Walter Map and the matter of Britain by Smith, Joshua Byron (review)

Abstract

192 North American journal of Celtic studies Smith, Joshua Byron. Walter Map and the matter of Britain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. ISBN 978–0–8122–4923–3. 272 pp. $69.95 (cloth), $69.95 (eBook). Daniel G. Helbert West Texas A&M University In this book, the first monograph on Walter Map in English, Smith uses his laser-focused study of De nugis curialium to gesture outwards and reflect on some bigger questions in Celtic studies and the literary milieu of late-twelfth-century Britain. Some of the major issues surrounding Walter Map that are addressed in this study are: the literary culture of the twelfth-century March of Wales; the status of Latin within Welsh and Anglo-Norman society; the portrayal of Welsh politics, law, ethics, and culture within non-Welsh literature ; Henry ii’s court and its association with literary production; and the origins of the Lancelot-Grail cycle and how the ‘Matter of Britain’ was created. Perhaps selling himself short, Smith narrows these concerns into two specific arguments: ‘The first is that Walter Map’s De nugis curialium is not the disheveled and disorganized text that scholars have imagined’, and the second is that ‘ecclesiastical networks of textual exchange played a major role in exporting Welsh literary material into England in the twelfth century’ (1). Smith’s first chapter establishes the context for these arguments by situating Map within the Marches and Henry ii’s court. That combination is especially important for the reception of Map’s work because, as Smith shows, Map is keen to establish himself as an ‘expert’ on the Welsh for Henry’s court—even though Map himself identifies variously as a ‘Marcher’ and as an ‘Englishman’. Chapters ii and iii do the meticulous work of carrying out the first part of Smith’s argument; his thorough examination of the contents , structure, and history of Bodley 851 (the sole witness to De nugis curialium) insists that, instead of a singular jumbled mess of ‘trifles’ divided into five linked sections, Map originally intended to have five distinct and unified works with separate (though related ) themes. Smith is especially convincing in his reading of Map’s ‘doublets’, thought by most (myself included) to be rambling repetitions of earlier sections. Instead, Smith demonstrates how these repetitions are actually moments of revision that have been permanently preserved, unintentionally, in a single manuscript that has copious scribal errors and non-authorial sections. Reading through one section of these revisions leads to his fourth chapter, in which Smith analyzes Map’s romance of King Herla. This romance has long been thought to have ‘Celtic analogues’ because of its employment of certain folk motifs and the setting of ancient Britain. Instead, Smith demonstrates that ‘Herla’ is a nearly full-blown invention by Map that has been made to look like a ‘Celtic’ story for demonstrable political purposes. The provocative implications of this reading are taken up further in chapters v and vi, which argues that this situation of non-Welsh, Latinate authors working with Welsh-Latin documents and inventing the Matter of Britain is likely to be the status quo rather than an individual anomaly. Daniel Helbert [dhelbert@​ wtamu​ .edu] is Assistant Professor of English at West Texas A&M University. He researches and teaches the comparative literature of the British Middle Ages, medievalism, and environmental humanities. Reviews 193 In regard to the first of his two arguments, Smith’s meticulous reading of Map certainly heightens one’s appreciation of the strange and important document we call De nugis curialium. The misperception that Map was an unorganized and flighty author stems from two sources: (i) the disheveled state of the document represented by Bodley 851, and (ii) Map’s own comments about his flightiness. The latter of these has inappropriately confirmed the former in the past when (now, in hindsight) his comments fit more appropriately within the ubiquitous modesty topos of the period. As to the reading represented by the faulty manuscript, that is now a problem that can be partially mitigated by Smith’s account. Rather than a hodgepodge of random and often repetitive tales jumbled together under a misleading ‘authorial’ organization, Smith demonstrates how Map was in the process of...