The Arthur of Medieval Latin Literature: The Development and Dissemination of the Arthurian Legend in Medieval Latin (review)

Abstract

SIÂN ECHARD, ed., The Arthur of Medieval Latin Literature: The Development and Dissemination of the Arthurian Legend in Medieval Latin. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages 6. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2011. Pp. xi, 199. ISBN 978-0-7083-2201-7. $70.00. This volume is the latest in a series under the general editorship of Ad Putter, earlier volumes having dealt with the Arthurs of the Welsh, English, Germans, French, and the North. The proposed multiplicity is a laconic editorial statement that is also realized in the present collection of essays. Volume editor Siân Echard, after a Preface by Putter and her own Introduction, has organized the eight contributions in four sections: 'The Seeds of History and Legend,' 'Geoffrey of Monmouth,' 'Chronicles and Romances,' and 'After the Middle Ages.' Both Putter and Echard contribute essays of their own. In the Introduction Echard stresses that 'Latin is the language of textuality in Geoffrey's [Geoffrey of Monmouth] day' and carried with it a 'self-conscious awareness of matters of style at the level of word, argument and form' (1). The studies of Section One reveal that visions of the king tend to be 'subordinated to the larger ideological schemes of the texts in question' (7). In the opening essay, 'The Chroniclers of Early Britain,' Nick Higham provides a survey of such histories, revealing a progressive engagement with the Arthurian topic, from annals to chronicles and on to polemic. Key texts and authors are the Historia Brittonum, Gildas, Bede, and Annales Cambriae. In them, legendary figures are developed via biblical imagery to a particular rhetorical effect in which the historicity of the figure of Arthur is less fundamental than its adaptability to ideological purpose. Of the texts, 'theirs [the authors'] were Arthurs developed retrospectively for specific and very immediate purposes, with no universal claim on reality centuries earlier' (21). In 'Arthur in Early Saints' Lives,' Andrew Breeze catalogues a large number of passing references and offers capsule summaries of the widely varying stances early modern and modern scholarship has taken to this still largely unexplored material. Breeze contends that the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, to be seen as promoting the political advancement of Gwynedd and Dyfed, 'offer a template against which the Arthurian passages in Latin hagiography can be gauged' (39). With regard to Section Two and Geoffrey of Monmouth, editor Echard recalls the greater trajectory of Geoffrey's work and his 'persistent interest in both human rulers and the larger forces which shape and perhaps circumscribe their rule' (43). Her own full-length essay that follows, 'Geoffrey of Monmouth,' becomes central to the collection as a whole, by virtue of both Geoffrey's disputed eminence and influence, and its own scholarly quality. In a corrective to the modern perspective, she emphasizes that Geoffrey is writing about a long sequence of kings who came before and after the Incarnation. Yet despite the sweep of recreated history, 'Geoffrey is...rather like Merlin. He can see what is going to happen; he can, for a time, make history stand still-but he too is, finally, a spectator, one who can show but not change, what he knows' (59). …