L’Historia regum Britannie dans la Chronique dite de Baudouin d’Avesnes, ou l’art de la compilation médiévale

This volume collects the debates of a group of scholars from the Brest colloquium of 2012, which aimed to offer a new approach to the European historiographical tradition emerging from and influenced by the Historia regum Britannie of Geoffroy of Monmouth. The chronicles resulting from the process of adaptation and translation are generally called Bruts , but can also be used to complete wider texts — such as in the fourth redaction of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César (Richard Trachsler). The reception of the Historia regum Britannie varied greatly, as the French adapters tended, at least in the early chronicles, to perceive Geoffroy’s text as proper history, while it has been met with a critical reception among insular chroniclers (Jaakko Tahkokallio). Nevertheless, the will to integrate it in universal chronicles still persisted. The adaptations of the Historia regum Britannie , however, are not limited to the genre of the chronicle: it also has served as material for vernacular romances and epic poems (Laurence Mathey-Maille, Beatrice Barbieri), and its adaptations have often been completed with Enfances texts, especially with regard to the legend of King Arthur (Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan). The Historia regum Britannie is at the root of a unique set of medieval literature, and this volume offers insight into some of the less-known derivations, such as the Welsh tradition (Brynley F. Roberts, Pierre-Yves Lambert); the Icelandic sagas found under the name Breta Sögur (Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, Regina Jucknies); or some specific episodes, such as the Merlin prophecies, which found their own success in various countries (this is the case not just with French medieval literature, but also in late Spanish knightly romance (Alejandro Casais)). It is not only the prolific influence of this text that is exemplified in this volume, but also the importance of the transmission of the manuscripts containing various adaptations, and the marks different versions can leave in the further tradition (Mathey-Maille, Lambert, Roberts). The result of this particular type of circulation is of course an ample tradition, which exists not only in its own right, but can also be inserted in broader compilations, translated and modified at will. Often, from this kind of modification an amplified material will emerge, whose ties with the original text became quite loose to the point of asking if these texts can still be considered as Bruts at all (Heather Pagan). Their study can shed light on the work of the compilers and translators, who are sometimes renowned for their work and technique (Olivier Szerwiniack, Anne Salamon, Lloyd-Morgan), and how they can be linked to and reveal the cultural background of the time of the new texts’ composition (Jucknies, Françoise Le Saux). A substantial bibliography completes this volume, which is a first step towards a greater consideration of the diffusion and the means of adaptation of such a major text.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsThe "Historia regum Britannie" of Geoffrey of Monmouth, 3: A Summary Catalogue of the Manuscripts. Julia C. CrickLister M. MathesonLister M. Matheson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 67, Number 4Oct., 1992 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2863491 Copyright 1992 Medieval AcademyPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

<i>The "Historia Regum Britannie" of Geoffrey of Monmouth, 2: The First Variant Version, a Critical Edition.</i>Geoffrey of Monmouth, Neil Wright, N. H. Wolfeboro

Reviewed by: Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain. An Edition and Translation of the 'De gestis Britonum' [Historia Regum Britanniae] Siân Echard Michael D. Reeve , ed., and Neil Wright, trans., Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain. An Edition and Translation of the 'De gestis Britonum' [Historia Regum Britanniae]. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007. Paperback, 2009. Pp. lxxvi, 307. ISBN: 9-781-8438-344-1-0. $47.95. Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum britannie is indisputably a foundational document of the whole Arthurian tradition, yet paradoxically, it is this very importance that has presented would-be editors with an almost insurmountable task. The Historia survives in well over 200 manuscripts, and an editor must also contend with the variant traditions, and with the separate tradition for the Prophetie Merlini section of the text. The first modern editions all had limitations. Edmond Faral's 1929 attempt was frankly and modestly a reader's edition, with a variable and sometimes confusing apparatus. Acton Griscom's text, also appearing in 1929, surveyed most of the then-known manuscripts and made some use of three, but his base text was corrupt. Jacob Hammer's 1951 edition of the variant tradition was to have been followed by a scholarly edition of the main tradition, but Hammer died before he could complete the work. The editions which began to appear in 1985 in the Brewer Historia regum Britannie series focused on what one might think of as 'doable' projects: these are Neil Wright's editions of the Bern MS (to represent the Vulgate) and of the eight known witnesses to the First Variant tradition. While Reeve notes that Wright's base text for the 1985 edition is corrupt, the series it initiated has been a crucial resource for Galfridian scholars, and so it is a pleasure to see Wright's contribution, in this case as translator in Reeve's edition, to what is sure to be the standard text for the foreseeable future. Reeve's introduction is businesslike and occasionally funny (he calls the Prophetie a 'trailer' for the Historia, p. viii; he confesses to breathing a sigh of relief when Gualguainus and his difficult name finally perish, p. lii). A reader new to Geoffrey might wish for a little more on the biography and historical context, but this introduction is aimed squarely at the specialist reader, and in that respect does everything it needs to do. Reeve moves smartly to a discussion of his decision to collate eleven manuscripts in full and six in part, repeating some arguments from his 1991 Journal of Medieval Latin article on the transmission of Geoffrey's text. The edition does not collate all these manuscripts in its apparatus, but rather, aims to reconstruct the two most significant witnesses throughout, along with two other witnesses for certain sections of the text (Merlin's prophecies, and the narrative from that point to the end of the work). The textual introduction includes a manuscript stemma and several tables of variants. A casual user is unlikely to read all of Reeve's detailed analysis, which is a shame, for the admittedly forbidding technical sections are enlivened by touches of textual humor, as for example when Reeve observes that an omission is 'to the detriment of both sense and syntax' (p. xxi). Reeve himself notes that 'most readers... will prefer to skip' his survey of the whole of the manuscript tradition (p. xxxi)—that is, of the manuscripts beyond the seventeen forming the basis for his text—but this section, too, is full of useful detail. There follow brief sections on such issues as spelling, punctuation, Geoffrey's sources, and editions, and [End Page 129] a somewhat longer section of critical notes, where Reeve takes extra time to explain some particularly interesting or challenging editorial decisions. One of the shorter sections is where one finds the explanation for what is undoubtedly Reeve's most surprising decision—his choice of the title De gestis Britonum. Reeve notes that five of his manuscripts agree on this form of the title, and that Geoffrey uses it himself at the end of his Vita Merlini. I for one am...

The essay presents an analysis of how different prophetic textual traditions depicted catastrophic natural events between the 12th and early 14th centuries. The focus is particularly on the Latin and Romance prophetic corpora associated with the prophet Merlin: from the Prophetiae Merlini included in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie, to their Old French translation preserved in the manuscript of Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, n.a.f 4166; from the prophecies compiled in the Prophecies de Merlin to their Italian translation in Paulino Pieri’s Storia di Merlino. The study explores the various ways in which medieval prophecies provided an ideal space for representing nature, also reflecting on the methods of linguistic and cultural translation.

The "Historia regum Britannie" of Geoffrey of Monmouth, 4: Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages.Julia C. Crick

Breta (c. 1200) is the Old Norse translation of the more famous Historia regum Britannie [HRB] written by Geoffrey of Monmouth ic. 1100-1155) in the first half of the twelfth century. Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britannie} completed in the 1130s during his years as magister at Oxford, nearly two generations after the Norman Conquest, contains the stories of the kings of Britain from Brutus to Cadwallader, divided into twelve books, with books 9 to 11 containing the stories of King Arthur and Merlin. Geoffrey's Prophetiae/Libellas Merlini - The of - was originally an independent work, and only later was it incorporated into the Historia (Book 7). Indeed, the Libellas was circulating separately from the Historia, and plausibly even before the completion of the Historia itself.2 As the prologue to the prophecies states,Coegit me, Alexander Lincolinensis presul, nobilitatis tue dilecto prophetias Merlini de Britannico in Latinum transferre antequam historiam parassem quam de gestis regum Britannicorum inceperam.(HRB, 73)[Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, my admiration for your noble behaviour leaves me no other choice but to translate the Prophecies of Merlin from the British tongue into Latin, before I have finished the history which I had already begun of the deeds of the kings of the Britons.](JHKB, 170)Indeed, the translation of the Prophetiae by Gunnlaugr Leifsson (c. 1200) demonstrates that it was known in Scandinavia as a separate text; and, as Caroline Eckhardt remarks, over seventy manuscript copies of the Prophetia Merlini as a separate article survive.3 In his dedication Geoffrey claims that he translated the Historia into Latin from a book given to him by Walter, archdeacon of Oxford.Unlike the Historia, which is preserved in more than two-hundred manuscripts, Breta is extant in only a handful of manuscripts, in both a shorter and longer redaction. The longer version is found in two manuscripts.4 The first of these is Copenhagen, Arnamagnaean Institute, AM 573 4to (c. 1330-1370), containing Trojumanna saga, Breta scgur, and a fragment of Halvers pattr, a text typical of courtly literature. This version of Breta is incomplete, as it ends with the death of King Arthur. The second manuscript containing the longer version is Stockholm, Papp. fol. no. 58, a seventeenth-century copy of the now lost fourteenthcentury manuscript of the Ormsbok. This version contains only the first part of the saga and ends before the reign of King Arthur. The shorter version of Treta scgur used throughout this article, is represented only in Hauksbok, a manuscript named after Haukr Erlendsson,5 written between 1301 and 1314. This manuscript, now in three parts (AM 371 4to, AM 544 4to and AM 675 4to),6 contains different kinds of texts dealing with historical, geographical, mathematical and theological matters. Finnur Jonsson, in his introduction to the edition of Hauksbok, suggests that the texts in the manuscript can be divided into six groups: 1) History: (a) about Iceland: Eandnamabok, Kristni saga, FostbmOra saga, Eiriks saga rauda; (b) about Norway: Skalda saga - a history of the poets of King Haraldr harfagri - in three {^aettir (Flemings pattr, Pattr af Upplendinga konungum, and Ragnarssona pattr, and Hervar saga); (c) pseudohistory: Trojumanna saga and Treta scgur,1 2) Theology, philosophy and ethnography: Eluddarius, Heimslysing ok helgifroeoi, Heimspeki ok helgifroeoi, two dialogues known as ViOroeOa likams ok salar (Dialogue Tetrnen Tody and Soul*), and Prognostica temporum; 3) Natural history: Nattursteinar, 4) Calendar and mathematics: Cisio janus, and Algorismus; 5) the poem Vcluspd; 6) Fragments of text on different subjects. The collection of texts in the Hauksbok could be defined as Haukr Erlendsson's private library; it shows Haukr's interest in history and genealogy, as well as in science and poetry.As shown by the texts contained in Hauksbok, Scandinavian countries, and especially Iceland, were familiar with the practice of translation. …

Geoffrey of Monmouth uses the figure of Merlin to reveal metafictional levels of meaning in the HRB in order to foreground the historian's role in shaping perceptions of history.

<i>The "Historia Brittonum," 3: The "Vatican" Recension</i>. David N. Dumville<i>The "Historia regum Britannie" of Geoffrey of Monmouth</i>. Geoffrey of Monmouth , Neil Wright

Studies of Arthurian tradition often touch only lightly on the contribution of Latin texts to that tradition. Even at the dawn of the twenty-first century, when we are rediscovering almost daily new riches in the vernacular inheritance of the Middle Ages, it sometimes seems that we feel we know all we need to know about Latin. While Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie is given its just due as a foundational Arthurian text, Geoffrey is usually the only Latin writer to be included in an Arthurian survey, and he is also often seen as sui generis, a maverick who stands apart from the system that formed him and later judged him. Those judgements may be presented through a collection of disgruntled remarks by Latin chroniclers, and we have generally been content to accept their representation of Latin attitudes to Arthurian tradition as the attitude of the learned elite. Even then, however, we often do not appreciate the exact nature of these objections to Arthurian history.

“The Anger of Saturn shall fall”: Geoffrey of Monmouth's <i>Historia regum Britannie</i> and the limits of history

Reviewed by: Citation, Intertextuality and Memory in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives ed. by Giulino Di Bacco and Yolanda Plumley Katherine McLoone Citation, Intertextuality and Memory in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, vol. 2, ed. Giulino Di Bacco and Yolanda Plumley (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 2013) x + 259 pp. Like its companion volume, 2011’s Citation, Intertextuality and Memory in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Text, Music, and Image from Machaut to Ariosto (University of Exeter Press), this collection of essays stems from two workshops (on citation in French lyrics and songs) and a conference on “Citation, Intertextuality, and Memory in the Middle Ages” at the University of Exeter. [End Page 223] With such a thorough pedigree, it is no surprise that this volume continues the strong tradition of presenting numerous case studies that, taken together, illuminate the nuances of the “complex transitions between memorial and literate negotiations” of citation, quotation, and intertextuality in medieval and Renaissance literature, art, and music (2). The first essay in the collection, Jenny Benham’s “Walter Map and Ralph Glaber: Intertextuality and the Construction of Memories of Peacemaking,” sets the pattern followed, for the most part, by the following essays: case studies that explore a particular aspect of memory and intertextuality, followed by a section that examines the larger ramifications of those case studies. As Benham explains, even two accounts of a historical meeting might not lead the modern scholar to an accurate understanding of what happens—instead, “it may only confirm the authors’ use of citation, allusion, and intertextuality” (16). The theme of the instability of memory-studies continues in Sjoerd Levelt’s sprightly essay “Citation and Misappropriation in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britannie and the Anglo-Latin Historiographical Tradition. Levelt addresse the tradition of Latinate British histories from Bede to Gerald of Wales to argue that each text in that tradition rewrites, with cheeky emendation, its predecessors in order to exploit gaps and, ultimately, speak to a divided audience of the unwitting public and the expert historiographer. As those essays indicate, we are left with textual artifacts of citation, quotation, and intertextuality from which we must reconstruct mental processes and the representation of those processes. The three essays on musical citation explore precisely that theme, beginning with Anna Maria Busse Berger’s “Orality, Literacy and Quotation in Medieval Polyphony.” Berger examines how medieval musicians (specifically, Perotinus and Oswald von Wolkenstein) engaged their “memorial archive[s]” to conclude that orality and literacy—which we might call two forms of memory—affect medieval polyphonic composition (31). Helen Deeming’s “Music, Memory, and Mobility: Citation and Contrafactum in Thirteenth-Century Sequence Repertories” explores contrafactum, the practice of “substituting a new text to an existing song-melody,” which has the effect of associating the original text with the new one, creating a “virtual polyphony” in which both songs exist “simultaneously … in the mind … of the musician” (68, 69). Memory, citation, and identity are further explored in Jennifer Saltzstein’s “Intertextuality and Authorial Self-Representation in the Music of Adam de la Halle”; Adam’s self-citation—unusual in medieval musical refrains—creates an intertextual identity for the author. But is an intertextual, constructed identity stable? Both R. Barton Palmer (“Centrifugal Allusion and the Centripetal Text: The Example of Guillaume de Machaut”) and Emma Cayley (“Coming Apart at the Seams? Citation as Transvestism in Fifteenth-Century Debate Poetry”) emphasize the instability of citation and memory, and how that instability can affect subjectivity. Cayley examines debate poetry and accompanying illustrations to argue that “citation in the Derridean sense and Butlerian gender performance trouble the reader through their erosion of any stable identity or subject position in the text” (66), while Palmer explores the “discontents of authorship and the drama of the self” in Machaut emphasize on the subjectivity of poetic existence (161). [End Page 224] Of course, to speak of memory and subjectivity without recourse to passion omits a vital component of existence. Both Lina Bolzoni (“The Impassioned Memory in Dante’s Divine Comedy”) and Naomi Howell (“Sepulchral Citations in Twelfth-Century Romance”) address the emotional effect of memory and intertextuality. Bolzoni links Dante’s engagement with mnemotechniques to the...

THE ROUND TABLE65 Ebrauke and the Politics of Arthurian Geography RICHARD J. MOLL Medieval tradition gives us three possible locations for Dolorous Garde, the castle in which I.ancelot protected Guinevere from Arthur's vengeance. The Auchinleck version ofrhe ShortEnglishMetrical Chronicle tells us that the pair resided in Nottingham, while Thomas Malory suggests that the castle was either Alnwick or Bamburgh. It has been proposed that both of these statements are inspired by contemporary political issues, and indeed an association between Alnwick and Dolorous Garde does seem to be invented to echo cuttent events. Both Nottingham and Bamburgh, however, had long been associared with King Ebrauke's foundation ofa castle called either Mount Dolorous or Dolorous Garde. Rather than inventing the tradirion, therefore, both the anonymous chronicler and Malory adapted existing traditions concerning Ebrauke to their own thematic concerns. The ultimate source for rhis confusing srate of affairs is, of course, Geoffrey of Monmourh's Historia regum Britannie, where Ebrauke is a minor figure. The fourth king after Brurus, Fibrauke is known for his many children and his city-building activities. Most famously, he establishes York, 'id est ciuitas Ebrauci' [rhat is, the city ofEbrauke], but he also founds 'oppidum montis Agned, quod nunc Castellum Puellarum dicirur, et Montem Dolorosum' [the fort at Mount Agned, which now is called the Castle ofMaidens, and Mount Dolorous]. Several latet chroniclers felr rhat Mount Dolorous was an alternative name fot the Castle of Maidens, while others attempted to identify it, just as the Castle ofMaidens was identified as Edinburgh. The first author to claim that Ebrauke founded Bamburgh was Geffrei Gaimar in his mid-twelfth-century Estoire des Engleis. Gaimar had also translated Geoffrey's Historia as the Estoiredes Bretuns, but that work is now lost. In the EstoiredesEngleis Gaimar writes of Ida, the king of Bernicia, who reigned twelve years ? Baenburc bien restotad, / Dechaette ctt e mult defraite / De si cum Eubrac Tot ainz faite' [and well restored Bamburgh, which was in ruins and falling down from when Ebrauke had earlier esrablished it]. The detail about Ebrauke's foundation of Bamburgh is an addirion to Gaimat's source. Gaimar does not specifically associate the castle with Mount Dolorous, but, given the later Traditions discussed below, it seems a fair assumption that he had included a full account ofEbrauke's foundations in his translation of Geoffrey and that pethaps he had there identified Bambutgh with Mount Dolorous. The association between Ebrauke and Bamburgh was not universal, however, and Raufde Boun's Le Petit Bruit (c. 1309) srates that King Ebrauke founded 'Ie chasrel Sidemound Dolorous qe homme appelle ore le chastel de Notyngham' [the Castle of Sidemound Dolorous, which men now call the castle of Nottingham].4 Rauf suggests that the castle was called 'Dolorous' because Ebrauke's wife and children 66ARTHURIANA were killed thete by Gog and Magog. It is unclearwhy rhese authors add Nottingham and Bamburgh ro the list ofEbrauke's foundations. They may merely be supplying information missingin the Historiabyassigning northern castles to Geoffrey's cryptic reference to Mount Dolorous. These identifications could be based on local oral Tradition or, perhaps, simply the whim of rhe chronicler. Ir is only after Ebrauke had been credited with founding both Bamburgh and Nottingham that the firsr Arthurian association is made in the Auchinleck version of the ShortEnglish Metrical Chronicle (c. 1330s). Other versions ofthis chronicle give a typical précis ofArthur's reign, but this manuscript presents an unusual picture. It is, in fact, the only English chronicle to deviate from Geoffrey of Monmourh's narrative and include a romande relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere. After a brief passage of praise for the king, the Arthurian section quickly turns to internal conflict: bcrafter aros wer strong burch he quen in his lond. Launcelot de Lac held his wiif, Forjji bitven hem ros gret striif. Lancelot was a qucynt man: For \>c quen sake he made Notingham, be castcl wip mani selcou]3c wonder, Caucs mani he made pervnder. Ri;5t in \>e hard ston Chambers he made mani on !•at ))c quen mißt in wone, ;^ifhe king wald |)ider come. After the couple has resided in Nottingham for almosr fouryears, Arrhur...

‘This book, attractively composed to form a consecutive and orderly narrative’: The Ambiguity of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie

The HRB presents an ambivalent colonial fantasy, wherein encounters between unequal powers establish domination through topographic, linguistic, and erotic desire.