Introduction Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship

Abstract

Although feminist critics are producing readings of an increasing number and ever-widening variety of medieval texts, no feminist critic has analyzed the full range of female figures present in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s two extant works: the Historia regum Britanniae, an account of early British history that he completed shortly before fellow historian Henry of Huntingdon discovered a copy of it in January 1139, and the Vita Merlini, an Arthurian poem that Geoffrey completed in about 1150.1 In this volume, I offer a feminist-historicist analysis of the non-Arthurian portion of The History of the Kings of Britain that complements the analysis I have already published in its companion volume, Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Feminist Origins of the Arthurian Legend.2