Early Reactions to Geoffrey’s Work

Although the 12th century was blessed with a profusion of elegant and idiosyncratic works of erudition, its literary horizon offers no more spectacular or unforeseen comet than the pan-European fascination with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum and Vita Merlini. The scale of popularity and influence of Geoffrey’s work is made more remarkable by its apparently unpropitious subject matter. Geoffrey adapted (or, some have claimed, invented) the historical triumphs and travails of a barely remembered people living on what was perceived to be the furthest outcrop of civilization:1