Analysis of The Histroy and Topography of Ireland by Gerald of Wales

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For Gerald of Wales, religion was one of the most essential aspects of being a civilized human being. Therefore, when he wrote, The History and Topography of Ireland, he portrayed its inhabitants as subhuman and barbaric during his apparent travels to Ireland. As a colonizer, Gerald picked a far away place in which many had not been to, in order to establish them as the “other”. Unfortunately, for Gerald, he may have ridiculed the Irish for their lifestyle conveyed in his writing, but his exploitation of them most likely was done because he could in fact relate to them. In the book, The Postcolonial Middle Ages, Jeffery Jerome Cohen’s analysis in his chapter, “Hybrids, Monsters, Borderlands: The Bodies of Gerald of Wales”, closely focuses on Gerald’s cultural hybridity, which mirrors his accounts of the Irish. Although he deemed the Irish as barbaric, they were also hybrids, thus he also shared a feeling of displacement with them. Nonetheless, he still held himself to a higher degree because they did not properly celebrate Christianity, ultimately leading them to make other unpleasant decisions.
It is not obvious in The History and Topography of Ireland that Gerald is a hybrid, but when reading Cohen alongside the book, it seems that the negative depiction of the Irish was intentional for personal reasons. In his chapter, Cohen provides, “Gerald of Wales suggest[ion] that medieval hybridity is the admixture of categories, traumas, and temporalities that reconfigure what it means to be human. Medieval hybridity is inherently monstrous” (89). In his proposal, Gerald is demonstrating the rejection of any type of crossbreeding between cultures, races, and species. Although he feels that hybridity constitutes the lack of humanity, his...

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...ng it as bestial, it was easy enough to use the idea of hybridity to turn people against the Irish. Cohen goes on to explain that Gerald’s texts, including, “Topographia Hibernica are reductive texts that unabashedly glorify the invasion of Ireland” (94). History and Typography of Ireland, only made it more clear to his readers that something must be done for the Irish, because colonization would “help” the beasts.
It seems that Gerald always suppressed any feelings of connection between himself and any hybrid, therefore it would be just to suggest that his book would have also had an agenda to turn people against the atrocious and immoral hybridity of the Irish.
Gerald of Wales’ was most likely never in Ireland, and his writing is not an accurate portrayal of the Irish, but a chance to discuss hybridity and turn his readers against it while also the Irish.

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