03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 93 2 THE ARTHUR OF THE CHRONICLES Françoise Le Saux and Peter Damian-Grint Geoffrey of Monmouth It is established usage when discussing medieval Arthurian texts to distinguish between a ‘romance’ tradition, the best-known examples of which are the works of Chrétien de Troyes, and a pseudo-historical tradition, originating with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (c.1138).1 This distinction is based on obvious structural and narrative differences: the romances typically are episodic in nature and focus on the personal adventures of one or several heroes connected with Arthur’s court, whereas the pseudo-histories cover the entirety of the history of Celtic Britain, thus placing Arthur within a wider pattern of dynastic succession. They also have a marked annalistic flavour, thanks to the time rubrics that punctuate the narrative, hence the term ‘Arthurian (pseudo- )chronicles’ commonly used to refer to these works. By present-day standards, the chronicle strand of the Arthurian tradition is not ‘real’ history, in the sense that much of the material sprung on an unsuspecting and delighted world by Geoffrey of Monmouth is pure fiction, but it was accepted by most of Geoffrey’s contem- poraries as a convincing and authoritative historical narrative. There are a number of reasons for the ease with which the Historia was granted the authoritative status it so quickly achieved. First, Geoffrey of Monmouth himself was not without credentials. He was a cleric, probably an Augustinian canon active in Oxford between 1129 and 1151, and acquainted with Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. Indeed, Geoffrey maintains in his preface that it was Walter himself who provided the source of the Historia, a ‘very ancient book written in the British language’.2 Geoffrey was made Bishop Elect of St Asaph in Flintshire in 1151, ordained and consecrated in 1152, and in 1153 was one of the bishops witnessing the Treaty of Westminster between King Stephen and Henry, son of the Empress Matilda. He is thought to have died in 1155. We are therefore dealing with a genuine scholar, who enjoyed a good network of ecclesiastical and political connections and whose Welsh origins lent credibility to his claim that he translated Walter’s ancient book into Latin. The discovery of the book itself would not have been perceived as implausible, as the existence of a long written tradition in the Celtic languages was known and accepted. Moreover, the Historia is not pure fabrication. It draws from a range of 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 94 94 THE ARTHUR OF THE FRENCH sources, both oral and written, including all the historical sources available at the time, from the classics to the Historia Britonum and the works of Gildas and Bede. Even if we cannot accept the claim made by Geoffrey in his introduction that his putative source was ‘attractively composed to form a consecutive and orderly narrative’ (5), he certainly made extensive use of Welsh genealogies and king-lists (Piggott 1941). The stories relating to different kings and their parentage might well be due to Geoffrey’s imagination, but the names at least were genuine, and their order of succession was roughly based on the authority of Welsh documents. In order to create the illusion of chronological coherence, Geoffrey punctuates his narrative with time rubrics which hint at the underlying indebtedness to an annalistic type of source and always refer to well-known events in world history. New and old material is interwoven; references to events and characters mentioned by recognized authorities indirectly validate the narra- tive of the lesser-known events happening at the same time in Britain. The material specific to Geoffrey, buttressed by this armature of respectability, is made more credible for a reader who finds the Historia to be in agreement, or at least not in contradiction with, established knowledge. By the time the truly dubious stories turn up – Vortigern’s tower, Merlin’s prophecies, the moving of the stones of Stonehenge from Ireland, and of course Arthur’s conception, glorious conquests and mysterious end – the reader has already accepted the credentials of the Historia and is more likely to enjoy the stories than to question them. Politically, the Historia conferred valuable prestige on the Plantagenet kings, who encouraged the acceptance and dissemination of the work; but this in itself cannot account for its extraordinary popular success. The key to an under- standing of the enthusiastic reception of the Historia may be found in the opening lines of Geoffrey’s prologue: Whenever I have chanced to think about the history of the kings of Britain, on those occa- sions when I have been turning over a great many such matters in my mind, it has seemed a remarkable thing to me that, apart from such mention of them as Gildas and Bede have each made in a brilliant book on the subject, I have not been able to discover anything at all on the kings who lived here before the Incarnation of Christ, or indeed about Arthur and all the others who followed on after the Incarnation. Yet the deeds of these men were such that they deserve to be praised for all time. What is more, these deeds were handed joyfully down in oral tradition, just as if they had been committed to writing, by many peoples who had only their memory to rely on. (5) Geoffrey is here signalling a gap in the scholarly market, the existence of which is obvious because of the alleged existence of a reliable oral tradition. This lacuna is an injustice to the memory of the great departed, especially of Arthur. Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, then opportunely comes along with his ‘ancient book’. It is clear that King Arthur is very much the hook with which Geoffrey hopes 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 95 THE ARTHUR OF THE CHRONICLES 95 to catch his audience’s attention. We know that tales about Arthur were circu- lating in Europe at the time, witness the well-known Arthurian archivolt of Modena cathedral, featuring Arthur and his knights apparently attacking a castle to free the captive Winlogee (Guinevere).3 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s achievement is to provide an authoritative, scholarly background for the char- acter of Arthur. From the hero of popular tales he is transformed into a medieval king, presented as belonging to a specific dynasty, fixed in time by certain dates, active in realistic geographical settings and fighting identifiable enemies. He maintains law and order in his realm, protects the Church and distributes lands and ecclesiastical benefices. Arthur, on one level, is just one king among over a hundred mentioned in the Historia. After his death in 542, he is succeeded by another twelve rulers before dominion over Britain passes to the English. Moreover, the salient features of his reign – resisting the enemy within (treacherous relatives as well as the pagan Saxons) and defying the enemy without (the Romans) – are present in the accounts of the lives of other rulers. Belinus and Brennius have already conquered Rome once; the son of the British princess Helen was a Roman emperor; strife within the ruling family is a recurrent feature from Locrinus onwards, and its effects are no less destructive than Mordred’s treachery, whilst the struggle against the Saxons remains constant from the moment they are allowed to settle in Britain by Vortigern. However, Arthur’s importance is signalled by the fact that his reign is recounted at exceptional length, taking up over one sixth of the Historia as a whole; by comparison, succeeding kings seem somewhat colourless. Arthur’s rule is recounted in a predominantly epic mode, with lavish descriptions of the pomp and splendour surrounding state events. But what truly makes it stand out is the king’s aura of predestined glory. Essential to an understanding of the Arthurian section is the figure of Merlin.4 Geoffrey first introduces him as the wonder-child who announces to Vortigern the return to Britain of Aurelius and Uther, Arthur’s uncle and his father-to-be; he later prophesies the greatness of Arthur at the death of Aurelius and engineers Arthur’s birth through appearance-changing drugs which allow Uther to gain access to the chaste Ygerne, Countess of Cornwall. Whether these circumstances surrounding his conception enhance Arthur’s greatness, or constitute an essential weakness, will be a matter of debate for Geoffrey’s later readers, but there is a sense in which Arthur’s achievements merely confirm the reliability of Merlin, specifically with regard to the political prophecies recorded in Book VII of the Historia (§§109–17). These prophecies, in the cryptic and obscure style associated with the genre, had been written and circulated by Geoffrey before the comple- tion of the Historia; their strong political associations suggest that the work as a whole might have been intended as a cautionary tale for the Plantagenets, under the guise of history. Arthur could then be read as a warning: even the greatest of 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 96 96 THE ARTHUR OF THE FRENCH kings will be unable to fulfil his destiny if he cannot count on the loyalty of his kin. As a political fable, the Historia failed to have much impact, but it gained swift and almost universal acceptance as history.5 From the moment the Historia was published, it became the definitive history of Celtic Britain. Moreover, it offered a fund of stories and anecdotes, fully crafted in elegant Latin and attractive to a wide audience. Above all, Geoffrey turned Arthur into a respectable historical personage, rather than a figment of the imagination of frivolous storytellers. These elements combined to make the work an instant best-seller; over 200 manuscripts are still extant. [FLS] Wace In 1155, an outstanding French verse translation of Geoffrey’s Historia was completed by Wace, a Jersey-born cleric active in Caen, one of the most impor- tant intellectual and political centres of twelfth-century Normandy. Thought to have been born around 1100, Wace was already an experienced writer when he tackled Geoffrey’s immensely popular work. He claims in his later Roman de Rou that he was the author of a wide range of poetic works, and from his earlier period we still have three hagiographical poems translated from the Latin: La Vie de sainte Marguerite, La Vie de saint Nicolas and La Conception Nostre Dame; these early works chart the progress of a burgeoning career. Having completed his education, probably in Paris, but possibly in Chartres, the young Wace gained a reputation which won him the support, first of local religious establishments, then, for the Conception, of local secular patrons and, finally, for the Roman de Brut, of the greatest lord of Normandy, the King of England. The Brut was an immediate success, both as a scholarly endeavour – Wace’s work was to become the French version of Geoffrey’s Historia, eclipsing previous attempts at recasting the British material in French6 – and as literature, influencing amongst others Chrétien de Troyes. Henry II rewarded the poet with a prebend at the abbey of Bayeux, in Normandy, where Wace probably died some time after 1174.7 Some thirty-two manuscripts of Wace’s Brut are still extant, of which nineteen are complete or near-complete. In the two oldest manuscripts, both Anglo- Norman (the late twelfth-century Durham Cathedral, MS C. iv. 27 and the early thirteenth-century Lincoln Cathedral, MS 104), the work is copied alongside Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis and Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, providing the reader with an overview of the history of Britain from the earliest times; the poem was clearly read as history. Later manuscripts, however, and particularly those produced on the Continent, tend to combine the Brut with Arthurian 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 97 THE ARTHUR OF THE CHRONICLES 97 romances, indicating that beyond the Anglo-Norman world it was read as a work of fiction rather than an independent historical work. The text of the Brut combines two versions of the Historia with additions from Wace’s fund of general knowledge, both scholarly and popular. The first part of his poem, up to the prophecies of Merlin, is based on the ‘Variant version’, an anonymous rewriting of Geoffrey’s Historia, which slightly abbreviates the text whilst adding a few details and introducing a more pedagogical and moral tone to the work (Wright edn 1988, l–lxxv). After the prophecies of Merlin, Wace appears to have used both the Variant version and Geoffrey’s own, fuller text; this suggests that he wished to include as much information as possible in the Arthurian sections, which he amplifies to a far greater extent than the rest of Geoffrey’s narrative. Over 4,000 octosyllabic lines, out of a total of 14,866, are devoted to the reign of Arthur. The importance of Merlin, though, is considerably reduced, through the omission of the entire book containing the prophecies. Wace’s expla- nation suggests that his main concern was with the authority of his text: Ne vuil sun livre translater Quant jo nel sai interpreter; Nule rien dire nen vuldreie Que si ne fust cum jo dirreie. (7539–42) (I do not wish to translate his book, as I do not know how to interpret it; I would not wish to say something that would not turn out as I said.) Even a slight misinterpretation of this notoriously obscure (and politically sensi- tive) material might jeopardize his standing as a scholar and the credibility of the Brut as a whole. The passage from Latin to French did indeed bring specific problems. Unlike Welsh, which enjoyed the authority of a language with a long written tradition, French was not perceived as a medium of learning. Moreover, the audience Wace was addressing (the lay members of the Plantagenet court, and, if the English poet Layamon is to be believed, Eleanor of Aquitaine herself) could not be expected to recognize references to, or echoes of, Latin authorities. The proce- dure of implicit validation adopted by Geoffrey and retained with some adaptations by the redactor of the Variant version was not suitable for a work in the French vernacular aimed at lay readers or listeners. Wace, therefore, had to find an explicit way of affirming both his own authority and that of his work, ensuring that any cultural or literary references were understood, but in such a way that his intended audience would not feel unduly patronized. The narrative persona he creates is both scholarly and endearingly candid about the limits of his knowledge. The expression ‘ne sai’ (I do not know) occurs so frequently that it almost becomes a mannerism. However, the information ‘not known’ is invari- ably trivial or technical in nature, with the result that the authority of the narrator is actually enhanced. Where scholarly detail is provided, one notices a 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 98 98 THE ARTHUR OF THE FRENCH principle of pedagogical inclusiveness at work. For example, his frequent, lengthy discussions of linguistic change and its effect on place-names show off his knowl- edge, but they also create a link with the everyday experience of members of his audience, who would have been well aware of problems of language ‘corruption’ in an already multi-cultural country. Greater stress is also placed on events relating to religious history. For example, Wace introduces an entirely new story about Taliesin, who is mentioned only fleetingly in Geoffrey’s Historia, though he is one of the main protagonists of Geoffrey’s later Vita Merlini. Wace turns Taliesin into a British Isaiah, proph- esying the birth of Christ and responsible for the British responsiveness to the good news of the Gospel. This added vignette is also good story-telling, designed to entertain under the guise of instruction. Wace’s readiness to add details and anecdotes to make his work more accessible to the general reader or listener gains momentum in the poem, reaching a climax in the Arthurian section. Wace’s most striking addition is the mention of the Round Table, borrowed directly from popular oral tales: Pur les nobles baruns qu’il out, Dunt chescuns mieldre estre quidout, Chescuns se teneit al meillur, Ne nuls n’en saveit le peiur, Fist Artur la Runde Table Dunt Bretuns dient mainte fable. (9747–52) (Because of his noble barons, each of whom thought himself superior to the others, each of whom considered himself the best, without anyone knowing who was the worst, Arthur made the Round Table, about which the Bretons tell many a tale.) The point of this, says Wace, was that it put an end to quarrels arising from seating precedence, as the table had no high or low end. The creation of the Round Table is even given a date: it took place when Arthur returned to England after conquering Scotland and Scandinavia and settled down to a glorious peace that was to last twelve years (9730). The stories circulating about Arthur and his knights are presented as a record, albeit imperfect, of this protracted period of peace: En cele grant pais ke jo di, Ne sai si vus l’avez oï, Furent les merveilles pruvees E les aventures truvees Ki d’Arthur sunt tant recuntees Ke a fable sunt aturnees: Ne tut mençunge, ne tut veir, Ne tut folie ne tut saveir. Tant unt li cunteür cunté E li fableür tant flablé Pur lur cuntes enbeleter, Que tut unt fait fable sembler. (9787–98) 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 99 THE ARTHUR OF THE CHRONICLES 99 (It was in this time of great peace I have mentioned – I do not know if you have heard of it – that the wondrous events occurred and the adventures were experienced that are so often told about Arthur, to the extent that they have been turned into tales: not all lies, not all true, neither all folly nor all wisdom. The story-tellers have told so many tales, the spinners of yarns have recounted so many fables, that they have made everything seem like pure invention, in their attempts to embellish their stories.) Wace does for Arthurian tales what Geoffrey did for Arthur himself: he gives them credibility and anchors them in time. The fact that the adventures of the Round Table took place during a period of peace rationalizes the contrast between the forceful and energetic conqueror of ‘history’ and the somewhat shadowy ‘roi fainéant’ of romance. Indeed, the account of Arthur’s campaign against Rome allows Wace to foreground prominent Arthurian characters such as Kay (Kei), Bedivere (Bedoer) and especially Gauvain (Walwein), whose heroic stature Wace endows with a somewhat gentler nature than his counterpart in Geoffrey of Monmouth. In a light-hearted exchange with Cador of Cornwall, following the Roman ultimatum to Arthur, Gauvain is made an advocate for the virtues of peace, in terms that would not be out of place in any romance: Bone est la pais emprés la guerre Plus bele et mieldre en est la terre; Mult sunt bones les gaberies E bones sunt les drueries. Pur amistié e pur amies Funt chevaliers chevaleries. (10767–72) (It is good to have peace after war, the land is the fairer and the better for it; it is excellent to be able to indulge in joking and courting the ladies. It is for love and their beloveds that knights perform knightly deeds.) This little speech is an addition by Wace to the scene found in his Latin source. It acts as a corrective to the warlike enthusiasm of Cador, casting Gauvain in the role of courtly admirer of ladies that is his hallmark in the romance tradition. Despite his qualified endorsement of popular tales of Arthur, Wace does not succumb to the temptation to interpolate any of them into his narrative, beyond the mention of the Round Table.8 He follows faithfully the structure and sequence of events of the Historia, expanding on descriptions of sea journeys, court events and battle scenes. The evident pleasure taken in the depiction of the pomp and luxury of state occasions is in great part responsible for Wace’s reputation as a courtly poet. The Arthur who most inspired Wace was the conqueror of France and victor over Emperor Lucius of Rome; the struggle for self-preservation on British soil and the ensuing consolidation of power of the youthful Arthur are not elaborated to any great extent. This may be interpreted as a desire to undermine further the political undercurrent to Geoffrey’s material, or simply as an indication that Wace was trying to make the narrative more continental in outlook. Wace’s handling of the characters of Mordred and Guinevere similarly weakens the 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 100 100 THE ARTHUR OF THE FRENCH political dimension of their treason, motivating Mordred’s usurpation of Arthur’s bed and throne by a long-standing secret love harboured for queen (11179–89), rather than by the lust for power implied by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account. More so than in the Historia, there is a distance between the narrator of the Brut and his material, which is seen most clearly in the aside relating to Arthur’s death: Arthur, si la geste ne ment Fud el cors nafrez mortelment; En Avalon se fist porter Pur ses plaies mediciner. Encore i est, Bretun l’atendent, Si cum il dient e entendent De la vendra, encor puet vivre. Maistre Wace, ki fist cest livre, Ne volt plus dire de sa fin Qu’en dist li prophetes Merlin; Merlin dist d’Artur, si ot dreit, Que sa mort dutuse serreit. Li prophetes dist verité; Tut tens en ad l’um puis duté, E dutera, ço crei, tut dis, Se il est morz u il est vis. (13275–90) (If the story is true, Arthur received a mortal wound to his body. He had himself carried to Avalon to have his wounds tended. He is still there, the British are waiting for him; they say and believe that he will return from there, he may still be alive. Master Wace, who made this book, will not say any more about his end than did the prophet Merlin. Merlin said about Arthur, and he was right, that his death would be doubtful. The prophet spoke truly: it has been doubted ever since, and people, I believe, will be forever uncertain whether he is dead or alive.) There is little doubt that this passage is meant to be humorous, poking fun both at the foolish ‘Bretun’ and the opaqueness of Merlin’s prophecies. This superior attitude gives way to open contempt for the Welsh descendants of the ancient British in the closing lines of the poem, where the narrator states: Tuit sunt mué e tuit changié Tuit sunt divers e forslignié De noblesce, d’onur, de murs E de la vie as anceisurs. (14851–54) (They have completely changed and altered, they are totally different and have degenerated from the nobility, the honour, the customs and the life of their ancestors.) Whereas Geoffrey was writing his Historia from the assumed perspective of an insider, Wace clearly approaches his subject-matter from the outside, and with an amused distance. This attitude is particularly evident in Wace’s later Roman de Rou, a verse history of the dukes of Normandy, in which he mentions the disap- pointment he felt after a visit to the famed forest of Brocéliande in Brittany: 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 101 THE ARTHUR OF THE CHRONICLES 101 La allai jo merveilles querre Vi la forest e vi la terre, Merveilles quis, mais nes trovai, Fol m’en revinc, fol i alai. (6393–96) (I went there seeking marvels; I saw the forest, I saw the land; I looked for marvels, but I did not find them. I came back a fool, a fool I went there.) The world of Breton romance is firmly identified as being both foreign and untrustworthy. But it is noteworthy that Wace’s ‘folly’ lies in his readiness to believe in the presence of fées in Brocéliande; we are not dealing with a blanket condemnation of Arthurian material. The distinction in the Brut between the core of historical truth that lies at the heart of Arthurian romances, and the more fabulous aspects of the tales, is still subscribed to by the poet. Whilst maintaining the trappings of ‘serious’ history, Wace’s Brut is a precursor of the later Arthurian romances, which will be indebted to him in three main respects: (i) as a result of his attribution of a kernel of truth to stories of Arthur and the Round Table, this material lent itself to literary reworking in written form; (ii) his well-crafted poetics demonstrated the appropriateness of the octosyllabic couplet for lengthy and complex narratives; (iii) his lively descrip- tions and expansions in the epic and courtly modes provided a template for future writers. The Brut is not an Arthurian romance, but it paved the way for the new genre. [FLS] Arthur in the Brut tradition In view of the popularity of Wace’s Brut, other vernacular histories of Britain composed between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries are also generally referred to as Bruts. Like Wace’s Brut, they present Arthur as one king among many. The importance they attribute to him changes, though in general it dimin- ishes as time goes on. There is a distinct difference between the early verse Brut texts, inspired directly by Geoffrey’s Historia, and the later prose versions, written in a dry, annalistic style and appearing to owe more to the monastic chroniclers or even to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle than to the historiographical tradition typi- fied by Wace or his contemporaries. The verse Brut tradition The verse Brut tradition consists of a small group of works of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Six texts are known to have survived, five of which have been edited or at least transcribed (Damian-Grint 1994).9 Although all the surviving texts are fragmentary, in at least two cases, the Royal and Harley Bruts, the surviving portions are large enough to give a good idea of the authors’ 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 102 102 THE ARTHUR OF THE FRENCH intentions. The tradition divides naturally into two branches according to prosodic form; the majority are in the standard narrative form of octosyllabic couplets, but two are in the less usual, though not unique, form of monorhymed Alexandrine laisses. The Royal Brut consists of 6,237 lines in octosyllabic couplets and translates approximately one third of the text of Geoffrey’s Historia, from just after the beginning up to the conception of Arthur. In BL, MS Royal 13. A. xxi (late thir- teenth-century) the Royal Brut, composed in the twelfth century, replaces the beginning of Wace’s Brut (Damian-Grint 1996). Also written in octosyllabic couplets is the 254-line Harley Fragment, which has been considered as a frag- ment of the same version as the Royal Brut. But there is no overlap of material and the evidence is insufficient, although it is not impossible from a stylistic and linguistic point of view.10 The Royal Brut, naturally enough, does not refer to Arthur at all; references to Arthur within the Harley Fragment derive very closely from the Vulgate text of Geoffrey’s Historia (Damian-Grint 1994, 91). Also in octosyllabic couplets is the Munich Brut, which, unlike all the other verse Brut texts, is of continental origin:11 it appears to have been composed in or near Flanders in the early thirteenth century, and thus within the flourishing vernacular historiographical tradition which also produced several versions of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle (see Spiegel 1993). Some 4,180 lines of this text survive in a single manuscript, Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Codex Gallicus 29, but only the early part of Geoffrey’s Historia is translated, and again Arthur does not appear.12 A separate branch of the same tradition is represented by the Harley Brut, which consists of five fragments totalling 3,359 lines in Alexandrine monorhymed laisses. The five portions of the text cover just over a quarter of Geoffrey’s Historia, translating with some gaps from the death of King Lucius up to Arthur’s campaign against (coincidentally) the emperor Lucius. One section of the text, the prophecies of Merlin, is also to be found in two other manuscripts, where it is interpolated into copies of Wace’s Brut at the point at which Wace himself declares that he will not translate the prophecies from Geoffrey.13 It has been suggested that the text was composed by Claraton, an English writer known to have translated Geoffrey into French verse, but there is no compelling evidence why it should be this text, rather than any of the others, or indeed some other text which has not survived, which should be attributed to him (Damian-Grint 1999a, 63–4). The 136-line Bekker Fragment, which describes the moving of the Giant’s Dance to Britain by Merlin, is also in Alexandrine laisses; it is very close stylisti- cally to the Harley Brut, even to the extent of sharing a number of lines, but the precise nature of the relationship is unclear. The Harley poet’s choice of prosodic form is intriguing. Although Anglo- Norman literature of the period is notable for its extremely wide variation in verse 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 103 THE ARTHUR OF THE CHRONICLES 103 form (ranging from Philippe de Thaon’s hexasyllables to fourteen-syllable lines, and from couplets to laisses of sometimes hundreds of lines), the octosyllabic couplet is the chosen form for the majority of authors of historiography and other narrative forms, such as saints’ lives, which present themselves as non-fiction. The Alexandrine monorhymed laisse is found in two other historiographical works, the early sections of Wace’s Roman de Rou and the Estoire d’Antioche, where it has generally been regarded as a deliberately epic form. Arthur in the Harley Brut appears exactly as he appears in Geoffrey. Given the constraints of the metre, the author translates remarkably closely (the Harley Brut version of the prophecies of Merlin is almost improbably faithful to the Latin, considering the complexity of the material), and Geoffrey’s warrior-king and general is reproduced here with few changes. It may be noted that the author shows slightly more interest in the figure of Arthur than in those of Ambrosius Aurelius and Uther, to the extent of allowing himself a certain degree of amplifi- cation in descriptions of court life. He elaborates on Arthur’s crown-wearing in Caerleon after his northern campaign and provides, when Arthur arrives in France, a long description of his pavilion at Barfleur. All the texts of the Anglo-Norman verse Brut tradition date from the second half of the twelfth century or possibly the early years of the thirteenth; it is not hard to imagine a flurry of literary activity in the years immediately following the appearance of Geoffrey’s work, which enjoyed enormous popularity from the moment of its publication. The three longest texts appear to be the wreckage of ambitious projects: judging from their size in relation to the proportion of Geoffrey’s Latin original they cover (necessarily only the roughest of compar- isons), the complete Royal Brut could have been almost 16,000 lines, about the same length as Wace’s Brut, and the Harley Brut at least 10,000 lines long. Nevertheless, whatever their authors’ intentions, or pretensions, they cannot be regarded in any real sense as rivals to Wace’s text, which was the only vernacular version of Geoffrey still being regularly copied well into the thirteenth century. The reasons for this are various. Of all the twelfth-century translators of Geoffrey’s Historia, only Wace is known to have had significant patronage; however, the fragments are all missing their prologues and epilogues, where one would expect to find such information, and an argument ex silentio is naturally of limited value. As far as the literary qualities of the poems are concerned, there is general agreement that none of the octosyllabic texts measures up to Wace’s stan- dards. In his edition of the Royal Brut, Bell states (xiv) that it is the work of ‘a journeyman in comparison with Wace’. On the other hand, the Harley Brut is ‘a vigorous and effective work’ by a competent poet (Damian-Grint 1999a, 64); however, the fact that it uses a completely different prosodic form may save it from too direct a comparison with Wace. The choice of form may also have dictated the literary fate of the Harley Brut. As we have seen, monorhymed 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 104 104 THE ARTHUR OF THE FRENCH Alexandrine laisses were used in other works of historiography of the period, but it was not a common nor, apparently, a popular form (the Estoire d’Antioche is preserved in only two manuscripts and no medieval manuscripts of the Alexandrine sections of the Roman de Rou survive).14 No less important is the portrayal of characters, especially Arthur. Wace’s Arthur is a courtly figure, while the Arthur of the Harley Brut and the Harley Fragment is essentially Geoffrey’s Arthur, a very different king; little effort is made to produce an Arthur closer in character to the figure of Arthurian romance. While it can be argued that this is simply the result of a lack of imagi- nation on the part of the Brut poets, it seems more likely that it was a matter of deliberate choice. All the authors of the verse Bruts present their texts as estoires, works of historiography and not fiction, making heavy use of historiographical terminology and consistently stating that their texts are trustworthy because they are translations of authoritative Latin sources. In keeping with their general strategy of translation, in which close, even literal, word-for-word translation is the norm (Damian-Grint 1999b), their presentation of Arthur as military leader, rather than courtly king, corresponds closely to that of Geoffrey’s original, with only minor variations (Damian-Grint 1994, 353–4). But this dry, ‘historical’ Arthur does not seem to have been what their audiences wanted. The prose Brut tradition The tradition of Brut texts in prose is considerably more complex than that of the verse works. The very first version, produced around 1300, used a variety of sources probably including both the verse Brut tradition and Geffrei Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis.15 Immensely popular, the Brut text was added to, abbreviated and adapted, the different versions surviving in more than fifty manuscripts. A complete history of the prose Brut tradition, and even of the different versions and the relationships between them, remains to be written. Some of the prose Brut texts were commissioned by important patrons – the Petit Bruit is dedicated to Henry de Lacy, one of the most eminent barons of Edward I’s reign – but they cannot be considered as ‘courtly’ works. Their style is often dry and annalistic, their construction schematic and their grasp of chronology sometimes unsure. The prose Brut is presented as the history not of Britain but of England; some versions start with the division of England into five kingdoms and the reign of King Egbert, and attention is frequently concentrated on post-Conquest and even contemporary history. No longer the outstanding figure of British history, Arthur, when he appears at all, is not even the primus inter pares; he becomes overshadowed by such kings as Havelock, Edgar and Edward the Confessor. From here to the somewhat inadequate Arthur of Middle English tradition, the Arthur of The Avowing of King Arthur or the Awntyrs of Arthur, is a short step. 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 105 THE ARTHUR OF THE CHRONICLES 105 Although he is no longer the emperor who defeats the Romans and conquers Gaul, as does the Arthur of the verse Brut tradition, Arthur in the prose tradition is still, however, a local hero, the conqueror of Scotland, Wales and Ireland. More importantly, perhaps, he has become the hero of Arthurian romance, ‘si merveillousement chevalerous qe parmy le mound home parlout de sa nobley et de la graunt genterie qi en luy fuit trové’ (so wonderfully chivalrous that men throughout the world spoke of his noble knights and of his own great nobility, Petit Bruit, 12. 29–30). Some prose Bruts find space to mention Arthurian knights – Gauvain, Perceval – by name, but they do not expand on their deeds; it is the atmosphere of romance and chivalry which is required. Indeed, it is used simply as a distinguishing mark; Arthur is ‘the chivalric’, as Athelstan is ‘the fair’ and Ethelred is ‘the bad’. Arthur thus takes his place in a list, a king with a single quality to distinguish him from all the other kings who each in their turn have their own label. The Arthur of the prose Brut is the undistinguished figure of the chronicles, a sketch rather than a portrait. [PDG] The Political Arthur There is no proof that Geoffrey of Monmouth was consciously making a polit- ical statement in writing his Historia; it has indeed been suggested that the work was intended to be read as a parody, for humorous effect (Flint 1979). However, the writing of history, even in jest, always has political implications. Inasmuch as chronicles and histories are perceived as reflections of the past, they will be used as keys to an understanding, not only of the past, but of the present with its roots in that past, and be invoked to justify future plans and policies. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s decision to give his work the form of a historia thus suggests concerns above and beyond the desire to gain preferment for an ecclesiastical benefice.16 The political circumstances in England when Geoffrey was composing his work were tense. Henry I, who died in 1135, shortly after the publication of the Prophecies of Merlin apparently, did not have a direct male heir to succeed him. He had designated his daughter Matilda as heir to the throne, but already during his lifetime it was clear that his choice would be hotly disputed by his nephew Stephen. So the dire consequences of dissension in the ruling family may be inter- preted as a warning to Stephen, or indeed, as a warning to the entire royal clan (Tolhurst 1998). Seen in this light, the recurrence of female rulers in the Historia, all of them capable and worthy of wielding power, may be read as an indirect way of giving support to Matilda. This dimension would certainly not have been lost on Geoffrey’s contemporary readers; for later translators and adapters of his work it would no longer have been relevant, at least until the accession to the 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 106 106 THE ARTHUR OF THE FRENCH throne of Elizabeth I, for whom these strong female rulers would have offered both models and precedents. On a different level, relations with France were problematic. As Duke of Normandy, the King of England was technically a vassal of the King of France. A history in which kings of Britain repeatedly defeat the French with insulting ease would have been useful propaganda. Wace’s Roman de Rou attests to an age- old antagonism between Normandy and France, a situation exacerbated by the marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine of the future Henry II, who thus controlled more territories in France than the king himself. There is, therefore, an ideolog- ical divide in the way Geoffrey’s image of the past would have been perceived, depending on whether the reader or adapter belonged to the Anglo-Norman or the Île de France spheres of influence. It was in the interests of Paris to view the Historia as an amusing collection of anecdotes from a distant past, devoid of any connection with the present day; hence the tendency in continental manuscripts of the Brut to link the text with romances rather than histories. Conversely, one observes a keen interest in the material as history by English poets and historians of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Anglo-Norman kings were also at a disadvantage compared to their French counterparts, in that they had no Charlemagne. Theirs was a relatively new dynasty and its coming to power was founded on William the Conqueror’s forcible subduing of his future subjects. Geoffrey’s new history provides Britain with a figurehead equal to Charlemagne, modelled indeed on Alexander the Great. Arthur is not a Norman, but neither, crucially, is he English, and through the putative Trojan ancestry of the British he is made the equal of any hero of classical antiquity. Moreover, through Arthur’s blood ties with the kings of Brittany, Geoffrey allows for an alignment of the Celtic, pre-Anglo-Saxon popu- lation of Britain with William the Conqueror’s Breton allies, who by the late 1130s would have become good Anglo-Norman barons. For continental writers this dimension would have been secondary to Arthur’s entertainment value; but Geoffrey’s Anglo-Norman audience was quick to perceive the new legitimacy offered by the character. Geoffrey’s work had political overtones for another section of his readership: the Welsh. The Historia gives the Britons a long, successful and cultured past at odds with the image of the boorish Welshman current at the time and immortal- ized by Chrétien de Troyes’s uncouth Perceval. Moreover, Geoffrey’s underlying warnings against dissension would have taken on particular resonance within the context of the struggle of the Welsh princes against the Anglo-Norman kings in the early twelfth century. Outbreaks of revolt occurred in different parts of Wales, firstly in 1116, under the leadership of Gruffudd ap Rhys, then in the years following the death of Henry I. The figure of Arthur, under such circum- stances, could be viewed as a threat to the Anglo-Norman rulers (Gillingham 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 107 THE ARTHUR OF THE CHRONICLES 107 1990). So the intended audience of the Historia might not have been the Anglo- Normans at all, but Geoffrey’s own Welsh people; they did not heed the lesson, however, and the hopes of the uprisings in the 1130s foundered due to divisions among the Welsh princes. The real power of Geoffrey’s creation lies in the fact that he did not invent Arthur. Tales relating to the once and future king were already in circulation around Europe, and Arthur was a household name before the Historia was published. For the propaganda value of the Arthurian material to remain strong, it was necessary to ensure that its entertainment value be unimpaired, even as history. Wace and the Anglo-Norman translators and adapters of the Historia recognized this and exploited as many of the cues for amplification offered by Geoffrey as their narrative would allow. This means that, to the modern reader, these reworkings of the Historia frequently appear to cross the boundary from (supposed) history to fiction, and all too often they are assimilated to romances. But the chronicle format, with its recurrent themes throughout a long succession of reigns, raises questions that are not typically those of romance. With each episode a different light is shed on preceding events, and each colours those that follow. Arthur is no exception: any political or ideological interpretation of his reign has to take account of the context in which he arose. The way in which different writers viewed his predecessors and his successors had a direct bearing on the political or ideological message conveyed by his birth, rule and death. He is an important part of the whole, but still only a part. The sheer number of reigns and combinations of power patterns in the Historia made reappropriation relatively simple; a shift in emphasis from one aspect to another can unobtru- sively change the flavour of the entire work. The Anglo-Norman kings seem to have lost interest in the ‘historical’ Arthur quite rapidly: no royal commissions to update or rework Geoffrey’s material were made after Wace’s Brut. This may have been due to an awareness of the poten- tially dangerous implications of the character of Arthur, particularly with regard to the widespread belief in Arthur’s return. The much-publicized ‘discovery’ of Arthur’s grave in Glastonbury in 1190 can be seen as an attempt to put an end to the legend and relegate the once and future king firmly to the past. Equally, the increasing integration of the English into the ruling circles made the Celtic kings of Britain less politically useful to the crown. The patronage of Arthurian chron- icles was taken over by the Anglo-Norman barons, whose specific agendas are reflected in the works they commissioned. The implicit advocacy of a strong royal power found in the Historia and retained by Wace in his Brut is thus radi- cally undermined in the Anglo-Norman Bruts, where greater attention is given to episodes featuring kings such as Belinus or Cassibelaunus, who, in various ways, are shown to be dependent on the good will and support of their barons (Zatta 1998). The increased importance of these episodes (which, crucially, tend to be 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 108 108 THE ARTHUR OF THE FRENCH neglected by readers of all periods interested primarily in the figure of Arthur) results in the loss of some of Arthur’s eminence in the Anglo-Norman prose Bruts. The change in the balance of cultures in England during the thirteenth and four- teenth centuries eventually led to the abandonment of Anglo-Norman French as a medium of ideological expression, in favour of English. By the end of the Middle Ages French has become a foreign language, overwhelmingly employed on the Continent and therefore reflecting a different world-view; here the material of the Historia was perceived as scholarly, rather than political, as the history of the distant past of an alien people whose interest is subordinated to other narratives. The political Arthur must therefore be viewed as a British phenomenon, for in Britain there was a vested interest in exploiting the prestige and potential for prece- dent of this paragon of kingship, an interest which ensured that the ‘chronicle’ strand of Arthurian literature retained much of its political charge well into the Tudor period (see Bryan 1999, especially chapter 7). [FLS] Notes 1 For a discussion of the date of the Historia, see Wright edn 1984, xi–xvi. 2 Quoted from Geoffrey’s introductory dedication to the Historia (Thorpe transl., 51); all English translations of the Historia are from Thorpe. 3 A photograph of the Modena archivolt is reproduced in Loomis ed. 1959*, between pages 60 and 61. 4 Geoffrey’s Vita Merlini, composed in Latin verse some twelve years after the Historia, attests to an enduring interest in the character of Merlin, but also presents a very different vision of the prophet. The wonder-child is now a hermit, a wild man of the forest aspiring to salvation. See Geoffrey of Monmouth: Vita Merlini, ed. and transl. B. Clarke (Cardiff, 1973). 5 William of Newburgh (1196–7) was one of the few to see through Geoffrey’s narrative strate- gies, but his violent rejection of the Historia could be the consequence of his personal anti-Celtic agenda. 6 Gaimar tells us in the prologue to his Estoire des Engleis that he had also composed (probably in the 1140s) an Estoire des Bretuns, now lost. 7 1174 being the date of the latest Bayeux charter in which Wace’s name appears. On Wace’s life, see Holmes 1967, Blanchet 1959 and Burgess 2002 (Roman de Rou transl.), xv–xxl. 8 This, however, offered the cue for manuscript compilers to include Arthurian romances along- side the Brut, e.g. BNF, fr. 1450, in which the five romances of Chrétien de Troyes are inserted into Wace’s Brut, at the point when the twelve-year peace is mentioned. 9 There is some evidence for the existence of a number of other Bruts that have not survived (see Arnold edn of Wace’s Brut, I, xcviii). It is also possible that the book Gaimar claims to have used as a source for the earlier section (now lost) of his Estoire des Engleis may be Geoffrey’s (Short 1994, 327–8, 337–40). 10 See Bell 1963, esp. 201. For Harley Brut, fragment 5, see Blakey edn; fragments 1–4 are tran- scribed in Damian-Grint 1994. See also Damian-Grint in Short ed. 1993 (esp. 94–5). 11 Grout edn. See also Bell 1939 and Grout 1985 and 1988. On the language of the text, see Jenrich 1881. 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 109 THE ARTHUR OF THE CHRONICLES 109 12 Another version is to be found in BL, MS Egerton 3028, but this is simply a heavily condensed version of Wace’s text. See Damian-Grint in Short ed. 1993, 92. 13 The two manuscripts are the Penrose manuscript (BL, Additional MS 45103), fols 86–97, and Lincoln Cathedral, Chapter Library, MS 104, fols 48–57. See Damian-Grint 1994, 375–6. 14 For manuscripts of the Roman de Rou, see Holden edn, III, 19–24, and Burgess transl., xxv–xxvi. The sections written in Alexandrines are preserved only in a seventeenth-century copy (BNF, Duchesne 79). 15 See Gillingham in Genet ed. 1997, 165–76 (esp. 167–9). 16 On the political dimension of the Historia, see Arthuriana, 8: 4 (1998); esp. K. Robertson, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Insular Historiography’, 42–57, and M. Fries, ‘The Arthurian Moment: History and Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britannie’, 88–99. Bibliography For items accompanied by an asterisk, see the General Bibliography. Texts and Translations Geoffrey of Monmouth The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Ed. by N. Wright: I, Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS 568 (Cambridge, 1984); II, The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition (Cambridge, 1988). La Geste du Roi Artur selon le Roman de Brut de Wace et l’Historia Regum Britanniae de Geoffroy de Monmouth: édition bilingue. Transl. by E. Baumgartner and I. Short (Paris, 1993). The History of the Kings of Britain. Transl. by L. Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1966). Gaimar L’Estoire des Engleis by Geffrei Gaimar. Ed. by A. Bell, ANTS 14–16 (Oxford, 1960; repr. New York, 1971). Wace Wace, Roman de Brut. Ed. by I. D. O. Arnold, 2 vols, SATF (Paris, 1938–40). [Wace’s Brut]. La Partie arthurienne du Roman de Brut. Ed. by I. D. O. Arnold and M. M. Pelan (Paris, 1962). Wace’s Roman de Brut: A History of the British. Ed. and transl. by J. E. Weiss (Exeter, 1999; 2nd edn, 2002). La Geste du Roi Artur selon le Roman de Brut de Wace et l’Historia Regum Britanniae de Geoffroy de Monmouth. Transl. by E. Baumgartner and I. Short (Paris, 1993). Includes the text of the Arthurian section of the Brut. Le Roman de Rou de Wace. Ed. by A. J. Holden, 3 vols, SATF (Paris, 1970–3). Wace, The Roman de Rou, Translated by Glyn S. Burgess with the Text of Anthony J. Holden and Notes by Glyn S. Burgess and Elisabeth van Houts (St Helier, 2002). The Brut Tradition Bekker Fragment. Ed. by S. Lefèvre, ‘Le Fragment Bekker et les anciennes versions françaises de l’Historia Regum Britanniae’, Rom, 109 (1988), 225–46. 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 110 110 THE ARTHUR OF THE FRENCH Brute d’Engleterre abregé. Ed. by E. Zettle, in Anonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle (London, 1935). Harley Brut, fragment 5. Ed. by B. Blakey, ‘The Harley Brut: An Early French Translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae’, Rom, 82 (1961), 44–70. Harley Brut, fragments 1–4. Transcribed in Damian-Grint 1994, Appendix II. Harley Fragment. Ed. by Damian-Grint, in Short ed. 1993, 87–104. Munich Brut. Ed. by P. B. Grout, Ph.D. thesis, London, 1980. Rauf de Boun, Le Petit Bruit. Ed. by D. B. Tyson, ANTS, PTS 4 (London, 1987). [Petit Bruit]. Royal Brut. An Anglo-Norman Brut (Royal 13, A.xxi). Ed. by A. Bell, ANTS 21–2 (Oxford, 1969). Studies Bell, A. 1939. ‘The Munich Brut and the Estoire des Bretuns’, MLR, 34, 321–54. Bell 1963. ‘The Royal Brut Interpolation’, Med. Aev, 32, 190–202. Blacker, J. 1994. The Faces of Time: Portrayal of the Past in Old French and Latin Historical Narrative of the Anglo-Norman Regnum, Austin, TX. Blanchet, M.-Cl. 1959. ‘Maistre Wace, trouvère normand’, MRom, 9, 149–58. Bryan, E. J. 1999. Collaborative Meaning in Medieval Scribal Culture: The Otho La3amon, Ann Arbor, MI. Burch North, S. ed. 1987. Studies in Medieval French Language and Literature Presented to Brian Woledge, Geneva. Busby, K., and N. J. Lacy eds. 1994. Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly, Amsterdam. Crisafulli, A. ed. 1964. Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honor of Helmut A. Hatzfeld, Washington DC. Damian-Grint, P. 1994. ‘Vernacular History in the Making: Anglo-Norman Verse Historiography in the Twelfth Century’, Ph.D. thesis, London. Damian-Grint 1996. ‘Redating the Royal Brut fragment’, Med. Aev, 65, 280–5. Damian-Grint 1999a. The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Inventing Vernacular Authority, Woodbridge. Damian-Grint 1999b. ‘Translation as enarratio and Hermeneutic Theory in Twelfth-Century Vernacular Learned Literature’, Neophil, 83, 349–67. Flint, V. I. J. 1979. ‘The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth: Parody and its Purpose: A Suggestion’, Spec, 54, 447–68. Genet, J.-P. ed. 1997. L’Histoire et les nouveaux publics dans l’Europe médiévale (XIIIe–XVe siècles), Paris. Gillingham, J. 1990. ‘The Context and Purposes of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain’, ANS, 13, 99–118. Grout, P. B. 1985. ‘The Author of the Munich Brut, his Latin Sources and Wace’, Med. Aev, 54, 274–82. Grout 1988. ‘The Manuscript of the Munich Brut (Codex Gallicus 29 of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich)’, in Burch ed. 1988, 49–58. Holmes, U. T., Jr. 1964. ‘The Anglo-Norman Rhymed Chronicle’, in Crisafulli ed. 1964, 231–6. Holmes 1967. ‘Norman Literature and Wace’, in W. Matthews ed. Medieval Secular Literature: Four Essays, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 46–67. Jenrich, K. 1881. ‘Die Mundart des Münchener Brut’, Ph.D. thesis, London. Loomis, R.S. 1959. ‘The Oral Diffusion of the Arthurian Legend’, in Loomis ed. 1959*, 52–63. Piggott, S. 1941. ‘The Sources of Geoffrey of Monmouth’, Antiquity, 15, 269–86. Short. I. ed. 1993. Anglo-Norman Anniversary Essays, London. Short 1994. ‘Gaimar’s Epilogue and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Liber vetustissimus’, Spec, 69, 323–43. 03 Chapter 02 AF 2/3/06 10:24 am Page 111 THE ARTHUR OF THE CHRONICLES 111 Spiegel, G. 1993. Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth- Century France, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Tatlock, J. S. P. 1950. The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae and its Early Vernacular Versions, Berkeley. Tolhurst, F. 1998. ‘The Britons as Hebrews, Romans, and Normans: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s British Epic and Reflections of Empress Matilda’, Arthuriana, 8: 4, 69–87. Tyson, D. B. 1979. ‘Patronage of French Vernacular History Writers in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Rom, 100, 180–222. Zatta, J. 1998 ‘Translating the Historia: The Ideological Transformation of the Historia Regum Britannie in Twelfth-Century Vernacular Chronicles’, Arthuriana, 8: 4, 148–61.