Layamon's Brut and other Medieval Chronicles

Description

"Layamon's Brut" long remained unstudied. In the past two decades several translations of this long chronicle have been released both in English, French and Italian while substantial scholarly and critical work has been done on a great many aspects of the work. The present volume contains fourteen essays, most of which were papers given at the 7th international Layamon's conference held at the Sorbonne in Paris in June 2012.

Sujets

• Littérature
• Harmattan Littérature

Informations

• Publié par: L'Harmattan
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 14
• EAN13: 9782336333410
• Langue: Français
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

Marie-Françoise Alamichel (ed.)

Laȝamon’sBrut and other Medieval Chronicles 14 essays

Laȝamon’sBrutand other Medieval Chronicles 14 essays

Marie-Françoise Alamichel (ed.) L A ȜAMON ’ S B RUT AND OTHER M EDIEVAL C HRONICLES

14 essays

© L’Harmattan, 2013 5-7, rue de l’Ecole-Polytechnique, 75005 Paris http://www.harmattan.fr [e-mail] [e-mail] ISBN : 978-2-343-02033-4 EAN : 9782343020334

Table of Contents

Editor's Preface…………………………………………………….….... 7 Eric WEISKOTT Lawman, the Last Old English Poet and the First Middle English Poet……………………………………………11 Kenneth TILLER La܌amon’sBrutand the Poetics of thePeterborough Chronicle……………………………………………………….59 Eric G. STANLEY  Fictional Truth in La܌amon’sBrut………….……..……..……. 81 Fiona TOLHURST  What Did La܌amon(s) Do to Geoffrey's Female Figures?........................................................................ 103 Nolwena MONNIER Arthurian Women from Geoffrey of Monmouth to La܌amon………………..………………………………….. 133 Charlotte A. T. WULF  The Women in the Post-Arthurian Section of Lawman'sBrut……………………………………………. 153 Joseph D. PARRY Letting Be and the Post-Arthurian Section of Lawman’sBrut……………………………………………169 5

Gail Ivy BERLIN  Gadgets and Magic in La܌amon'sBrut………………….…… 185 Danièle BERTON-CHARRIERE DuBrutde La܌amon auKing Learde Shakespeare : l'ellipse ou la « tierce place»………………………………… 207 Marie-Françoise ALAMICHEL  Brutus and the Trojans: a European (hi-)story…….…………. 233 Philip SHAW The metrical chronicle attributed to Robert of Gloucester and the textual transmission of La܌amon’sBrut……………………………….…………… 267 Heather PAGAN ‛Unum librum qui vocatur Brute’: readers and owners of the Anglo-NormanProse Brut….…….293 Frédéric ALCHALABI Itinéraire et fortune de la matière troyenne e e dans l’historiographie castillane (XIII-XV siècles) : de laGeneral Estoriad’Alphonse X à la Crónica Sarracinade Pedro de Corral………………….…….309 Marie-Françoise ALAMICHEL  Trois versions moyen anglaises desGrantz Geants…………..325 List of Contributors…………………………………………………... 355

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Editor's Preface rom 21 to 23 June 2012, the University of Paris- th Sorbonne, hosted the 7 international La܌amon dealing with F theBruthad been given. Since 1992, the circle of academics conference, 20 years after the first one that had taken place in Lausanne in 1992 and during which 16 papers studying La܌amon'sBruthas grown much wider and the range of topics has considerably expanded. Research now no longer only deals with who La܌amon was, why he wrote such an archaic (archaistic?) type of poem, the differences between the two manuscripts or for what sort of audience theBrut was composed but also includes the historical, social, and cultural context of the twelfth/thirteenth centuries, goes deeper into linguistics, literary devices, genres, thematical analyses and interpretations (kingship, law, justice, evil, [national] identity, territory, gender considerations, etc.); it takes into account all the otherBrut chronicles (from the earliest and founding texts [Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace] to versions written after La܌amon’s time (Anglo- Norman and Middle-EnglishBrutchronicles as well as continental versions in the vernacular), and compares the variousBrutto chronicles many other insular or continental verse or prose chronicles—to medieval writing of history as a whole. Paperson the broader topic of national histories of medieval Europe were indeed welcome at the conference provided they addressed questions related to:

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Myths of origins, civilizing heroes, time and space. Identity and national feeling, collective memory, connections with the past and present. Relationship between reality and fiction, History and facts / romance and imagination.

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Propaganda and ideology, glorifying ancestors and a royal lineage. Genre & hybridity, literary conventions or originality. Audience reception: medieval and current readers.

The conference highlighted the quality, the richness, and the diversity of academic work carried out on these fascinating accounts in Middle English or in other European vernacular languages (not to forget Latin). All it takes to be convinced of the vitality of theBrutstudies is to take a look at the programme of the conference:‛La܌amon’sBrutthe and Poetics of thePeterborough Chronicle’ (Kenneth Tiller),‛La܌amon, the last Old English Poet and the first Middle English Poet’(Eric Weiskott), ‛Itinéraire et fortune des matières troyenne et bretonne dans quelques e e chroniques castillanes des XIII -XV siècles’Alchalabi), (Frédéric ‛English Cultural Identity in Lawman’sBrut’(Jacqueline Burek),‛What Did La܌amon(s) Do to Geoffrey’s Female Figures?’ (Fiona Tolhurst), ‛De Geoffrey of Monmouth à La܌amon : images de femmes arthuriennes’ (Nolwena Monnier),‛The Women in the Post-Arthurian Section of Lawman’sBrut’(Charlotte Wulf),‛Looking for La܌amon in Lincolnshire’(John Brennan),‛Letting Be and the Post-Arthurian Section of Lawman’sBrut’Parry), 'Fictional truth in La (Joseph ܌amon’sBrut’ (Eric G. Stanley),‛Astronomy in the Vernacular: The Pendragon Comet andcaput draconis’(Elizabeth Bryan),‛Merlin as embodied imagination: prophecy and magic in La܌amon’sBrutsome English and Brut verse th th chronicles of the 13 and 14 century’(Lucy Perry),‛Gadgets and Magic in La܌amon’sBrut’ (Gail Ivy Berlin),‛La matière bretonne, un sujet escamoté dans les chroniques universelles ? Ou comment greffer l’Historia regum Britanniaede Geoffroy de Monmouth à une compilation’ (Géraldine Vesseyre and Hélène Tétrel),‛The Anglo- Norman ProseBrut: Medieval Bestseller?’Pagan), 'Mythical (Heather History in fifteenth-century Genealogies of England’s Kings: influences of the proseBruttradition’Rajsic), (Jaclyn ‛Entre histoire et fiction : texte et images de l'Histoire des rois de Bretagne dans le manuscript enluminé duBrut en prose, Londres, Lambeth Palace 6’Fabry- (Irène Tehranchi),‛DuBrut de La܌amon, au King Lear de Shakespeare : l’ellipse ou « la tierce place»’(Danièle Berton-Charrière).

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 Lucy Perry chaired a round table on editing and/or translating La܌amon'sBrutother and BrutElizabeth Bryan, Heather chronicles. Pagan, and Philip Shaw were on the panel. Many issues were raised such as: what is at stake in editing and translatingBrutChronicles, who are the target audience, and what key questions might be addressed in an edition. The merits of hypertexts and e-editions were explored. Discusion also revolved around what remains to be explored and investigated in La܌amon studies, preparing thus the next La܌amon conference.

 The present volume contains a selection of the papers that were given in Paris as well as three additional essays (by Philip Shaw and Marie-Françoise Alamichel). It is another contribution to the highly productiveBrutstudies as it comes in addition to the proceedings of the preceding La܌amon conferences which include:

ƒFrançoise Le Saux, ed.,The Text and Tradition of Layamon's Brut, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994 (conference held at the University of Lausanne in 1992). ƒJames Noble, ed.,‛Special Issue on Lawman'sBrut,’Arthuriana, 8:3, fall 1998. Elizabeth J. Bryan, ed.,‛Theoretical Approaches to Lawman'sBrut,’Arthuriana, 10:2, summer 2000 (conference held at the University of New Brunswick at Saint John in 1997). ƒRosamund Allen, Lucy Perry, and Jane Roberts, eds.,Laȝamon. Contexts, Language, and Interpretation, King's College London: Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 2002 (conference held at King's College London in 2000). ƒRosamund Allen, Jane Roberts, and Carole Weinberg, eds, Reading Laȝamon’s Brut: Approaches and Explorations, DQR Studies in Literature 52, Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2013 (conferences held at Brown University in 2004 and at Gregynog Hall [Bangor University] in 2008).

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Marie-Françoise Alamichel