Richard of Devizes, Walter Map, and Richard de Templo

Abstract

This chapter looks at the work of three historians—Richard of Devizes, Walter Map, and Richard de Templo—and the connection between history and literature. Richard of Devizes, though a Benedictine monk, wrote a chronicle whose tone is worldly and satirical and owes more to Juvenal than to the English chronicle tradition. In Walter Map’s work, fanciful stories coexist with commentary on recent historical events. Richard de Templo’s Itinerarium is largely based on a French verse work, but even those sections that are not show the influence of the chanson de geste tradition. Here these works are used to address questions of authorial intention and audience reception, the relationship between history and fiction, and the overlap between Latin prose and French verse historiography.