by Heather R. Darsie, J. D.

On 10 April 2026, I had the absolute pleasure of presenting the keynote speech for the Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature, held this year at Minot State University. It is rather long for a blog post, as it took me roughly forty-five minutes to deliver the speech. Please bear with me; I believe the message is applicable to a broad range of fields even if the details are not.

Ever become fed up with hearing the same old thing that doesn’t make sense? That’s how I felt in 2012.

I’d recently been exposed to the gateway drug that is the Showtime series The Tudors. I was intrigued by Anna of Cleves — mainly because I was a German major for my undergrad degree. Being a proper nerd, I started reading whatever books I could find on Henry VIII of England’s six wives.

For the most part, the books were fairly slim on Anna. The usual story: Henry picked her from a portrait, paid a pile of money to bring her to England, and then effectively dumped Anna for being ugly — or at least unattractive to him. There was also a rumor about a precontract.

Using my stunning powers of contemplating the obvious, I noticed three things. First: Anna was twenty-four years old when she moved to England. Second — and I’m showing my “American” here — her name simply could not have been Anne. That was not a name in German. Third: because Anna was of an atypically older age for a woman of her standing to marry, there was probably a little more to her story than being bought, paid for, shipped to England, found ugly, and dumped.

I tried to find what any previously unexplored works had to say about Anna’s German history. Turns out, no one who could read German had really looked into it. With these multiple factors demonstrating a suspicious lack, I determined that it wouldn’t hurt for me to do something.

So I did the smartest thing I could think of: I wrote a letter to the mayor of the German city of Cleves. Never mind that they didn’t have an archive there, or that the city wasn’t the administrative center for Anna’s family’s lands — things about which I had absolutely no idea at the time. Being eclectic, I pulled out my nicest paper and my wax seal. A wax seal! I figured something out-of-the-ordinary might actually be read. I wrote in the very best German I could muster and sent it off.

Crickets for weeks. Then finally — an email from the mayor’s administrative assistant. They’d forwarded my request to the archives in Duisburg, about 45 miles away. A couple more weeks later, a small packet arrived in the mail. Things took off from there.

I dug into those resources, then clawed back further. I found a multitude of German- and French-language sources. I used my linguistic abilities, plus my familiarity with legal research, to push forward. When the time came to write a popular history book, I borrowed from German writing the precision of structure, and from legal writing the ability to take very complex ideas and transmute them into digestible ones.

The moral of this story is that curiosity and adaptability can help you immensely with your research. I’m sure you’ve heard this many times before today, but our written output, whether a monograph, academic paper, or simple essay, shapes the future of other’s comprehension. How our society comprehends the written word is changing swifter than ever before due to short form social media and text messages. We have to be curious about these methods of communication and adapt with them to meet the needs of our academic fields.

I’m telling you all of this because I suspect some of you have a version of this story too. And I think those stories are the field’s best argument for its own relevance.

The texts you are researching ask the same questions we are still arguing about today. In the Year of Our Lord 2026, there is a political concern over succession in America. William Shakespeare, whose works I know C. S. Lewis would not include as English, let alone British, literature, carries the theme of succession anxiety, as seen in The Tragedy of King Lear. Older texts, such as that written by the mysterious Pearl Poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, bring to us the concepts of what happens when performative virtue clashes with public accountability. One can turn to John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments to see how literature kept the memory of the aftermath of violence alive almost a century after it was written.

The authors I’ve mentioned, Shakespeare, the anonymous Pearl Poet, and Foxe, all took in what was happening around them and placed those events and anxieties into literature. Their curiosity and intellectual adaptability led them to try and make sense of what was happening in the world around them.

Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear, first performed in 1605 or so, shows us through Goneril how the best speakers have a way of wooing us into a false sense of safety before being given power, where Regan’s lack of charisma but willingness to go with the flow allow her to obtain power, too. Cordelia shows us sometimes those best equipped for the job get in their own way. These forces come together in King Lear to illustrate the anxiety of succession that Shakespeare was seeing in his own day with Queen Elizabeth I of England.

Famously known as the Virgin Queen, the idea of Elizabeth I of England no longer being available to govern her people was a very real and present concern during Shakespeare’s day. The execution in 1601 of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, brought society’s fears front and center. He tried to overthrow Elizabeth, which illustrated the impending death of the kingdom’s monarch. Although no one knew when it would happen, Elizabeth was nearing seventy years old at the time of Devereux’s death. Who would rule over England when Elizabeth died? Would it be one of Elizabeth’s remaining cousins? Would there be anarchy? How much treachery would be involved for whomever took over? Would they rule through love or fear? Had they even read Machiavelli’s The Prince, let alone truly comprehended its contents?

What Shakespeare’s King Lear showed England, without her knowing it, were the dire situations that awaited her upon Elizabeth’s death. Shakespeare’s use of the deceitful Goneril showed to a country, then ruled by the otherwise stable James I of England and VI of Scotland potential fates that the country missed. Had the Earl of Essex succeeded in his coup, he being a person who was beloved and held in high esteem by Elizabeth, he would not have stopped with mere deception of monarch and country. He had the capacity for cruelty, like Goneril.

If England faced the fate of a ruler like Regan from King Lear, they would have faced a monarch of ambiguous loyalty and religion. Such a ruler would be found in Lady Arbella Stuart, a Tudor cousin of Elizabeth I. While Arbella Stuart did not display the twisted malice of Regan, she was known to lack her own ideas. Arbella occasionally came to court during Elizabeth I’s reign and was known as intelligent. However, she mostly lived her life in the background, working to appease, and did not take any strong stances. The strongest and most dangerous thing that Arbella ever did – and dangerous it was – came to pass in 1603. James was on the throne of England for a matter of months when the very Catholic Philip III of Spain made a concord with Arbella to overthrow James I in a conspiracy known as the Main Plot. Arbella, possessing more sense than Regan, reported it immediately. However, the danger was still there, and Shakespeare likely heard something about it.

James I and VI embodied the virtues of Cordelia. He was honest and not grasping, if put poetically. She refused to behave in the same way as her sisters, and sought to fulfill her duty as a loving daughter, but not as a fawning sycophant in order to gain her father King Lear’s affection. James I and VI behaved in a similar way toward Elizabeth I. Lear rejected her and disinherited Cordelia in favor of her sisters Goneril and Regan. Father and daughter were never properly able to reconcile. With things being too far gone, Cordelia was hanged.

Interestingly, Nahum Tate updated Shakespeare’s work in his late 17^th century book The History of King Lear, giving Cordelia a happy, virtuous ending. It was published during the reign of James I & VI’s grandson, Charles II of England, during the Restoration Period.

Both works, being Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear and Tate’s The History of King Lear mimic contemporary feelings about the succession to the Throne of England. Shakespeare’s work is a piquant criticism of those closest to Elizabeth I, though the play was not produced until after Elizabeth was deceased. Tate’s updated work shows a hope for peaceful transition after Charles II – who lacked legitimate issue – passed.

When looking at texts such as The Tragedy of King Lear and The History of King Lear, what piques your curiosity? How does the theme of succession anxiety impact us today? How can research on that work be adapted for the contemplation of the modern person? What special skills do you have beyond your specific academic training to bring us there?

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written by an unknown person who is occasionally called the Pearl Poet, illustrates the issue of performative virtue meeting public accountability. In this 14^th century chivalric romance, the mysterious and perhaps monstrous Green Knight appears at the court of King Arthur with a game: give the Green Knight a beheading blow, which he will have the privilege of returning a year later. The brave soul who completes the beheading is allowed to keep the Green Knight’s axe. King Arthur’s nephew young Gawain, a knight of the Round Table, decides to take up the challenge at the last minute. Gawain beheads the Green Knight, who thereafter calmly stands up and walks off holding his head, reminding Gawain of his responsibility.

As the time draws near a year later, Gawain sets out to find the Green Chapel wherein he shall meet the Green Knight. Ahead of schedule, he arrives at the castle of a lord and lady. Gawain strikes a bargain with the lord that the lord will give him daily some of his hunting bounty, and Gawain will share with the lord what he procures about the castle. Over time, the lady comes to tempt Gawain, giving him a series of kisses each night, testing Gawain’s virtue. Gawain gives the same number of kisses to the lord at their appointed time the next day. Finally, she gives Gawain a green sash, which he does not then give to the lord.

The day comes for Gawain to head to the Green Chapel. He ties the lady’s sash about his waist and makes his way there. The Green Knight is waiting for him. Gawain is ready to receive the blow. After a couple of false starts that expose Gawain’s cowardice, the Green Knight knicks Gawain’s neck, thereby returning the beheading blow and completing the game. The Green Knight reveals himself to Gawain as the lord of the castle, and he knows about the sash. Gawain feels humiliated, but the lord forgives Gawain for his dishonesty. Gawain returns to Arthur and the Round Table, confesses his faults to them, and is forgiven by his cohort. All the knights of the Round Table begin wearing green sashes to remind them of Gawain’s mild ordeal and faults.

There are at least two ways to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the display of performative virtue contrasted with public accountability. One: the otherwise good-natured folly of youth. Two: an illustration of when the elite few are willing to cover for and normalize bad behavior. Gawain was assumed to be chivalrous, trustworthy, honest. He displayed those virtues until he couldn’t fully resist temptation. Then he hid it until he was caught.

What makes you feel curious about this story? Why was it written? How can the layers be pulled back further? How can the morals and faults of Gawain and the Knights of the Round Table be adapted to today — or rather, how can the way you typically approach a medieval manuscript be adapted to make such a tale relevant for the modern person?

The final piece of literature that we will discuss, John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days, Touching Matters of the Church, is laden with memories of the aftermath of violence. John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments was first printed in 1563, during the reign of Elizabeth I, who was the very same Elizabeth whose succession anxiety may have been fuel for Shakespeare’s King Lear. Elizabeth was protestant, unlike her sister Mary I before her, who was Catholic and in some ways, violently so for how short her reign was. Mary tried to claw England and the Anglican church back to Catholic alignment, which necessarily involved the early modern political expedience of violence. Foxe’s work sought to illustrate the torture and heinous executions that Protestant martyrs suffered from approximately the year 1000 through to the present, particularly those killed in England and Scotland, including Elizabeth I’s mother Anne Boleyn. Anne is widely credited with being the catalyst for the English Reformation.

Whilst Foxe’s Actes and Monuments was an important work with several editions published in the late 16^th century, its lasting impact came during the 17^th century. Actes and Monuments was republished in 1630. Its martyrologies were used to support differing perspectives of the Anglican church at a time when there was a more-visible Puritan movement, a Catholic queen consort in Henrietta Maria, and a monarch in Charles I who was not paying enough attention to his government, let alone his church of which he was the spiritual head.

Foxe was assuredly trying to place the Catholics as violent when publishing his Actes and Monuments during the reign of Elizabeth I, and with subsequent augmented publications during his lifetime. During the reign of Charles I, the reprinting of Actes and Monuments served as a cultural memory of violence at a time when Charles I was supporting further religious reform for what had been a relatively stable Anglican Church since the time of Elizabeth I. Particularly on the eve of the English Civil War, which took place from 1642 to 1651, a further reproduction of Actes and Monuments in 1641 pushed the memory and aftermath of violence into the public consciousness. Whether Foxe intended to write to his entire country or create more of a semi-private chronicle, his work when published almost eighty years later reminded the country of intolerable and oppressive violence for those unwilling to conform.

Looking at the afterlife of Actes and Monuments, what can a curious mind of today see in such a work? How can the principles and historical understanding within it be adapted today, given the upheavals we are witnessing?

All three of these authors — Shakespeare, the anonymous Pearl Poet, and Foxe — were doing the same thing in the medieval and early modern periods as we are doing today. They were taking public ideas and consciousness, using their own curiosity to further inquire — if only from the intellectual safety of their writing desk — and adapting what they saw and experienced into works meant for entertainment, and to communicate ideas to the common public.

When you, as academics of the field of Early British Literature, review works as ancient as these: what makes you curious about them? What skills do you have that could help you adapt our modern understanding? How can your particular, fine mind communicate these ideas not only to the academic community, but to the common person?

I would encourage you not to accept the thin readings that sometimes exist for works of Early British Literature — much like I could not accept the thin account of Anna of Cleves’ life.

The manuscript is stable. Our relationship to it is not. The field is changing faster than the syllabi.

What do I mean by that? Our world is rapidly becoming digitized. Artificial Intelligence is gaining more and more visibility and applicability. Specific to the humanities, we have access to more documents held in faraway places than ever before. There are open-access editions of works, there are old, printed works available for free via resources like Google Play and Archive.org.

During the pandemic, more museums and archives than ever digitized parts of their collections. The pandemic forced institutions to do in two years what advocacy hadn’t accomplished in two decades. This has made access to the content of manuscripts easier to attain than ever before. Accessing a digital copy does not replace physically interacting with an original, or even centuries-old copy, but it does give us the opportunity to intellectually contemplate. It is also worth noting that most of the time, manuscripts are free or low-cost to access. Back when I sent my letter with the wax seal in 2012, I had to pay an embarrassing amount of money to simply receive scans on a disc from the archives in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Now when researching for a popular history book or academic paper, I can type in the archive’s website, navigate to what I need, and there it is. Whilst that gives me access to the words, it does not give me access to the feel of the item, what might be on the back of it, what interesting stains or marks could have been missed due to digitization. On the other hand, there are new tests that can be used on physical manuscripts to pick up things invisible to the naked eye. We can test items for their age in a way that humans cannot do. We can certainly approximate things on our own without technology, but technology gives us more precision in some instances, such as showing when something was added to or deleted from a manuscript.

As we venture ever further into our digitized, modern world, we must remember to use old tools and new whenever we can. I strongly believe that had I simply sent an email to the mayor of Cleves, it would have been disregarded. By using a distinctive, old method of communication – a letter with a wax seal – I was communicating the seriousness of my intent and efforts. By continuing communication via email with the archive, I was able to receive digitized documents that I could not venture out to see in person. Had I stopped with the physical letter or not emailed to continue communication, I would not have received what I was seeking. Had I been fortunate enough to physically go to the archives, I may have missed out on some of the details captured in the digitized copies that I received due to being pressed for time.

There are other hurdles we face in our fast-paced digital world. Younger generations could be losing the patience to interact with items that require going the extra mile. The willingness and ability to read lengthy, centuries-old text could be dwindling. With our on-demand digital world, with powerful computers in our pockets, the idea of ambiguity and lack of resolution could become increasingly difficult. If there is not a quick answer from the pocket computer, can new generations of researchers and the public tolerate the stasis of not knowing? What techniques do we have individually to bring to the world to adapt and continue bringing vital research and learning about Early British Literature to our modern society? Together, we must use our individual curiosity and skills gained over our individual lifetimes to tackle the lack of tolerance and patience for the written word that looms over society today.

Only weeks ago was information made public about the analysis of a rare fragment from a 13^th century manuscript relating to Merlin. The fragment was re-discovered back in 2019. It was reused as part of a binding for a 16^th century archival record. The work on it was carried out by Cambridge University Library. It is part of the Lancelot-Grail cycle, and adds to the canon of tales regarding King Arthur and Merlin. It is part of what is known as the Suite du Merlin, and digital, technological tools revealed that the manuscript was written between approximately 1275 and 1315.

When it was originally discovered, the manuscript was folded and stitched into the binding of a property record for a manor in Suffolk. Removing and unfolding the seven hundred-year-old fragile, torn manuscript fragment would have imperiled it. The danger of destruction caused the minds at Cambridge to turn to digital techniques to analyze what was found. This allowed researchers to further identify the manuscript fragment’s age and contents whilst the fragment remained within the binding of the 16^th century archival record. The researchers began with what their eyes could tell them — noticing the fragment tucked within the binding — then turned to digital techniques to read what human sight could not. By using the digital techniques, humans were allowed to physically read much more of the item and further identify the manuscript.

Upon its discovery, the Suffolk fragment was believed to be a 14^th century fragment about Sir Gawain. Portions of the text, handwritten with ancient ink on parchment, were completely faded away and unreadable by the human eye. Without using digital technology, no one would have been able to physically examine the Suffolk fragment of the Suite du Merlin. The researchers of the Suffolk fragment were able to digitally reconstruct the fragment. They were able to create a 3D, readable image of the fragment, restoring readability of the worn away portions. The image, or model, of the fragment was so detailed that even the small folds and creases in the fragment were detectable.

By using their human abilities to reproduce a physical model of the Suffolk fragment of the Suite du Merlin manuscript, the fragment became radically accessible. They used different photographic techniques and tools to capture every possible angle and surface of the fragment, then digitally stitched it together. This allowed them to see what the fragment would look like if it could have been safely removed from the binding and opened. This beautiful blending of humanity and technology brought to light a manuscript that may never have been re-discovered, let alone rebuilt in such a way that it is preserved for future analysis and preservation techniques. The outcome of the Suffolk Fragment of the Suite du Merlin is remarkable for its ingenuity.

So if the texts are still asking good questions, and we’re still finding new ways to hear them — what does contemporary culture actually need from us?

At this point, contemporary culture does not yet know how much it needs you. When we look around the room, there are people in attendance today from different states in the US, and maybe different countries outside the US. We are able to identify ourselves and modern works of literature by putting them into a neat cultural box. However, the farther back in time we go, we enter into a literary world that was without nation-states, without stable identity categories, and without the internet. Our modern, contemporary culture is drowning in all three of these boundaries. People need to access, read, and comprehend literature from times long gone to understand and appreciate our present.

Early British Literature is showing up in our cultural milieu. For example, A Song of Ice and Fire, more commonly called Game of Thrones, is rife with connections to Early British Literature. The general public simply doesn’t know it.

Turning back to our Arthurian theme, one can see how Stannis Baratheon and Melisandre have a similar interplay to King Arthur and Morgan le Fay. Both Stannis Baratheon and King Arthur are striving to become leaders of an important, powerful territory. Both men rely upon the wit and magic of women with whom they have unstable relationships. Melisandre and Morgan le Fay make cryptic prophesies about their would-be kings. Neither mystical figure completely supports their would-be king, and occasionally thwarts them or tricks them.

Another Arthurian figure we see in Game of Thrones is Lancelot, embodied by Jaime Lannister. Both figures are revered within their literature as being the best knight then-living. They are legendary even whilst still alive. Lancelot and Jaime are known for their courage, chivalry, and loyalty. Over time, as their tales develop, it becomes clear that both legendary knights are fallible human beings, too. What does it mean that both literary traditions need their greatest knight to be compromised? What does the fallibility of Lancelot and Jaime tell us about how these cultures understood heroism?

Looking to Shakespeare’s King Lear, we see a similar figure of Lear in Game of Thrones’ Tywin Lannister. In King Lear, Lear’s family is torn apart by the ill will and rapaciousness of at least two of his children, and the meddling of their spouses. He dies of grief over his children. Whilst Tywin Lannister’s cause of death is much different, he still must endure the sometimes irredeemable behaviors of his children. Tywin dies at the hands of one of his children. What does it tell us that both traditions return so reliably to the destruction wrought by ungrateful children upon aging, powerful men?

For those within the field of Early British Literature, the goal shouldn’t be to explain the pop culture echo. It should be to show why the echo sounds the way it does today. Why are these themes showing up uninvited, so many centuries later? How is the relationship between Early British Literature and contemporary popular culture impacted by the change in how the written word is consumed? If how we comprehend the written word is shifting, our field has a responsibility to be part of that conversation — not a casualty of it.

Anna of Cleves lacked a good framework for understanding her life. She frequently showed up as an almost uninvited guest to the arena of Tudor history. Due to my curiosity, I was able to give her a proper German framework for understanding her life and the international politics that impacted her. This fleshing-out of Anna’s life I hope has made her more understandable as a person, as she whispers to us through the centuries. Which brings me to what I think we owe the next generation of people who take courses on Early British Literature and pursue its scholarly study.

We must consider what we pass on, and how we do it. The various hands that copied the Suite du Merlin, including the Suffolk fragment, were not preserving a relic of the past. They were betting on someone in the future wanting to read the manuscript. That someone would want to know it. The person who used the Suffolk fragment as a binding in the 16^th century may have had a thought about the future of the fragment. There is no way of knowing, but it is possible that the creator of the 16^th century binding wanted to include the Suffolk fragment because Suite du Merlin meant something to that person. Or the person simply disliked Arthurian literature and saw a reputable way to dispose of expensive parchment. Either way, neither the creator of the Suffolk fragment nor its unwitting preserver had any other goal in mind than to create and preserve something. Whether it was Suite du Merlin or an archival record, those individuals were taking a gamble. They were making a bet that someone, in some future they could not imagine, would want access to these things. They were right. All of us here are proof.

The people who created and then placed the Suffolk fragment within that binding were unwittingly waiting for someone to be curious about it, and to use their specific set of skills to unlock what was calling out from centuries ago. Like the researchers of the Suffolk fragment, I used what I had, namely, creativity, a specific set of skills, and, yes, a wax seal, to access what was buried.

I began today by telling you about a letter I wrote with a wax seal. It was an eccentric thing to do. It was also the right thing to do, not because it was clever, but because it came from genuine curiosity about a woman whose story had been told too thinly for too long. Anna of Cleves deserved better than the account that had been handed down. So did the field that had overlooked her.

That is what I am asking of you today. Not to abandon what you know, but to carry it somewhere new. The texts of Early British Literature are not finished speaking. They are showing up in our television, in our politics, in our arguments about who deserves power and who gets away with betrayal. They are whispering through the centuries to anyone willing to slow down long enough to hear them.

Our written output, whether the monograph, the academic paper, the simple essay, shapes what future generations will be able to understand about their own world. That is not a small thing. It is, in fact, the whole thing.

The field of Early British Literature does not need defending. It needs translating. Not from Old English into Modern, but from the archive into the conversation that is already happening, in places we did not expect, about problems we recognize.

You have the curiosity. You have the skills. You have, I suspect, your own version of a wax seal, being some eccentric, distinctive approach that is yours alone and that no algorithm will replicate.

Use it.

What will you do, starting tomorrow, to make sure the next generation of readers does not have to accept the thin account?