The Luttrell Psalter is one of the most recognisable illuminated manuscripts produced in medieval England and is perhaps known for its wild profusion of marginal and hybrid creatures, as well as the bas-de-page illuminations that depict pastoral life. It is those images which have led to the psalter being linked to an idea of “Englishness.” Yet, to view the psalter only through this lens is to misunderstand the codex entirely. Sharing the marginal spaces alongside the scenes of rural life are bodies which can be categorised as ‘Other’ – the Scots, Irish, Jews, ‘Ethiopians’ and ‘Saracens.’ The ideas of “Englishness” and the foreign appear to be at odds with each other, however, whilst paradoxical a sense of one informs a sense of the other. This paper uses the ideas of borders – real (those of the book) and imagined (those informed by difference) - to ascertain how the creation and use of borders inform medieval identities. Doing so means using ideas of medieval race and race-making, both in relation to Whiteness and its extension in the psalter “Englishness,” to gain insight into how Otherness is constructed. By assessing race-making through codicological means reveals the importance of how material objects such as manuscripts become vehicles to aid us in the quest for understanding how race functioned in the premodern world, free from the constraints and possible anachronisms introduced by canonical race theory. Georgie Anderson is a CHASE AHRC Stuart Hall Foundation doctoral candidate at the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent. Her thesis currently titled Tracing the Figure of the Black Knight in Chivalric Romances from North Atlantic Europe uses a literary and codicological focus to investigate how race and race making functions in medieval Europe, and to discover new terminologies that better represent premodern race in relation to its modern counterpart. Her other research interests include the cultural connections between medieval England and the Low Countries, particularly their shared literatures.

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