Wace's Roman de Brut : a history of the British : text and translation

Abstract

Wace's Brut is an 1155 French verse rendering of Geoffrey of Monmouth's earlier Latin history of Britain, from the time of Brutus, the eponymous founder, to the 7th century. It includes the Arthurian legend, with the first appearance of the Round Table and an unambiguously guilty Guinevere. This is an English translation and is presented in parallel with the French text. Wace uses Geoffrey's earlier stories, such as those of King Lear and King Arthur, with a lively inventiveness and originality, drawing on oral sources and his own knowledge of parts of Britain, imaginatively re-interpreting his material: his Guinevere is decidedly involved in Arthur's downfall, and his St Augustine endows the inhabitants of Colchester with tails. He presents a dramatically recurrent pattern of great achievements undercut by domestic treachery and national weakness.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 24 citations exist upstream.