A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth最新文献

{"title":"Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Conventions of History Writing in Early 12th-Century England","authors":"Georgia Henley","doi":"10.1163/9789004410398_012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004410398_012","url":null,"abstract":"Modern critics of Insular 12th-century history have tended to view Geoffrey of Monmouth’s historiographical project in terms of its differences from the other Latin works of Insular history of his time (particularly William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Orderic Vitalis, and John of Worcester), reading him as an outlier departing from the conventions of his contemporaries by penning something previously unknown, outside the historical mode, and likely spurious. Yet when viewed in tandem, the works of Geoffrey and his contemporaries are in fact united by key similarities in form, structure, classical allusion, and scope, even as they are separated by treatment of sources, content and focus, and reception. In this chapter, I situate Geoffrey’s De gestis Britonum in the context of the longform histories of his contemporaries, particularly William of Malmesbury’s Deeds of the English Kings (Gesta regum Anglorum) and Henry of Huntingdon’s History of the English (Historia Anglorum), establishing their shared adherence to the conventions of history writing and its attendant rhetorical strategies, and noting where Geoffrey departs – perhaps subversively – from such conventions. Though Caradog of Llancarfan seems to have been an important contemporary of Geoffrey as well, given that Geoffrey mentions him by name, I do not compare Geoffrey’s work to Caradog’s saints’ lives, focusing instead on longform narrative history; nor do I discuss other contemporaries due to constraints of space. Following an assessment of the conventions of the genre and how they are satisfied by each of the three authors, I examine the three works according to the unifying theme of conquest, demonstrating that Geoffrey’s departure from his contemporaries lies primarily in his treatment of sources and his focus on the Britons, not on the flagrant departure from history conventions as is sometimes claimed. These key differences have nevertheless resulted in a vastly different reception history for his work, including modern critical reception, compared to William and Henry. I conclude by offering an interpretation of Geoffrey’s motives for writing in light of this comparison.","PeriodicalId":206404,"journal":{"name":"A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115181425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Geoffrey of Monmouth and the English Past","authors":"Rebecca Thomas","doi":"10.1163/9789004410398_005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004410398_005","url":null,"abstract":"Geoffrey does not grant much space to the English in the De gestis Britonum. In one respect, this is unsurprising: Geoffrey’s history extends back to the origins of the Britons in Troy, spending a significant amount of time in pre-Roman Britain, and as such the English enter the narrative rather late in the day. Even after their arrival, however, the English do not appear in the way which we might expect. The traditional narrative of the development of the English kingdoms, pioneered by sources such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and accepted and reproduced by many of Geoffrey’s contemporary Anglo-Norman historians, has no place in the DGB. With his strikingly different version of events, Geoffrey certainly cannot be accused of lacking originality in his treatment of English history. The way in which he approached this subject is highly significant not only for our understanding of his attitude toward the English, but also for the composition of the DGB more generally. There was no shortage of contemporary historians writing of the English past, such as Henry of Huntingdon, the first version of whose History of the English, with which Geoffrey was most likely familiar, was completed by 1130. Henry presents us with a conventional account of English history, drawing heavily on Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.1 Hengist and Horsa arrive in Britain in 449, and after recounting their dealings with the Britons, Henry proceeds through the various other Saxon settlers of the 5th and 6th centuries. Battles between them and the Britons are often recorded, and it is only after noting the foundation of the kingdom of Wessex in 519 and the 17-year rule of King Cerdic that Henry inserts a brief account of King Arthur, drawn mainly","PeriodicalId":206404,"journal":{"name":"A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129770954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Geoffrey of Monmouth in Portugal and Galicia","authors":"Santiago Gutiérrez García","doi":"10.1163/9789004410398_028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004410398_028","url":null,"abstract":"The dissemination of the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth in medieval Portugal must be analyzed, aside from its peculiarities, within the broader context of the Hispanic kingdoms. Knowledge of Geoffrey’s works in Portuguese lands accords with the dynamics of dissemination and circulation of texts in the central and western areas of the Iberian Peninsula, and shows strong connec-tions to events happening in the neighboring kingdom of Castile-León. As in Castile-León, no copies of Geoffrey’s work are documented in Portugal during the Middle Ages, while there are only a few allusions to his work that allow scholars to indirectly establish the presence of his work in West Iberia. This sit-uation is somewhat paradoxical, since scholars have considered Portugal one of the main points of entry of the Matter of Britain into the Peninsula. There is no doubt, in fact, that the Atlantic coast of the Portuguese kingdom gener-ated contact by sea with the peoples of northwestern Europe, especially those of Britain.1 Thus, for example, Portuguese ports were on several occasions layovers for Crusader expeditions on their way to the Mediterranean, or for Crusaders participating in the conquest of cities in central and south Portugal, such as Lisbon, which were taken with the help of the British in particular. And, in the same manner, the alliances that the kings of Portugal established with England – think, for example, of the wedding between João I and Philippa of Lancaster in 1387 – not only consolidated Portugal’s recent independence from the kingdom of Castile-León, but also fostered Anglo-Portuguese com-mercial and cultural exchanges.","PeriodicalId":206404,"journal":{"name":"A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131694575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Classical and Biblical Inheritance","authors":"P. Russell","doi":"10.1163/9789004410398_004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004410398_004","url":null,"abstract":"1 DGB, Prologus 2.9–10: “... quendam Britannici sermonis librum uestustissimum ...” Translations of the DGB are normally Wright’s unless it was felt necessary to vary it; for other texts, translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. To a large extent the following discussion focuses in the DGB, which provides many more complex examples to consider, but some cases where Geoffrey draws on classical sources in the VM are also discussed. His debt to biblical sources in the latter is less easy to pin down; for a discussion of some of the theological aspects of the VM, see Barry Lewis’s chapter in this volume (pp. 420–23). I am grateful to Ben Guy for reading a draft of this chapter and for the comments of the anonymous referees, and also to the editors for their careful guidance and help. 2 DGB, Prologus 2.12–15: “... Rogatu itaque illius ductus, tametsi infra alienos ortulos falerata uerba non collegerim, agresti tamen stilo propriisque calamis contentus codicem illum in Latinum sermonem transferre curaui ...” Wright, and others (Geoffrey of Monmouth, De gestis Britonum, trans. L. Thorpe, Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain, London, 1966, p. 51; Geoffrey of Monmouth, De gestis Britonum, trans. M.A. Faletra, The History of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Peterborough, Ontario, 2007, p. 41), render stilo as “style” but it may be intended more precisely as stilus, “pen, stylus”.","PeriodicalId":206404,"journal":{"name":"A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth","volume":"240 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132239318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Colonial Preoccupations in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum","authors":"Michael A. Faletra","doi":"10.1163/9789004410398_013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004410398_013","url":null,"abstract":"Nearly three quarters of the way through the sweep of legendary history that constitutes Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum, the narrative grinds almost to a halt. Whereas parts of the history had glossed over dozens of kings and hundreds of years, sometimes in a page or two, the pace of events leading up to the reign of King Arthur had steadily slowed, only to arrive at a near standstill in Geoffrey’s description of Arthur’s Plenary Court. It is a moment of great political importance, the celebration of the king’s victory both over the Saxons who had plagued the realm for a generation and over much of what is now France: like several of his more successful predecessors on the British throne, Arthur returns to Britain a conqueror. The Plenary Court held to stage Arthur’s coronation and to celebrate his glorious new order takes place on Pentecost in the Welsh city of Caerleon: “Located in Glamorgan on the River Usk at a lovely site not far from where the Severn empties into the sea, it had an abundance of riches greater than that of any other city and was thus an excellent place to hold a high feast.”1 No expense is spared, Geoffrey reminds his Anglo-Norman readers, and he treats them to lavish descriptions of the coronation processions, the splendid regalia, the celebratory games, and the feasting for many hundreds of guests – all of which seem calculated to drive home the fact that ancient Britain had attained a cultural pinnacle: “Britain had at that point acquired such a state of dignity that it surpassed all other kingdoms in its courtliness, in the extravagance of its fineries, and in the polished manners of its citizens.”2 In their enjoyment of the trappings of a cultural modernity characterized by courtly behavior and fine clothing (and later by Europe’s first literary description of a tournament), the ancient Britons under King Arthur revel in a Caerleon that stands as the metropole of expansive","PeriodicalId":206404,"journal":{"name":"A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124129648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Early Manuscript Dissemination","authors":"J. Tahkokallio","doi":"10.1163/9789004410398_007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004410398_007","url":null,"abstract":"Since its release, the De gestis Britonum has been defined by its popularity. The work became successful quickly and the material record of its early reception is exceptional in its extent. The count of surviving manuscripts runs to 225 at the moment, and almost 80 of them can be dated to before c.1210.1 In what follows I shall examine the first stages of the transmission and reception of the DGB using these early manuscripts as my primary body of evidence. The first part of this chapter discusses the earliest dissemination of the work, bringing together evidence from the manuscripts, textual transmission, and narrative and documentary sources. I start from the process of how the text was released and move on to discuss the role of the dedicatees and early documented readers in the circulation of the text. I also suggest circumstances in which the three dedications of the work were probably penned and look briefly at the genesis of the textually idiosyncratic versions of the work, the socalled First and Second Variants. This part depends heavily on Michael Reeve’s textual work and the division of the transmission of the DGB into two main families, depending on lost archetypes Φ and Δ respectively. In the second part, I turn to what the manuscripts tell us about the early audience and its attitudes toward the DGB. Here, I first provide an overview of what is known about the origins of the early copies and point out the scale of early monastic dissemination, in particular on the Continent. Despite its","PeriodicalId":206404,"journal":{"name":"A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115918891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Latin Reception of the De gestis Britonum","authors":"Siân Echard","doi":"10.1163/9789004410398_009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004410398_009","url":null,"abstract":"Gerald of Wales famously skewered the veracity of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history in his story of Meilyr, an illiterate man who could spot falsehood, thanks to devils dancing on the offending tongues or pages. Meilyr’s tormentors could be driven away by the Gospel of John, but when a copy of the De gestis Britonum was placed on his lap, the devils returned in ever greater numbers. Gerald’s anecdote, written in his Itinerary Through Wales in the 1190s, is a witness to the incredible popularity of the DGB less than 50 years after Geoffrey’s death, and that popularity would only grow, as the story was taken up in the vernacular translations discussed in Chapter Eight. Gerald’s skepticism is of a piece with the reactions from other Latin authors dealt with in Chapter Six, but as the present chapter will show, the rise of Arthurian literature as a vernacular phenomenon, and the dismissal of Geoffrey’s work (and Arthur’s historicity) by some Anglo-Latin historians, give a potentially misleading impression about the importance that the DGB continued to have in the Latin tradition, well into the early modern period. First, while the centrality of the Arthuriad to the DGB cannot be overstated, Geoffrey is also responsible for promulgating several other highly popular and influential myths, of interest to both Latinate and vernacular readers in the Middle Ages and beyond; that is, Geoffrey’s importance reaches beyond the Arthurian tradition. And second, while some Latin writers may have reacted negatively to Geoffrey’s work, others set about commenting on it, supplementing it, and even writing their own Latin Arthurian narratives. This chapter will explore the many ways that the Latin tradition, both medieval and early modern, interacted with Geoffrey’s myth-making through commentary, continuation, and outright creation.","PeriodicalId":206404,"journal":{"name":"A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125927759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Scottish Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth","authors":"Victoria Shirley","doi":"10.1163/9789004410398_029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004410398_029","url":null,"abstract":"Medieval Scottish historians had a complex relationship with Geoffrey of Monmouth and his De gestis Britonum. Geoffrey was a source of authority on British history who was worthy of respect; however, his idea of Insular union could not always be reconciled with Scottish national history, which advocated Scotland’s independence from England. Geoffrey’s narrative of British history was contested in official letters, legal documents, and Latin historiography produced in Scotland between the 14th and 15th centuries. Such national rewritings of the DGB are exemplified by the Instructiones (1301) and the Processus (1301) by Baldred Bisset – a lawyer who was also a canon of Caithness and rector of Kinghorn in the St Andrews diocese – and the Chronicle of the Scottish People by John of Fordun (1384 × 1387), which was continued by the Augustinian canon and abbot of Inchcolm, Walter Bower, in his Scotichronicon (1440 × 1447). These texts reimagine the political geography of Britain in the DGB to articulate Scottish resistance to English imperial conquest. In the DGB, Geoffrey of Monmouth uses the story of Locrinus, Albanactus, and Kamber to explain the tripartite division of Britain into England, Scotland, and Wales. After the death of their father, Brutus of Troy, Geoffrey writes that","PeriodicalId":206404,"journal":{"name":"A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126847719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}