17th April 2024: The Passing of Arthur

This month, Morgan Lee will be leading our meeting and we will be reading and discussing two different tellings of the death of King Arthur. Both texts – Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Passing of Arthur’ (1885) and Sir Thomas Malory’s telling of the same taken from the end of ‘Sir Mordred’ (1485) – are introduced by Morgan below. The meeting will be held in Rm 2.46 of the John Percival Building from 1-3pm on 17th April.

Tennyson’s imagination was captured by Arthurian myth, and particularly the figure of King Arthur. According to Hallam Tennyson, his father considered Arthur the ‘greatest of all poetical subjects’.[1] Through much of the nineteenth century, Tennyson published several poems based on the legend, including ‘Morte d’Arthur’, ‘Sir Galahad’, and ‘The Lady of Shalott’, before publishing the twelve-volume collection the Idylls of the King. The proliferation of Tennyson’s Arthurian poems in Victorian culture and literary imagination has led him to be dubbed by David Staines as the ‘father of the Arthurian renaissance’.[2] The Idylls is a collection of blank verse poems which were published in various sets between 1859 and 1885, retelling the myth of Arthur’s birth unto his death. The collection was very popular with Victorians, particularly Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert who received a dedication within the collection following his death in 1861.

Tennyson’s primary source for his Arthurian subjects was Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (1485). Tennyson stated that ‘The vision of an ideal Arthur as I have drawn him […] had come upon me when, little more than a boy, I first lighted upon Malory’.[3] Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur was finished in either 1469 or 1470 and first printed in 1485 by William Caxton. The seventh print edition of Malory came in 1816, and this was the edition that Tennyson owned in several copies. Tennyson made the Idylls in twelve individual poems to replicate the twelve books in Malory’s corpus and scholars including Christopher Ricks, have extensively noted the linguistic allusions and echoes throughout the Idylls. However, Tennyson’s and Malory’s portrayals of King Arthur are distinct from one another, not least in their different mediums and language.

The Arthurian legend is one that has repeatedly returned since the sixth century and still haunts British literature and culture. Different versions of King Arthur have been created in various mediums for centuries and each version of the narrative can be considered spectral as the ‘story returns over and over, […] in different registers, each reflecting another perspective entangled in a skein of cultural interests’.[4] My research examines Tennyson’s portrayal of his Arthur as the ‘phantom king’ and how he re-models Malory’s version to reflect Victorian cultural interests. Tennyson sought to make ‘the old legends his own, [restore] the idealism, and [infuse] into them a spirit of modern thought and an ethical significance, setting his characters in a rich and varied landscape’.[5] The Idylls is haunted by its intertextual connections to Malory, but also is occupied with reproducing the myth for a Victorian audience. Given my interest in spectrality and return, the MEMORI session will focus on how Malory and Tennyson portray the death of their respective King Arthurs, in Malory’s ‘Sir Mordred’ and Tennyson’s ‘The Passing of Arthur’.

The texts follow overall a similar structure in which Arthur’s Round Table has fallen into disarray in the wake of Guinevere and Lancelot’s revealed affair. Knights have turned from Arthur to follow Mordred, and the King and the last of his loyal knights are preparing to go to battle. King Arthur has a dream of his late nephew, Gawain/Gawayne, who warns him of his impending death in battle. Despite the warning, Arthur goes to fight and whilst in combat with Mordred, Arthur kills him, but is also receives a mortal blow. The half-dead Arthur is carried from the battlefield by Sir Bedivere/Bedewere (and his brother Sir Lucan in the Malory) to a nearby chapel.

Once away from the battle, the dying Arthur commands Bedivere/Bedewere to take his sword, Excalibur, and throw it into a nearby body of water. The last knight of the Round Table leaves, but he cannot face throwing the sword, so he hides it and returns to Arthur. When Arthur asks for a description of how the sword sank below the water, Bedivere lies that the sword simply sank. The wounded King accuses Bedivere of betrayal and sends him out, three times in total, until Bedivere eventually obeys his King and Excalibur is caught by a hand from the water. Bedivere returns to Arthur, who knowing he is dying, asks the knight to carry him to the waterside. A barge or ship appears bearing three Queens and Arthur is taken aboard, and the boat sails away.

Whilst the two texts follow this same plot, there are significant differences between Tennyson’s King Arthur and Malory’s. What my research and the seminar will consider is how Tennyson re-models Arthur and his death differently to Malory. In particular, the presence of ghosts within the two texts, and how the cultural expectations surrounding masculinity and war affects the presentation of Arthur as a king and knight.

Areas for discussion:

• What are the main similarities between Malory’s and Tennyson’s portrayal of King Arthur’s final battle and death?
• What are the differences?
• How is King Arthur portrayed as a king in Malory and Tennyson’s accounts?
• How do the two describe their battle scenes?
• What is the significance of the appearance of Gawain/Gawayne’s ghost?

Written by Morgan Lee.

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[1] Hallam Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir Volume 1, Cambridge Library Collection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 125.

[2] David Staines, ‘Tennyson’ in The Arthurian Encyclopaedia, ed. Norris J. Lacy (New York: The Boydell Press, 1986), p. 543.

[3] Christopher Ricks, The Poems of Tennyson in Three Volumes. Vol. 3, ed. Christopher Ricks, Longman Annotated English Poets (Harlow: Longman, 1987), p. 259.

[4] Julian Wolfreys, Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), p. 4.

[5] Hallam Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir Volume 2, Cambridge Library Collection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 122.

13th December 2023: The Middle Breton Dialog between Arthur and Guynglaff

This month, Jess Shales will be leading our meeting and we will be reading ‘The Middle Breton Dialog between Arthur and Guynglaff’, introduced by Jess below. The meeting will be held in Rm 2.46 of the John Percival Building from 1-3pm on 13th December.

The earliest version we currently have of the Middle Breton poem An Dialog etre Arzur, Roe d’an Bretounet, ha Guinglaff (‘The Dialog between Arthur, King of the Bretons, and Guynglaff’) is preserved in a copy made, in 1716, by the Breton linguist Dom Louis Le Pelletier, in his Dictionnaire de la langue bretonne (‘Dictionary of the Breton Language’). Le Pelletier had access to two manuscript versions of the text — both now lost, but one of which dated from 1619. The Dialog is a vaticinatory poem and, as its name suggests, it takes the form of a dialogue between King Arthur and the Breton prophet and Wild Man Guynglaff — who is to be numbered among other Celtic Wild Men such as the Welsh Myrddin, the Scottish Lailoken, and the Irish Suibhne.

In words which could equally be applied to most of the corpus of Middle Breton texts (with titles modified as required), not a lot is known for certain about the date and authorship of the Dialog. Regarding location, the majority of the poem’s dialectal markers point to Léon, in the North West of Brittany, as the place of origin (Bucher-Durand: forthcoming). Regarding date, Le Pelletier helpfully provided one: the Dialog in his Dictionnaire is preceded by the rubric Ecrit ainsi en François l’an de Notre Seigneur mil quatre cent et cinquante (’Written thus in French: the year of our Lord
1450’).

The current prevailing view among Breton scholars is slightly more complicated, however. It may be summarised as follows. First, the Dialog text in its preserved state is the result of many layers over time of scribal interventions — the result of copyists’ misunderstanding and incompetence — and these interventions are evinced by irregularities in the poem’s metre; internal rhyme; syllable-count per line; and its significant proportion of Middle French loanwords, which would not have been in use earlier in the Middle Breton period. Second, the poem’s core was written at two very different (but unspecified) points in time, with the first ten lines having been composed at an early date, and the rest written later. Under this view, it seems, the Dialog was put together as a whole by a ‘redactor’ around the year 1450 (Émile Ernault: 1926; Hervé Le Bihan: 2013).

More recently, however, I have been doing my best to set a cat among the pigeons by attempting to claim for the Dialog an original date of composition around the last decade of the sixteenth, or the early stages of the seventeenth, century. My argument is based on four main factors. First, problems with the 1450 date in the Dialog MS. Le Pelletier relays that his source in fact bore the date 450, preceded by a crossed-out mil (‘one thousand’). The author of the Dictionnaire read this erasure as the intervention of a mischievous scribe who desired to make the poem seem one thousand years older than it actually was — and thus from the (supposedly) authentic Arthurian age. But there is no evidence either to support this hypothesis, or to suggest that the original writer of the date had not in fact intended the (certainly fanciful) year 450 all along, had not mistakenly begun with mil, and accordingly corrected his work immediately by crossing out the mil. If this were to have been the case (as, in the light of the evidence as a whole, I think probable) it would mean that the 1450 date was Le Pelletier’s accidental invention, with no further relevance to the poem. Second, that the Prevailing View described above is both insufficiently supported by evidence from the text, and also somewhat circular — beginning (as it seems to do) with the premise that the poem is of an early date, and on this basis constructing further arguments for the Dialog’s greater antiquity, which in turn are used to confirm the text’s early date. Third, that the linguistic evidence — most notably innovative forms — are consistent with the late sixteenth century. And finally, that the poem’s overarching structure seems to reflect the turbulent events which took place in France and Brittany from around 1550 onwards.

This overarching structure may be summarised thus. The poem begins with what could be described as a prologue, which presents to the reader Guynglaff — who leads a solitary, sylvan existence — before introducing An Roe Arzur (‘The King Arthur’), who seizes the prophet and forcibly compels him to predict what will happen in Brittany before the world ends. Guynglaff agrees to expound almost anything Arthur asks, and launches into his prophecies. These prophecies occupy the majority of this 247-line poem; they are punctuated only three times by Arthur repeating with very slight variation his original question. Broadly speaking, Guynglaff’s vaticinations deal first with religious corruption in Brittany (ll. 24–61); second with catastrophic events in Brittany in the 1570s and 1580s (ll. 66–159); and third with the threat of an English invasion of Brittany (ll. 160–247). It is however striking that the first of these themes seems to underpin all of the prophecies, reoccurring in various forms throughout.

Il serait puéril de chercher à interpréter ces prophéties (‘It would be puerile to look to interpret these prophecies’), wrote René Largillière, the Dialog’s first modern editor, in reference to Guynglaff’s forecasts (Largillière: 1928, p. 630). To some extent, this view is justified: the overarching themes of Guynglaff’s prophecies mentioned above may be viewed as generic, common to much (especially Welsh) vaticinatory literature until the end of the seventeenth century. Historical parallels must therefore be approached with caution. Yet this has not stopped various scholars from trying to find particular historical events reflected in Guynglaff’s words. While J. Tourneur-Aumont has argued that the Great (Papal) Schism of 1378–1417 and the ‘Hussite’ uprising of 1429 feature among these historical events, I am unable to find any evidence to suggest that these occurrences concerned the Bretons to any noticeable degree around the date of composition which he espouses (Tourneur-Aumont: 1930). Instead, I find much more plausible that Guynglaff’s ‘heresy’ refers to reformed Protestant doctrine, which began its ascendancy in Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century and reached peak popularity in Brittany in the 1560s. As for the rest of the predictions, a notable number of these find striking correspondences with identifiable occurrences in Brittany at the end of the sixteenth century. On contextual historical grounds, therefore, I suggest a date of composition falling at some point between 1594 and the terminus ante quem — which one of Le Pelletier’s two MS sources provides — of 1619. Many avenues for further investigation remain with regard to the Dialog. Notably,comparative literary work between the Dialog and other Brittonic — or, more widely, European — prophetic literature could yield fruitful results.

Areas for discussion:

• Writer’s purpose.
• Comparisons with other prophetic literature.
• Affect of the Dialog on perceptions of the Arthurian legend.
• Characterisation of each interlocutor.
• The Dialog’s themes and their significance.
• Literary or thematic parallels.

Written by Jess Shales.

18th October 2023: Chaucer’s ‘The Legend of Ariadne’

Theseus and Ariadne, from ‘Game of Mythology’ (Jeu de la Mythologie) by Stefano della Bella, 1644. Source.

Welcome to the first meeting of the reformed MEMORI reading group.

The meeting will be held in Rm 2.46 of the John Percival Building from 2-4pm on 18th October. This month, we will be reading ‘The Legend of Ariadne’ from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women.

The Legend of Good Women was written between 1380-1387, and so is roughly contemporaneous with ‘The Knight’s Tale’ (c.1386), Chaucer’s other exploration of vaguely Thesean myth. In terms of its broader Chaucerian chronology, the Legend pre-dates The Canterbury Tales, but was written after TheBook of the Duchess (c.1368), The Parliament of Fowls (c.1374-1380), House of Fame (c.1374-1385), Troilus and Criseyde (c.1382-1387), and the continuation of The Romaunt of the Rose. At approximately 2700 lines, the Legend is the third longest of Chaucer’s works, and it survives in ten manuscripts.

For much of the twentieth century, the Legend was subject to critical censure and condemned as not very good. Much of the critical attention that was directed at the Legend focused on ‘the problem of the two prologues’, known as the F-Prologue and the G-Prologue: the question of which came first and, more nebulously, which version Chaucer himself might have preferred. Towards the end of the twentieth century, however, interest in the Legend shifted away from the prologues and towards the women of the Legend themselves, and the poem began to receive a reputational rehabilitation. Since the 1990s, there has been a continued and persistent interest in The Legend of Good Women, particularly given towards reading the text from a feminist perspective, although it remains one of the lesser regarded of Chaucer’s works and is still seldom taught.

Regardless of the version of the prologue that you might read, the Legend is presented as a work of poetic recompense or penance. The God of Love appears to the poet-narrator in a dream, accusing him of treachery. The charge levelled is that in his previous poetic works, specifically Troilus and Criseyde and the Romaunt of the Rose, the poet-narrator has ‘mysseyest’, and misrepresented Love himself and the women faithful to love. Alceste, consort to the God of Love, intervenes on the poet-narrator’s behalf and charges him with the redemptive task of writing a ‘glorious legend’ of true women if he wants to live:

Thow shalt, while that thou lyvest, yer by yere,
The moste partye of thy tyme spende
In making of a glorious legend
Of goode wymmen, maydenes and wyves,
That weren trewe in lovyng al hire lyves;
And telle of false men that hem bytraien,
That al hir lyf ne don nat but assayen
How many women they may doon a shame;
For in youre world that is now holde a game.
And thogh the lyke nat a lovere bee,
Speke wel of love; this penance yive I thee.[1]

Although the poet-narrator is being compelled to write for his life, the Legend is unfinished, and tails off abruptly during the final tale. Much of the criticism the Legend received in the twentieth century suggested that the reason for its incomplete state was authorial boredom at the telling and retelling of such similar tales (so inconsiderate for narratives of female heartache and abandonment to remain so uninterestingly similar) and resentment towards Alceste and her ladies for the enforced creative direction. More recently though, Sarah Harlan-Haughey has suggested that rather the reverse is true – instead of being bored and attempting to hurry the project along to its end, she argues that Chaucer is using the repetition of the women’s depressing(ly similar) stories to create a true and emotive response.[2] Chaucer’s ‘Legend of Ariadne’, in Harlan-Haughey’s reading, becomes ‘a prime example’ of the tragic recurring history that is ‘so deeply troubling in its recurrence that it really might make one sick at heart and not simply bored with dull “rehersings” of tragedies long passed’.[3]

‘The Legend of Ariadne’ is the sixth legend to be included in the collection. Altogether, the Legend retells the stories of ten mythic women across nine tales, and the reader is told that ‘trewe of love thise women were echon’ (F-Prologue, 290) and that they are all examples of the ‘trouthe of womanhede’ (F-Prologue, 297). Ariadne’s textual companions in the Legend are Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle, Medea, Lucrece, Philomela, Phyllis and Hypermnestra; some members of this group have raised more questions as to the designation of ‘good’ than others. Dealing as it does with tales of women abandoned, the Legend has long been considered a Chaucerian version of Ovid’s Heroides, and Chaucer identifies the ‘epistel of Ovyde / Of trewe wyves’ (G-Prologue, 305-06) as his primary source of auctoritas. However, the Heroides are just one of a number of sources Chaucer draws upon, and ‘The Legend of Ariadne’ in particular is curious amalgamation of sources, myths, and genres. Ariadne herself does not make an appearance until midway through, and the first half of her legend is occupied instead with the doomed love of another mythic woman, that of Scylla for Ariadne’s father, Minos. The inclusion of the Metamorphosean myth of Scylla points to the alternative Ovidian influence, while also acting as a forewarning to the reader that gestures towards the inevitable conclusion of Ariadne’s tale.

When she does appear, Ariadne is the chattiest of the women, a distinction that has contributed to her legend having been the most critically disparaged of all the women included. Writing in the 1970s, Robert W. Frank declared that the tale of Ariadne failed because it was ‘almost a conversation piece’; silent Lucrece, on the other hand, who has no words in the aftermath of her rape, Frank viewed as the roaring success of the collection.[4] However, in constructing Ariadne as a strident conversationalist, Chaucer grants her agency and a sense of subjectivity. In her spoken exchanges with Theseus and her sister, Phaedra, Ariadne voices her own desires and expresses her intentions as to how she will go about achieving her aims. Lucy Allen-Goss calls the Legend ‘the most radically disruptive’ of Chaucer’s poems because it establishes a mode of interrogating women’s emotions, desires, and aversions, thereby forging a connection with Middle English Romance; in the figure of Chaucer’s Ariadne, these features are clearly legible.[5]

Areas for discussion

• If you are familiar with any other versions of the Ariadne legend, how does Chaucer’s version compare? Is there anything particularly surprising or unexpected about the Chaucerian version?
• What genre would you say ‘The Legend of Ariadne’ is? Is it romance, fabliaux, or something else?
• What do you make of the Minos/Scylla episode in the first half of the tale?
• What is the role of Phaedra in this text?
• How does Phaedra’s speech compare with Ariadne’s, in terms of tone and content?
• What does Ariadne want?
• How convincing is the portrayal of Ariadne and Theseus as a couple? How do they compare against other Chaucerian couples or couples from Middle English romance?
• For those of you familiar with any Ovid, how Ovidian is this particular legend? Or if it isn’t Ovidian, is there anything else it resembles more?

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[1] Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women in The Riverside Chaucer, 3^rd edn, ed. by Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), F-Prologue, ll. 481-91 / G-Prologue, ll. 471-81.

[2] Sarah Harlan-Haughey, ‘The Circle, the Maze, and the Echo: Sublunary Recurrence and Performance in Chaucer’s Legend of Ariadne’, The Chaucer Review, 52,3 (2017), p. 345.

[3] Harlan-Haughey, ‘The Circle, the Maze, and the Echo’, p. 345.

[4] Robert W. Frank, Chaucer and The Legend of Good Women (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 170.

[5] Lucy M. Allen-Goss, Female Desire in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women and Middle English Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020), pp. 7-8.

Boccaccio, Lydgate & the Fall of Arthur (9 September 2020)

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  King Arthur receives the emissaries from Rome, Fall of Princes: South-east England, 1450-1460, Harley MS 1766, f. 217r.

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  Detail of King Arthur’s tomb, Fall of Princes: South-east England, 1450-1460, Harley MS 1766, f. 219r.

Next Meeting: Wednesday 9^th September, 4-6pm, via Zoom

No poet can mark time with such profuse demonstrations of energy, can so readily make twenty words do the work of one.

Derek Pearsall

The texts we will be reading this week are taken from Giovanni Boccaccio’s De casibus virorum illustrium (c.1355-1373) and John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes (c.1431- 38). Boccaccio’s De casibus is an encyclopaedic collection from late in his career, a moralising history written in Latin on the impact of Fortune on the great and those around them:

I shall relate examples of what God – or (speaking their own language) Fortune – can teach them about those she raises up. And, so that there can be no accusation against any specific time or sex, my idea has been to present succinctly – yet still with useful detail – those rules and other famous persons, women as well as men, who have been overthrown from the beginning of the world until now.^[1]

Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, meanwhile, is ostensibly a translation of the De casibus, but despite repeatedly claiming ‘Bochas’ as his auctour, Lydgate’s true source is Laurent de Premierfait’s De Cas de nobles hommes et femmes, a 1409 French prose translation of Boccaccio’s De casibus.^[2] Lydgate expands considerably upon his French intermediary and at 36,365 lines, the Fall of Princes is not only the longest extant Middle English poem, but it is also the longest English language poem, with only Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (34,650 lines) and John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (32,356 lines) coming close.^[3]

Commissioned in 1431 by the ‘myhti prynce’, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, the purpose of the Fall of Princes was to show that great men fall because of the depredations of Fortune, but that it is also possible to avoid her attentions through good behaviour. To this end, Gloucester requested that Lydgate add the moralising envoys following the tales, so that those reading might recognise their own missteps and correct themselves. Altogether, Lydgate added sixty-nine envoys, making them perhaps his most substantial original addition to the story collection. Close study of the envoys reveals their advice to be broadly ethical as opposed to specifically political or legal, which fits within the difficult line Lydgate had to tread in compiling the Fall of Princes for his patron. J. Allen Mitchell writes, 

Lydgate rationalizes and moralizes contingent events in a monitory rhetoric of human accountability, thereby making misfortune into another name for irresponsibility. The responsible prince, according to this advisory idiom, should not fear misfortune and may indeed aspire to overmaster Fortune.^[4]

Gloucester, however, was a contentious figure, and his abrasive and persistent pushes for more power during the minority government of Henry VI demonstrate ‘his willingness to allow personal ambition to jeopardize the wider good of the kingdom’.^[5] He chafed against the limitations imposed upon him by the council of lords, resenting the greater authority of his older brother, the Duke of Bedford, and persistently sought full authority as regent of England. Following the coronation of Henry VI in 1429, Gloucester manipulated the weak constitutional position of the council and played the seven-year-old king off against the lords, being the first to exploit ‘the dependence of the monarchical system upon the private person of the king’.^[6] In 1432, Gloucester orchestrated a coup in attempt to transfer government directly to the court, bypassing the council, and it has been speculated he was also responsible for goading Henry VI into challenging the lords in 1434.^[7] In compiling the Fall of Princes, Lydgate was therefore put in the awkward position of showing a cast of powerful men thrown down by Fortune for their sins, while simultaneously trying to cast Gloucester as a (somewhat implausible) exception to this rule. 

Unlike Lydgate’s patron, the version of King Arthur Lydgate presents is not an irresponsible figure. Detached from the flaws that might make him deserving of punishment in other versions of the Arthur legend, his misfortunes in the Fall of Princes are solely due to the actions of others: he is thrown under Fortune’s Wheel by ‘unkynde blood’ rather than any missteps of his own. In this sense, Lydgate’s King Arthur is a truly tragic figure. David Lawton suggests that Lydgate’s Arthur episode is an intentionally political parallel, observing that the detailed lists of Arthur’s conquests in France would not fail to recall to readers Henry V’s own French victories, still very recent history. Lawton further observes, ‘Arthur’s fall is attributed solely to Mordred’s rebellion while he was acting as regent in England, the position held by Gloucester while Bedford conducted the French war.’^[8] The tale of Arthur, therefore, becomes a site of tension, as Lydgate’s professed aim under instruction in writing the Fall of Princes (as a moral manual for great men) conflicts with the written message of the stories he is telling. This has contributed to the charges of incoherency laid at Lydgate’s feet over the years, but seems to be more indicative of the poet’s personal struggle in balancing the goals of his patron with his own observations from his ringside seat in the Lancastrian court.

Like Boccaccio’s De casibus virorum illustrium, the Fall of Princes was wildly popular during its own time, but by the eighteenth century, the reputation of both poem and poet had dwindled. In 1802, Joseph Ritson scathingly described Lydgate as ‘this voluminous, prosaick, and driveling monk’ in his Bibliographia poetica (termed ‘an outburst of dyspeptic anti-clericalism’ by Derek Pearsall) and Lydgate’s literary reputation has still yet to recover from the impact of this diatribe.^[9]

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Topics for discussion:

• What is familiar/unfamiliar about Boccaccio’s and Lydgate’s versions of the Arthur narrative?
• Consider the role of Fortune in both texts. How do they compare? 
• What do we make of the extensive detail Lydgate adds regarding the geography of lands Arthur conquers? 
• How does Lydgate portray the knights of the Round Table, and England under Arthur overall?
• What is the effect of making Mordred emphatically Arthur’s cousin instead of a bastard son? 
• Looking at lines 3095-3122, what do we make of Lydgate’s description of the death of Arthur?
• How accurate/appropriate is Lydgate’s moralising envoy at the conclusion of the text? How does ‘Bewar euere of vnkynde blood’ compare with Boccaccio’s moral reminder that ‘Only the humble things can endure’?
• Lydgate has long held a reputation for bad poetry; from what we have read, is it deserved?  

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^[1] Giovanni Boccaccio, The Downfall of the Famous, trans. Louis Brewer-Hall (New York: Italica Press, 2018), pp. 1-2

^[2] Premierfait translated Boccaccio’s De casibus twice: the shorter 1355-60 version, which is missing books VIII & IX, in 1400, and the extended version in 1409.

^[3] Nigel Mortimer, John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes: Narrative Tragedy in its Literary and Political Contexts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 1.

^[4] J. Mitchell, ‘Telling Fortunes in Lydgate’s Fall of Princes’, Ethics and Eventfulness in Middle English Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 88.

^[5] Mortimer, p. 54.

^[6] John Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 120.

^[7] Mortimer, p. 57.

^[8] David Lawton, ‘Dullness and the Fifteenth Century’, ELH, Vol. 54, No. 4 (1987), p. 784.

^[9] Mortimer, p. 3.

Caxtons Prologues and Printing: The Christian Worthies

By David Mason

William Caxton’s printing is diverse, but he is perhaps best known for his prose romances. The subject of this post are three prologues to the romances of the so-called ‘Chivalric’ or ‘Worthies’ series:[1] Godfrey of Bullogne (printed 1481), Charles the Grete (1485), and Le Morte Darthur (1485), as well as the non-romance Book of the Ordre of Chyualry (1481).[2]

Caxton personally translated many of the prose romances he printed, including Godfrey of Bullogne and Charles the Grete, working meticulously and word by word.[3] Each was accompanied by short prologues and epilogues, offering insights into the motivation behind his work and the audience he intends to address. This post explores Caxton’s use of the Nine Worthies motif in the prologues of the ‘Chivalric’ or ‘Worthies’ romances, through which he groups the texts thematically, and aligns his printing with an established literary motif of the late Middle Ages.

Literature of the Nine Worthies

The Nine Worthies is a motif common to late medieval literature: nine heroic individuals from history and legend who are grouped together in a sort of pantheon of the greats. They can be divided into three groups of three, in a system popularised (though not devised) by Jacques de Longuyon in his c.1310 Les Vœx du Paon.[4] These are:

The Pagan Worthies:

Hector, King of Troy
Alexander the Great
Julius Caesar

The Jewish Worthies:

Joshua of Israel
David, King of Israel
Judas Maccabeus

The Christian Worthies:

King Arthur
Charles the Great
Godfrey, King of Jerusalem

Each figure was the subject – collectively and individually – of a great deal of literary and artistic production in the late medieval period. Israel Gollancz’s appendices to his 1897 edition of The Parliament of the Thre Ages provide a numerous examples of medieval texts that showcase the literary popularity of this motif – two extracts from which are transcribed below:[5]

Men ȝernen iestes for to here,
And romaunce rede in dyuerse manere;
Of Alisaunder þe conqueroure,
Of Julius Cæsar þe emperoure, […]
Of King Arthour þat was so riche
Was noon in his tyme him liche; […]
How Kyng Charles & rouland fauȝt
With Sarazines nolde þei neuer be sauȝt…

(From the Anonymous Cursor Mundi (C11), ll.1-16)

The eldest was Alexandere, that alle the erthe lowtteded;
The tother Ector of Troye, the cheualrous gume;
The thirde Iulyus Cesare, that geant was holdene,
In iche jorne jentille, a-juggede with lords;
The ferthe was sir Iudas, a justere fulle nobille,
The maysterfulle Makabee, the myghttyeste of strenghes;
The fifth was Iosue, that joly mane of armes,
That in Ierusalem oste fulle myche joye lymppede.
The sextet was Dauid the dere, demyd with kynges…

(From Huchowne’s “Morte Arthure” (c.1380), the Interpretation of Arthur’s Dream, ll.3406-3446)

Both examples highlight some of the most typical descriptive features of late medieval depictions of the Worthies, which typically extol their martial deeds and great conquests. Alexander is the ‘conqueroure’ of all the world; Judas Maccabeus is the ‘myghttyeste of strenghes’ as a commander; Godfrey becomes King of Jerusalem after his success in the First Crusade.

Of the nine, Caxton’s ‘Worthies’ series details the lives of just three of the heroic individuals: the Christian figures of Arthur, Charles and Godfrey. Caxton’s printed translations are prose versions of the verse romances that proved popular at the Court of Burgundy during his own stay there in the mid-fifteenth century.[6] His mercantile and political connections meant that a significant portion of his working life was spent at the court of Philip the Good of Burgundy, where he had an intimate access to the libraries and social circles of the upper echelons.

Not only was the literature that Caxton selected for printing heavily influenced by Burgundian vogue, but so too was his printing style: it was the custom of the Burgundian court to write prologues and epilogues. Caxton’s influence in these prologues, which go some way to elucidate the connections between the ‘Worthies’ texts, have been recognised as being jointly-influenced by the dedications of the French texts he translated and those that appeared in Lydgate’s poetic works.[7] The particular style of Burgundian prologues emphasised the positive, didactic aspects of chivalry, and this didacticism is present in the prologues of the Worthies series;[8] Caxton prints, he repeatedly suggests, so that these great deeds might be emulated. Furthermore, we can read in the links between these prologues an intention that the texts should be read together, under the motif of the Nine Worthies.

Godfrey of Bullogne

The first of these ‘Worthies’ texts is Godfrey of Bullogne, printed in 1481.[9] The prologue gives a detailed description of each of the Worthies, and focuses particularly on their deeds. The extent of this description puts Caxton’s work in line with the previous literary iterations of the motif:

Accordyng to that we fynde wreton in holy scripture of many noble historyes, which were here ouer long to reherce. But in especial of thre noble and moost worthy of alle other, that is to wytte, fyrst of duc Iosue, that noble prynce / whiche ladde and conduyted the Childeren of Israhel, the chosen people of God, oute of deserte in to the londe of promyssyon, the Londe flowynge Mylke and hony. Secondly, of Dauyd the Kynge and holy Prophete…

Caxton continues as such for each of the Worthies, eventually arriving at Godfrey himself:

Henne as for the thyrd of the Cristen prynces, taken, reputed and renommed for to be egal emong thyse worthy & best that euer were, I mene the noble Godefroy of Boloyne […] whos noble hystorye I late fonde in a booke of ffrenssh, al alonge of his noble actes, valyaunces, prowesses / and accomplysshement of his hye empryses.

Deed and ‘accomplysshement’ takes pride of place, and Caxton suggests that these actions should prove an example for all of his readers. The Christian Worthies are given particularly great emphasis as men of legend, potentially as indication of Caxton’s intent to print on both Arthur and Charles in the coming years. Arthur is not only ‘kyng of the brytons’, but was the ‘fyrst founder of the round table’; Charles is likewise noted to have performed ‘noble actes and conquestes’ that have inspired many ‘large volumes’, the likes of which Caxton would translate and print only four years hence

Malory’s Morte Darthur

The second of the ‘Worthies’ romances is Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, printed by Caxton in July of 1485.[10] As with his translations, Caxton accompanies his edition with a lengthy prologue that begins with reference to the Worthies:

For it is notoyrly knowen thorugh the unyversal world that there been nine worthy and the best that ever were, that is to wete, thre Paynyms, thre Jewes, and thre Crysten men.

Specifically, he mentions the repeated demands to print Malory’s text that he has received – which he says has prompted his continuation of the Worthies motif.[11] While we cannot accept his claims at face value, his discussion in the prologue indicates that he prints Le Morte Darthur because he is obliged:

 …many noble and dyvers gentylmen of thys royame of Englond camen and demaunded me many and oftymes wherefore that I have not do made and enprynte the noble hystorye of the Saynt Greal and of the moost renomed Crysten kyng, fyrst and chyef of the thre best Crysten, and worthy, Kyng Arthur, whyche ought moost to be remembred emonge us Englysshe men tofore al other Crysten kynges.

The sayd noble jentylmen instantly requyred me t’emprynte th’ystorye of the sayd noble kyng and conquerour Kyng Arthur […] affermyng that I ought rather t’enprynte his actes and noble feates than of Godefroye of Boloyne or ony of the other eyght…

The passages are in direct reference to his 1481 work, a feigned dismay that he has mis-ordered his Worthies and removed the English King Arthur from his rightful place at the top. The initial passage is followed by a clear listing of the Worthies, along with a justification that the Pagan heroes are acceptable as men of legend as they were ‘tofore the Incarnacyon of Cryst’. Presumably, he suggests, no Pagan man can be held to the same standard as Christian man after the coming of Christ. The insinuation is hardly surprising; the Morte, is the only of the three texts in this set where the Worthy in question does not spend the majority of their time on crusade against Pagan foes.

Charles the Grete

Finally, we reach Charles the Grete, which can be precisely dated from Caxton’s final lines of the epilogue, stating that it was ‘enprynted the first day of decembre’ of 1485, roughly five months after the Morte.[12] More interesting though is that Caxton ‘fynysshed in the reducyng of hit in to englysshe’ on the 17^th June – the point at which he was working on printing the Morte. Once again, Caxton claims that popular demand provides the reason for his printing:

I haue been excyted of the venerable man messier henry bolomyer, chanonne of Lausanne, for to reduce for his playsyr somme hystoryes as wel in latyn & in romaunce as in other facion wryton, that is to say of the ryght puyssaunt, vertuous, and noble charles the grete…

However, shortly afterwards, the motive is twisted. Whilst still referring to the demands of his readership, Caxton makes mention of the Worthies series. Just as he has printed the works of Arthur and translated those of Godfrey:

 Thenne for as moche I late had fynysshed in enprynte the book of the noble & vyctoryous kyng Arthur, fyrst of the thre most noble & worthy of crysten kynges, and also tofore had reduced into englisshe the noble hystorye & lyf of Godfrey of boloyn kyng of Iherusalem, last of the said iij worthy, Somme persones of noble estate and degree haue desyred me to reduce thystorye and lyf of the noble and crysten prynce Charles the grete, kyng of fraunce & emperour of Rome, the second of the thre worthy…

The prologue to Charles the Grete, in this sense, is the most obscure of the three prologues; it does not follow trend Caxton has set of explaining the complete structure of the Nine Worthies, referring only to the Christian three. Perhaps, by this point, Caxton believes his readership has sufficient knowledge to make the connection. The link is not hidden, as he refers to Charles as ‘the second of the thre worthy’, but nor is it made explicitly clear in this prologue who these Worthies are. There is no mention of nine, no reference to the full pantheon, to the Pagans or the Jews, only the ‘thre most noble & worthy of crysten kynges’.

Caxton’s Worthies

Referring to these texts as a ‘Worthies’ series is a title we apply retrospectively, but not without reason. The evidence exists in Caxton’s own prologues to suggest that his intention was always that Godfrey of Bullogne, Charles the Grete, and his printing of Malory’s Morte Darthur be thematically linked and read as such. In using the motif as a linking factor, Caxton does not tread new ground. Many of the poetic works such as the Cursor Mundi treat the Worthies as a group, described and revered within a single text. Caxton prints each of his Worthies individually, but weaves throughout his own comments on the works a commonality that binds the three texts as one.

Of the remaining six, Caxton is remarkably quiet. He makes little mention of either the Pagan or Jewish worthies, save for his comments in the prologue to Malory’s Morte Darthur that they ‘were ‘tofore the Incarnacyon of Cryst’. Caxton’s judgements echo through the prologues, of these three texts and of many of his other prose romances. Many of these prologues show a considerably greater enthusiasm for religious war than can be reasonably explored in this post. Caxton’s allots a significant space in his prologue to Godfrey of Bullogne for direct comparison between the Saracen threat of the Godfrey’s crusade and the Ottoman threat that is ‘moche more nowe than were in his dayes’.

The prologues provide the clearest indication we could hope for of the intentions behind Caxton’s choice of texts to translate and print, even if we cannot discern the truth in his claims of patronage. Caxton adopts the motif of the Nine Worthies in his printing, but redirects focus from the entire pantheon onto the Christian three most relevant to his readership and printing interests.

Editions:

• William Caxton, Godeffroy of Boloyne, ed. Mary Noyes Colvin, EETS ES 64 (London: Trübner, 1893)
• William Caxton, The Lyf of the Noble and Crysten Prynce Charles the Grete, ed. Sidney J. H. Herrtage, EETS ES 36 & 37 (London: Oxford University, [1880] 1967)
• William Caxton, The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry, ed. Alfred T. P. Byles, EETS SS 2 (London: Oxford University, 1971)
• Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, ed. P. J. C. Field (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013)

 For further reference:

• Blake, N. F., Caxton and His World (London: Andre Deutsch, 1969)
• Blake, N. F., Caxton’s Own Prose (London: Andre Deutsch, 1973)
• Bornstein, D., ‘William Caxton’s Chivalric Romances and the Burgundian Renaissance in England’, English Studies, 57 (1976), 1-10.
• Cooper, H., The English Romance in Time (Oxford: University Press, 2004).
• Dickson, D., ‘The Nine Unworthies’, in Medieval Literature and Civilization, ed. D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron (London: Athlone, 1969), pp.228-32.
• Goodman, J. R., ‘Malory and Caxton’s Chivalric Series, 1481-85’, in Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), pp.257-71.

 

[1] William Kuskin, ‘Caxton’s Worthies Series’, ELH, 66:3 (1999), 511-551; J. R. Goodman, ‘Malory and Caxton’s Chivalric Series, 1481-85’, in Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), pp.257-71.

[2] The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry is regarded as part of the ‘Chivalric’ series, but it is not a ‘Worthies’ text like the romances. Still one of Caxton’s own translations, from the work of thirteenth-century French writer, Ramon Llull, it is addressed not as popular fiction but as specifically for those noble gentlemen who intend to enter the Order of Chivalry. See Caxton’s Epilogue to The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry, ed. Alfred T. P. Byles, EETS SS 2 (London: Oxford University, 1971).

[3] See ‘Introduction’ by Sidney J. H. Herrtage, in Charles the Grete, ed. Sidney J. H. Herrtage, EETS ES 36 & 37 (London: Oxford University Press, [1880] 1967), p. vii.

[4] Bruce Dickins, ‘The Nine Unworthies’, in Medieval Literature and Civilization, ed. Pearsall and Waldron (London: Athlone, 1969), 228-32.

[5] The following examples are transcribed from: The Parlement of the Thre Ages, ed. Israel Gollancz (London: Oxford University, 1897). The text is available on archive.org at < www.archive.org/details/cu31924013116219 > and the relevant appendix begins on p.119. A number of later texts considering the Nine Worthies, largely from C15-C18, are also freely available online on the Early English Books Online database.

[6] See: Diane Bornstein, ‘William Caxton’s Chivalric Romances and the Burgundian Renaissance in England’, English Studies, 57 (1976), 1-10.

[7] N. F. Blake, Caxton and His World (London: Andre Deutsch, 1969), pp.152-63.

[8] Bornstein, ‘Caxton’s Chivalric Romances’, p.6.

[9] Quotations from Godfrey are taken from Caxton’s prologue, transcribed in the EETS edition: William Caxton, Godeffroy of Boloyne, ed. Mary Noyes Colvin, EETS ES 64 (London: Trübner, 1893), pp.1-5.

[10] Quotations from the Morte are taken from P. J. C. Field’s 2013 edition of the text and paratexts: William Caxton, ‘Prologue to Le Morte Darthur’, in: Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, ed. P. J. C. Field (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), vol. II, pp.854-7.

[11] Kuskin, ‘Caxton’s Worthies Series’, p.512.

[12] Quotations from Charles are taken Caxton’s prologue in the EETS edition: William Caxton, The Lyf of the Noble and Crysten Prynce Charles the Grete, ed. Sidney J. H. Herrtage, EETS ES 36 & 37 (London: Oxford University, [1880] 1967).

David Mason is a doctoral candidate in medieval English literature, based at the School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University. His work is funded by the South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership (SWW-DTP). David’s thesis examines the English prose romances printed between 1473 and 1534 and the means by which these texts represent crusade, conversion, and the Eastern ‘other’. He can be found on twitter @d_s_mason

The auctoritas of Geoffrey of Monmouth

In his Anglica Historia (1534), Polydore Vergil published his scathing comments about Geoffrey of Monmouth, which subsequently ignited a debate over the veracity of the Historia regum Britanniae.[1] Quoting the twelfth-century historian, William of Newburgh, he writes that

there hathe appeared a writer in owre time which, to purse these defaultes of Brittains, feininge of them thinges to be laughed at, hathe extolled them above the nobleness of Romains and Macedonians, enhauncinge them with moste impudent lyeing. This man is cauled Geffray, surnamed Arthure, bie cause that oute of the olde lesings of Brittons, being somewhat augmented bie him, he hathe recited manie things of this King Arthure, taking unto him both the coloure of Latin speech and the honest pretext of an Historie.^[2]

Vergil believed the Historia to be largely fictitious: he regarded Brutus to be an invention of the author, and he also suggested that Geoffrey’s portrait of Arthur had been highly embellished. British historians and antiquarians, such as John Leland, John Prise, and Humphrey Llwyd, were not receptive to the Anglica Historia, and they rushed to defend Geoffrey.

Yet Polydore Vergil’s objections about the Historia regum Britanniae were not new. In the twelfth century, Gerald of Wales and – most famously – William of Newburgh had their doubts about the reliability of Geoffrey’s work. Vergil, then, was merely continuing a tradition of skepticism about the Historia that had been popular since the twelfth century, and so his comments were not, necessarily, the product of Renaissance humanist doubt. This short post will consider how medieval and early modern commentators on the Historia regum Britanniae used their scholarly arguments to explore ideas of authority and authorship; in particular, it focuses on how William of Newburgh and John Leland used their evaluative historiographical practices to influence the reputation of Geoffrey of Monmouth.

William of Newburgh

Geoffrey’s most profound early critic was William of Newburgh. His skepticism of the Historia regum Britanniane is well documented in his Historia rerum Anglicarum (‘The History of English Affairs’, c. 1198), a history of the Anglo-Norman kings from William I to Richard I, which focuses in particular on the civil unrest in the reign of King Stephen. In this text, William includes a vicious attack on Geoffrey and the Historia, and the prologue to his text begins with a treatise on history and truth. He upholds Gildas and Bede as the most esteemed writers of ‘British’ history, particularly as they were committed to revealing the truth about the Britons, but he laments that

in our own day a writer [scriptor] of the opposite tendency has emerged. To atone for these faults of the Britons he weaves a laughable [ridicula] web of fiction [figmenta] about them, with shameless vainglory extolling them far above the virtue of the Macedonians and the Romans. This man is called Geoffrey and bears the soubriquet Arthur, because he has taken up the stories about Arthur from the old fictitious [figmentis] accounts of the Britons, has added to them himself, and by embellishing them in the Latin tongue he has cloaked them with the honourable title of history.[3]

In this passage, William’s main objection to the Historia is its basis in fiction [figemnta], rather than fact, and he complains that such an unreliable work has been produced in Latin, the language of authority. The contrast between fact and fiction demonstrates the unreliability of Geoffrey’s work, especially since the deeds of Arthur in the Historia have been over exaggerated. William insists that here is no justification for such ‘wanton and shameless lying’ (I.5), and dismisses Geoffrey as a mediocre historian who has ‘not learned the truth about events’ (I.5).

William’s prologue continues with a brief descriptive of the Saxon invasion by Hengist, and he lists the English kings that ruled after him, including Ethelbert, Aethelfrith, Edwin, and Oswald. According to William, these are historically accurate [historicam veritatem] events as they are accounted for in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. William then uses Bede’s account to disprove Geoffrey’s version of events, and he claims that

it is clear that Geoffrey’s entire narration about Arthur, his successors, and his predecessors after Vortigern, was invented partly by himself and partly by others. The motive was either an uncontrolled passion for lying, or secondly a desire to please the Britons, most of whom are considered to be so barbaric that they are said to be still awaiting the future coming of Arthur being unwitting to entertain the fact of his death. (I.9)

William’s juxtaposition of these accounts is clearly designed to assert the authority of Bede, rather than Geoffrey. Nevertheless, his assertion that created the Historia ‘partly by himself’, suggests that William also regarded Geoffrey as an auctor who was distinguished from scriptors, compilators, and commentators by their ability to invent their own work.[4] Technically, of course, Geoffrey only fulfills the category of scriptor as he only presents himself as a translator of the ‘British book’, which he claims was given to him by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. By acknowledging that some of the content of the Historia regum Britanniae was unique – even it was unaccounted for – Geoffrey’s principal critic is also his most important bestower of auctoritas.

After comparing Geoffrey with Bede, William casts his final judgment over the veracity of the Historia. He interrogates Geoffrey’s account of Arthur’s reign, particularly his foreign conquests, and he remarks

how could the historians of old, who took immense pains to omit from their writings nothing worthy of mention, and who are known to have recorded even modest events, have passed over in silence this man beyond compare and his achievements so notably beyond measure? How, I ask, have they suppressed in silence one more notable than Alexander the Great – this Arthur, monarch of the Britons, and his deeds – or Merlin, prophet of the Britons, one equal to Isaiah, and his utterances? […] So since the historians of old have made not even the slightest mention of these persons, clearly all that Geoffrey has published in his writer about Arthur and Merlin has been invented by liars to feed the curiosity of those less wise. (I.14)

Here, William’s process of evaluation is framed through a series of complex rhetorical questions and juxtapositions focusing on Geoffrey and the ‘historians of old’. The rhetorical questions are designed to reinforce the authority of Gildas and Bede (even if they are not directly mentioned by name), and they imply that it would be unreasonable to doubt the reliability of two writers who recorded every detail of events. William entirely discredits Geoffrey’s attempt to fill the lacuna in insular history, and his conclusion that the stories of Arthur and Merlin Historia must be an invention, especially since they cannot be confirmed by any of the ancient historians, appears to be perfectly valid.

John Leland

The critical attitudes to Geoffrey’s Historia regum Britanniae began to change in the sixteenth century. The English antiquarian John Leland objected to Vergil’s claim that the Historia was an unreliable source, and in his De uiris Illustribus (‘Of Famous Men’, first completed 1535-6 and revised 1543-6), Leland offered a defence of Geoffrey, whom he placed alongside various other writers of ‘British’ history, ranging from the first Druids to Robert Widow. The account in De uiris Illustribus can be considered to be the first biography of Geoffrey, who is described as a man who ‘took great pleasure in reading ancient history’ and who ‘also delighted in scholarly intercourse’.^[5] Leland situates Geoffrey within the clerical and academic circles of his time, and he is upheld as model of learning and authority. He praises him for his dedication to ‘British’ history as ‘he stands alone in having rescued a great part of Britain’s antiquity [Britannicae antiquitatis] well and truly from destruction through a diligence [diligentia] which is beyond all praise’ (Leland, p. 308-9). Leland presents Geoffrey as a translator, rather than an author, of his own work, and he writes that

he openly declares that he performed the task [officio] only of an interpreter [interpretis]; in other words, he translated a British history, written in the British language, and brought to him by Walter Map, the archdeacon of Oxford, into Latin. (Leland, p. 310-11)

This remark is essentially an apology for the number of inventions that can be found in the Historia, and it is also designed to counteract the comments of Geoffrey’s critics, who credited him with fabricating many of the events in his work. According to Leland, then, Geoffrey had a limited amount of creative agency, and he simply acted as a cultural mediator by transmitting an ancient account of the ‘British’ past to his twelfth century readers.

Leland’s biography of Geoffrey includes a lengthy scholarly attack on Polydore Vergil. Leland complains that the Italian historian

launches a frenzied attack on Geoffrey, in order to undermine Geoffrey’s authority [autoritatem] and to accumulate weight and force as well as credibility [ueritatem] for his own empty inanities. Then, for much of the earlier part of his history, this most impudent fellow is forced to follow the writer whom he has just torn to pieces with so many harsh words. But one should surely forgive this impertinence when there was practically no other authority [autorem] he could have followed. (p. 310-11)

Here, Leland asserts that Vergil is a hypocrite for discrediting Geoffrey, and then using his account to form the basis of the record of insular history in the Anglica Historia. Leland’s comments also imply that ‘English’ history, from the Saxon period through the Normans to the Plantagenet kings, and the current Tudor monarchy, depends upon early ‘British’ history for its authenticity. Indeed, during the fifteenth century, the idea of cultural inheritance between England and Wales was being more explicitly acknowledged, especially as Henry VII had used his descent from Cadwallader, the last king of the Britons, to legitimate his claim to the throne. According to Leland, then, the Historia still had political currency, and he consistently emphasises the authority of Geoffrey, the ‘good author’, in order to expose Vergil, the ‘foreigner’, as the unreliable fraud.

In De uiris Illustribus, Leland also includes an assessment of Vergil’s sources that he used in the Anglica Historia. Vergil’s account of early insular history relied heavily on Tacitus’ Agricola (c. 98) and Julius Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico (c. 58-49 BCE), both of which had grown in popularity during the Early Modern period. For Vergil, these Latin Caesar and Tacitus were more authoritative than Gildas and Bede, who lived several centuries later than the period they were writing about. Leland, however, remarks that

none of them [the Romans], as far as I know, wrote anything worth mentioning before Caesar. Besides, not everything that Caesar wrote – however much the Dunce [Polydore Vergil] makes of his statements – seems to me to have proceeded from an oracle; the same applies to many other things about the Britons which were later handed down to posterity by Latin authors. (Leland, pp. 310-13)

This assessment of Caesar is also a judgment of Polydore Vergil. Leland implies that it was unreasonable for Vergil to use Roman – and therefore biased – history in order to counteract Geoffrey’s version of ‘British’ history. Moreover, Leland also disregards the authority of Gildas and Bede, especially since the authorship of De Excidio Britanniae was subject to question after its publication in 1525, and the Historia Ecclesiastica included very little information on early ‘British’ history prior to the Saxon conquest. Leland’s detailed evaluation of his these sources interrogates the comparative methodology that Geoffrey’s critics used to disprove his account of insular history, and through his scholarly inquiry, Leland demonstrates that the Historia is the only real authority worth following.

The short biography of Geoffrey of Monmouth in De uirius Illustribus canonised the ‘British’ historian as an auctor – a term that, as A. J. Minnis points out, ‘denoted someone who was at once a writer and an authority, someone not merely to be read but also to be respected and believed’.[6] John Leland’s appraisal of Geoffrey challenged and disproved the objections of the critics of the Historia regum Britanniae, and his work later influenced the Welsh historians John Prise and Humphrey Llwyd, who both wrote defenses of Geoffrey in the latter half of the sixteenth century. These classically educated scholars and intellectuals held the Historia regum Britanniae in great esteem, rescuing its reputation from the likes of William of Newburgh and Polydore Vergil. Through their arguments, Leland, Prise, and Llwyd proved that Geoffrey’s authority and the veracity of his Historia was beyond all doubt.

---

This is a revised version of a paper given at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds (July 2015)

[1] This debate has been previously explored by James P. Carley, who viewed the antagonism between the two historians as prefiguring twentieth-century scholarship on the ‘historical Arthur’ that became increasingly popular among historians and archaeologists following the work of E. K Chambers and Leslie Alcock; see James P. Carley, ‘Polydore Vergil and John Leland on King Arthur: The Battle of the Books’, in King Arthur: A Casebook, ed. Edward Donald Kennedy (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 185-204.

^[2] Polydore Vergil’s English History, from an early translation presented among the MSS. of The Royal Library in the British Museum. Volume 1. Containing the First Eight Books, comprising the period prior to the Norman Conquest, ed. Sir Henry Ellis (London: Printed for the Camden Society, by John Bowyer Nichols and Son, Parliament Street, MDCCCXLVI), p. 29. All further references to Vergil’s Anglia Historia are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the text.

[3] William of Newburgh, The History of English Affairs, ed. and trans. P. G. Walsh and M. J. Kennedy (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1988), p. 29. All further references to William’s Historia rerum Anglicarum are to this edition and are given in the text.

[4] On the definitions of the auctor, scriptor, commentator, and compiler, see A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London: Scolar Press, 1984), p. 94.

^[5] John Leland, De uiris Illustribus, ed. and trans. James P. Carley (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2010), p. 321. All further reference to Leland’s De uiris Illustribus are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the text. It should be noted that Leland’s length discussion on Polydore Vergil and King Arthur were later insertions, and the entry on Geoffrey of Monmouth in the first version of De uirius Illustribus was purely concerned with the writer in question.

[6] A. J. Minnis, The Medieval Theory of Authorship, p. 10.