some yearn for something just beyond their grasp, something authentic to knock them out of their malaise. Their frailties and obsessions are front and centre. They are garbage men, bus drivers, waitresses, soupkitchen clients, and neighbourhood perverts-tired and busy, too weary to contemplate-from social conditions that sanction only mere existence in redemption's agony and fleeting glory. " 'Suburban Pornography' surpasses a generic understanding of a tell-it-like-it-is literary form, born from American 20th century fiction, and delivers a unique Canadian voice offering a universal reflection of troubled humanity." - Discorder "What makes 'Suburban Pornography' so memorable is the brutally honestsnapshots of the inner-city ill-privileged and sad-sack suburbanites who fuck, suck, bleed, bruise, cruise and search for love among the loveless." - Xpress

'Shag Carpet Action' is Matthew Firth's boldest and brashest collection of stories yet. Centred on the novella "Dog Fucker Blues" this collection examines what it's like to be down but not quite out in the 21st century. The book examines people clinging to the edge of physical, mental, sexual, psychological, and financial survival, bordering on the brink of ruin. This new collection continues Firth's deep mining into the bowels of Canadian life. From there he unearths tales of some of Canada's forgotten people who survive with their wits and guts during these harsh times. Behind the covers of 'Shag Carpet Action' are stories about rival garbage collectors warring over a possible strike; suburban lust and yearning involving the creative use of a son's Spider-Man toy; the travails of a man who has a vasectomy but then finds that there are more painful events to deal with on his agenda; shameless and bombastic people who just don't care who overhears their conversation-and on it goes. Absurd, raunchy, funny stories whose sharp, salty characters are boldly credible and wonderfully rendered by one of Canada's most adventurous and courageous writers. "Matthew Firth is one of my favourite writers. I wait for new Firth books with all of the same sense of need and anticipation that I once felt while waiting for my heroin dealer to show." - Tony O'Neill, author of 'Sick City' "Matt Firth is the literary incarnation of the boy your mama warned you about. These short stories, as tightly clenched as an angry fist, are not for the faint-hearted. Firth will probably never win any big prizes, because he cock-punches the kind of pastoral/historical claptrap that passes for literature among wine-drinking book clubbers." -Jenn Farrell, author of 'Sugar Bush and Other Stories' and 'The Devil You Know' "Firth's strength lies not simply in provocatively deploying overt sexuality, but rather the way he leverages bald carnality to make broader, potent statements about thehuman condition." - Quill & Quire

Offers insights into the political, social and cultural interests that informed the shaping of England's pre-Conquest history.The Norman Conquest brought about great change in England: new customs, a new language, and new political and ecclesiastical hierarchies. It also saw the emergence of an Anglo-Norman intellectual culture, with an innate curiosity in the past. For the pre-eminent twelfth-century English historians - such as Eadmer of Canterbury, William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon - the pre-Conquest past was of abiding interest. While they recognised the disruptions of the Conquest, this was accompanied by an awareness that it was but one part of a longer story, stretching back to sub-Roman Britain. This concept of a continuum of English history that traversed the events of 1066 would prove enduring, being transmitted into and by the works of successive generations of medieval English historians. This collection sheds new light on the perceptions and uses of the pre-Conquest past in post-Conquest historiography, drawing on a variety of approaches, from historical and literary studies, to codicology, historiography, memory theory and life writing. Its essays are arranged around two main interlinked themes: post-Conquest historiographical practice and how identities - institutional, regional and personal - could be constructed in reference to this past. Alongside their analyses of the works of Eadmer, William and Henry, contributors offer engaging studies of the works of such authors as Aelred of Rievaulx, Orderic Vitalis, Gervase of Canterbury, John of Worcester, Richard of Devizes, and Walter Map, as well as numerous anonymous hagiographies and histories.

This book addresses a little-considered aspect of the study of the history of emotions in medieval literature: the depiction of perplexing emotional reactions. Medieval literature often confronts audiences with displays of emotion that are improbable, physiologically impossible, or simply unfathomable in modern social contexts. The intent of such episodes is not always clear; medieval texts rarely explain emotional responses or their motivations. The implication is that the meanings communicated by such emotional display were so obvious to their intended audience that no explanation was required. This raises the question of whether such meanings can be recovered. This is the task to which the contributors to this book have put themselves. In approaching this question, this book does not set out to be a collection of literary studies that treat portrayals of emotion as simple tropes or motifs, isolated within their corpora. Rather, it seeks to uncover how such manifestations of feelingmay reflect cultural and social dynamics underlying vernacular literatures from across the medieval North Sea world.