Anonymous, Anonymous Verse Bruts: Royal Brut

Jean Blacker (Kenyon College)
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The anonymous verse

Brut

in the early 14th c. Anglo-Norman MS, British Library, Royal 13.A.xxi, known as the Royal

Brut

or the Anglo-Norman

Brut

, is the longest fragment, containing 6,237 octosyllabic lines. In its current codicological situation, the Royal

Brut

, quite possibly originally part of a complete

Brut

, is preceded by the first 52 lines of Wace’s

Brut

, and followed by the remainder of Wace’s 14,866-line poem; the 6,237 lines are thought to have “substituted” for Wace’s lines 53–8728, hence the label of interpolation, though the poem’s editor, Alexander Bell, suggests that Wace’s poem may have been used to fill out the missing parts of the Anglo-Norman poem, and not vice versa (Bell 1969, x; see also Bell 1963); based on a number of omissions in comparison with…

244 words

Citation: Blacker, Jean. "Anonymous Verse Bruts: Royal Brut". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 April 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=41553, accessed 12 December 2024.]

41553 Anonymous Verse Bruts: Royal Brut 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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