Abstract
Even if Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae has been the subject of much attention by philologists, historians and folklorists, one can hardly say it has received a proper literary analysis. It is claimed here that, even from this point of view, this text is the result of a concerted project. The analysis of the first part of the Historia — the adventures of Brutus, the eponymous founder of the Britons — proves that Geoffrey consciously set out to integrate successively the three « matieres » of Rome (the ancient epic), of France (the « chanson de geste ») and of the Britons (the celtic marvellous myths and legends), in order to accomplish what could be called a « comprehensive narrative ». The aim of such an enterprise, addressed to a public that is not exclusively clerical, is to replace the kind of writing inherited from the High Middle Ages, directed towards an audience whose expectation were exclusively eschatological, with the secularised expression of a new experience of time.
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