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Layamon's ''Brut'' (ca. 1190 - 1215), also known as ''The Chronicle of Britain'', is a Middle English poem compiled and recast by the English priest Layamon. Layamon's ''Brut'' is 16,096 lines long and narrates the history of Britain. It is the first historiography written in English since the ''
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alf ...
''. Named for
Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
's mythical founder,
Brutus of Troy Brutus, also called Brute of Troy, is a legendary descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas, known in medieval British history as the eponymous founder and first king of Britain. This legend first appears in the ''Historia Brittonum'', an anonymous ...
, the poem is largely based on the
Anglo-Norman French Anglo-Norman, also known as Anglo-Norman French ( nrf, Anglo-Normaund) ( French: ), was a dialect of Old Norman French that was used in England and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in Great Britain and Ireland during the Anglo-Norman period. Wh ...
''
Roman de Brut The ''Brut'' or ''Roman de Brut'' (completed 1155) by the poet Wace is a loose and expanded translation in almost 15,000 lines of Norman-French verse of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin '' History of the Kings of Britain''. It was formerly known as ...
'' by Wace, which is in turn a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin ''
Historia Regum Britanniae ''Historia regum Britanniae'' (''The History of the Kings of Britain''), originally called ''De gestis Britonum'' (''On the Deeds of the Britons''), is a pseudohistorical account of British history, written around 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. ...
''. Layamon's poem, however, is longer than both and includes an enlarged section on the life and exploits of King Arthur. It is written in the
alliterative verse In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of ...
style commonly used in Middle English poetry by
rhyming chroniclers Rhyming Chroniclers, a series of writers who flourished in England in the 13th century, and related histories of the country in rhyme, in which the fabulous occupies a conspicuous place, among which Layamon's ''Brut'' (1205) takes the lead. One of ...
, the two halves of the alliterative lines being often linked by rhyme as well as by alliteration.


Language and style

The versification of the ''Brut'' has proven extremely difficult to characterise. Written in a loose
alliterative Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...
style, sporadically deploying rhyme as well as a
caesura 300px, An example of a caesura in modern western music notation A caesura (, . caesuras or caesurae; Latin for "cutting"), also written cæsura and cesura, is a metrical pause or break in a verse where one phrase ends and another phrase begins. ...
l pause between the
hemistich A hemistich (; via Latin from Greek , from "half" and "verse") is a half-line of verse, followed and preceded by a caesura, that makes up a single overall prosodic or verse unit. In Latin and Greek poetry, the hemistich is generally confined to ...
s of a line, it is perhaps closer to the rhythmical prose of
Ælfric of Eynsham Ælfric of Eynsham ( ang, Ælfrīc; la, Alfricus, Elphricus; ) was an English abbot and a student of Æthelwold of Winchester, and a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres. ...
than to verse, especially in comparison with later alliterative writings such as '' Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' and '' Piers Plowman''. Layamon's alliterating verse is difficult to analyse, seemingly avoiding the more formalised styles of the later poets. Layamon's Middle English is notably "native" in its vocabulary, i.e. devoid words borrowed from Norman French; the scholar B.S. Monroe counted a mere 150 words derived from French in the poem's 16,000 lines. It is remarkable for its abundant
Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...
vocabulary; deliberately archaic Saxon forms that were quaint even by Anglo-Saxon standards. Imitations in the ''Brut'' of certain stylistic and prosodic features of Old English alliterative verse show a knowledge and interest in preserving its conventions. Layamon's ''Brut'' remains one of the best extant examples of early Middle English. Solopova, Elizabeth, and Stuart D. Lee. Key Concepts in Medieval Literature. 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. During an era in English history when most prose and poetry were composed in French, Layamon wrote to his illiterate, impoverished religious audience in Worcestershire.Everett, Dorothy. (1978) "Layamon and the Earliest Middle English Alliterative Verse." Essays on Middle English Literature. Ed. Patricia Kean. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,. In 1216, around the time Layamon wrote, King Henry III of England came to the throne. Henry regarded himself as an Englishman above any other nationality, unlike many of his recent predecessors, and moved his kingdom away from the Old French dialects that had ruled the country's cultural endeavors.Ackerman, Robert W. (1966) '' Backgrounds to Medieval English Literature''. 1st. New York: Random House, Inc. Several original passages in the poem — at least in accordance with the present knowledge of extant texts from the Middle Ages — suggest Layamon was interested in carving out the history of the
Britons British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs mod ...
as the people 'who first possessed the land of the English'.


Manuscripts, editions and translations

Two copies of the manuscript are known; one in the MS.
Cotton Caligula This is an incomplete list of some of the manuscripts from the Cotton library that today form the Cotton collection of the British Library. Some manuscripts were destroyed or damaged in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731, and a few are kept in othe ...
A ix, dating from the third quarter of the 13th century, and in the
Cotton Otho This is an incomplete list of some of the manuscripts from the Cotton library that today form the Cotton collection of the British Library. Some manuscripts were destroyed or damaged in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731, and a few are kept in othe ...
C xiii, copied about fifty years later (though the extant, damaged, text is shorter). Both manuscripts are in the
British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
.


References


Bibliography

* Brook, G. L. and R. F. Leslie (ed.), ''Laȝamon: Brut, Edited from British Museum MS. Cotton Caligula A. ix and British Museum MS. Cotton Otho C. xiii'', Early English Text Society, 250, 277, 2 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1963–78), http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=cme;idno=LayCal. The standard edition. * W. R. J. Barron and S. C. Weinberg (ed. and trans.), ''Laȝamon's Arthur: The Arthurian Section of Laȝamon's ‘Brut’ (Lines 9229-14297)'' (Harlow: Longman, 1989). Facing text and translation, based on the Caligula MS. * Allen, Rosamund (trans.), ''Laȝamon: Brut'' (London, 1992) * Wace and Layamon, ''Arthurian chronicles'', trans. by Eugene Mason (London: Dent, 1962) * * * {{Authority control 12th-century poems 13th-century poems Arthurian literature in Middle English Epic poems in English Middle English poems Translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth