Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on translations
- Introduction: Latin Arthurian narrative and the Angevin court
- 1 “The Anger of Saturn shall fall”: Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britannie and the limits of history
- 2 “This is that Arthur”: chronicle responses to Arthur
- 3 “Are you the only uncivilized knight produced by sweet Britain?”: Arthurian episodes and knightly conduct
- 4 “Understanding the thing as it is”: De Ortu Waluuanii and the challenge of interpretation
- 5 “Dies fantastica”: the Historia Meriadoci and the adventure of the text
- 6 “When I have done you will be little the wiser”: Arthur and Gorlagon, Vita Merlini, and parody
- Conclusion: “A wise man may enjoy leisure”: The place of Latin Arthurian literature
- List of works cited
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
2 - “This is that Arthur”: chronicle responses to Arthur
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on translations
- Introduction: Latin Arthurian narrative and the Angevin court
- 1 “The Anger of Saturn shall fall”: Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britannie and the limits of history
- 2 “This is that Arthur”: chronicle responses to Arthur
- 3 “Are you the only uncivilized knight produced by sweet Britain?”: Arthurian episodes and knightly conduct
- 4 “Understanding the thing as it is”: De Ortu Waluuanii and the challenge of interpretation
- 5 “Dies fantastica”: the Historia Meriadoci and the adventure of the text
- 6 “When I have done you will be little the wiser”: Arthur and Gorlagon, Vita Merlini, and parody
- Conclusion: “A wise man may enjoy leisure”: The place of Latin Arthurian literature
- List of works cited
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
Summary
While Geoffrey of Monmouth may surely be credited with producing the first ordered, sequential, and complete Arthurian story, that story quickly moved from the realm of Latin history (or pseudo-history) into the world of vernacular romance and chronicle adaptation. By the end of the twelfth century, we see the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and the vernacular adaptations of Geoffrey in Wace's Brut and in the Welsh Bruts; by the thirteenth there are Layamon's translation and adaptation of Wace, the Welsh adaptations of French romances, and the great French prose cycles. The few free-standing Latin Arthurian narratives studied in the chapters that follow seem slight next to this vernacular proliferation. It would however be misleading to suggest that they are the only evidence for the prominence – or lack of it – of the Arthurian story in Latin prose and verse.
There is a wealth of Arthurian reference in Latin chronicles, both before and after Geoffrey. Before Geoffrey, Arthur appears (perhaps) as the unnamed victor of Badon in Gildas, as the dux bellorum of “Nennius,” with his list of battles, and the Arthur who died at Camlann with Medraut in the Annales Cambriae. Also before Geoffrey's Historia is the famously disgruntled remark of William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Regum Anglorum: “This is that Arthur about whom the foolish tales of the Britons rave even today; one who is clearly worthy to be told about in truthful histories rather than to be dreamed about in deceitful fables, since for a long time he sustained his ailing nation, and sharpened the unbroken minds of his people to war.”
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- Information
- Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition , pp. 68 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998