The Anonymous French Verse Brut Tradition

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Jean Blacker (Kenyon College)

Ed. by Matthew Siôn Lampitt, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.01: French Writing and Culture: Old French to the Middle Ages , 500-1400.
Vol. editors: Marianne Ailes (University of Bristol), Matthew Siôn Lampitt (University of Bristol), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Domains

History writing

Dates

Date of occurrence c.1150- c.1400

Places

France (Location)
United Kingdom (Location)

Resources

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General Introduction

Thus far we have discovered 16 early anonymous French verse versions of the Galfridian material: of those 16, 8 contain versions of Merlin’s Prophecies (one octosyllabic, four decasyllabic, and three alexandrine), and the rest have various sections of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae; all of the manuscripts are Anglo-Norman, except two, and the majority of the texts themselves date from the twelfth century, though they are found in manuscripts largely from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (see note 1). We will examine four of these early anonymous French verse Bruts, chosen because they contain important sections of the Galfridian material, that is, either the foundation myths of Britain, the adventus Saxonum (i.e., the arrival of the

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5093 words

Citation: Blacker, Jean. "The Anonymous French Verse Brut Tradition". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 April 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19708, accessed 02 May 2024.]

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