Wace's Roman De Brut: A History of the British (Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies)

Rating:
Summary: Wace's "Roman de Brut"-new ed. & trans.
Review: Raymond CORMIER Department of English, Philosophy and Modern Languages LONGWOOD COLLEGE 201 High Street Farmville, VA 23909 email: [e-mail]

*Wace's 'Roman de Brut': A History of the British*. Ed., trans. Judith Weiss. Exeter Medieval English Texts and Studies. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999. Pp. xxix + 385. Bibliography. Index of Personal Names. ISBN 0 85989 591 2.

Imagine an extraordinary medieval text filled with nostalgia and seductions, domestic betrayals and sovereign assassinations, battles and duels, magic and potions, shame, disgrace. This is a raconteur's dream of nightmarish greed and wise generosity, of human vanity and holy humility. At once ironic and sardonic, the yarn's wide narrative net captures rich and brawny descriptions of events, depicts individuals, their personal motivations and moral weaknesses, and portrays diverse peoples and whole tribes. It boasts, too, of vivid and roaring rhetorical figures, invents puns and etymologies, and, en passant redeems proverbs, folklore motifs, and place-name lore. Even while recounting the sad but famous career of the "New Trojans" as they limp, one generation after another, from bleak, distant wasteland to the fertile abode called Albion, and thence decline into fratricide, famine, and plague--skillful storyteller Maistre Wace, cleric of Caen, almost always finds a way to generate resonance with contemporary events (ca. 1150-1155), those usually gloomy and violent and chaotic storms that swirl about dukes, empresses, and prelates.

Judith Weiss (JW) of Robinson College, Cambridge, has performed a monumental feat: completing a new edition and a brand new translation of Wace's sprightly Old French "Brutus Romance"--the first complete and sustained extant vernacular history (however imaginary) of Britain. Presented in large parallel format, her modern English prose translates the French chronicle in verse--which itself freely adapts the Latin prose amalgamation of the Norman-Welshman Geoffrey of Monmouth, *Historia regum Britanniae* (ca. 1136-1138), a daringly politicized and innovative fabrication (which some consider a hoax as tremendous as MacPherson's *Ossian*). Wace himself, like some jaded Hollywood critic, observes in re: Arthurian fable: *Ne tut mençunge, ne tut veir,/ Tut folie ne tut saveir*--"not all lies, not all truth, neither total folly nor total wisdom" (vv. 9793-9794; cf. p. xxi).

These texts, along with Lawman's (or Layamon) subsequent early 13th-century adaptation of *Le Roman de Brut* into alliterative Middle English, propose a hermeneutic holiday. British historians see the plausible panorama as indeed part real fact, part imaginary fiction, sweeping us from the arrival of Aeneas' offspring, Brutus, the island's eponymous national founder, up to Cadwallader and the Anglo-Saxon invasion and colonization (7th century). All this seemingly to answer the query--why and how did the Britons yield their dominion over the land?

Gathered from antique, contemporary, and oral sources, favorite and indelible stories found their way into these narratives: King Lear's woeful tale of his three daughters. Then there is that half-legendary Cymbeline, a contemporary of Christ (!). Belin and Brenne's fierce brotherly rivalry and successful collaboration segues later to the treacherous slaughter of Britons by Saxons during the "Night of the Long Knives." Of course, the story reaches its climax with those gilded episodes dealing with the miraculous birth, sumptuous charisma, and stellar achievements of King Arthur. All this material and more trickled down to Malory, Spenser, and Shakespeare, among other writers.

JW accomplishes pretty much everything she set out to do. She provides a "re-issuing" edition of the text (p. xxv), drawing heavily on Arnold's pre-War Société des Anciens Texts Français publication, 1938-1940 as a model. Since then, a number of other manuscripts and fragments have turned up, from which discoveries JW has profited. Also playing a crucial role today is the multivalent state of Geoffrey's parent Latin text (and thus vitiating Arnold's basic assumptions in re: manuscript fidelity to it), once seen as monolithic (Faral, Griscom), and now viewed as enjoying several variant versions (see Neil Wright's work on the "Vulgate" or standard "History of the Kings of Britain"). JW draws as well on a recent modern French edition, *La Geste du roi Arthur* (Bibliothèque Médiévale, Paris: Union Générale d'Éditions, 1993).

Dedicated in 1155 to Eleanor of Aquitaine (according to Lawman), this "incipient romance" has 14,866 octosyllabic verses presented in 371 pages (Old French with English facing). Apart from some missing items in the bibliography, the volume has an extensive and authoritative introduction and discussion of the manuscripts. The newly-edited text and consistently-reliable translation, the handy running heads, and the abundant annotations, all make the book useful and enlightening for readers interested in the literary, intellectual, and social history of mid-12th century.

Rating:
Summary: Too bad it is nearly impossible to find anymore.
Review: This is a must-have text for arthurian literature students. It is beatiful, in fact, I like this more than the History of the Kings of Britain. Even though it was intended as a translation of that text, Roman de Brut incorporates some important fantastic elements to the Arthurian legend, like the round table. Too bad this book is no longer available and is almost impossible to find.