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's mythical founder,
Brutus of Troy, the poem is largely based on the
Anglo-Norman French ''
Roman de Brut'' by
Wace, which is in turn a version of
Geoffrey of Monmouth's
Latin ''
Historia Regum Britanniae''. Layamon's poem, however, is longer than both and includes an enlarged section on the life and exploits of
King Arthur
King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as a ...
. It is written in the
alliterative verse style commonly used in
Middle English poetry by
rhyming chroniclers, 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 style, sporadically deploying rhyme as well as a
caesural pause between the
hemistichs of a line, it is perhaps closer to the rhythmical prose of
Ælfric of Eynsham than to verse, especially in comparison with later alliterative writings such as ''
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' and ''
Piers Plowman
''Piers Plowman'' (written 1370–86; possibly ) or ''Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman'' (''William's Vision of Piers Plowman'') is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in un-rhymed, alliterative v ...
''. 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 identity, 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- ...
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
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
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 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 A ix, dating from the third quarter of the 13th century, and in the
Cotton Otho C xiii, copied about fifty years later (though the extant, damaged, text is shorter). Both manuscripts are in the
British Library.
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)
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{{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