Reading La3amon's Brut: Approaches and Explorations

Description

For La3amon, or Lawman (both forms are used), a parish priest living on the Welsh March c.1200, the criteria of language, race and territory all provided ways of defining the nation state, which is why his Brut commands a diverse readership to-day. The range of view-points in this book reflects the breadth and complexity of La3amon's own vision of the way his world is moulded by past conquests and racial tensions. The Brut is an open-ended narrative of Britain, its peoples, and its place-names as they changed under new rulers, and tells, for the first time in English, the rise and fall of Arthur, highlighting his role in the unfolding history of Britain. Beginning with its legendary founder, Brutus, the story is imagined anew, and although it concludes with an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, La3amon's closing words remind us that changes will come: i-wur�e �et iwur�e: i-wur�e Godes wille. Amen. This book offers detailed discussion and new perspectives. Its contributors explore aspects of behaviour and attitudes, personal and national identity and governance, language, metre, and the reception of La3amon's Brut in later times. Comparisons are made with Latin writings and with French, Welsh, Spanish and Icelandic, placing La3amon firmly within a European network of readers and redactors. The book will interest those working on medieval chronicles, as well as specialists in medieval law, custom, English language and literature, and comparative literature. Reading Lazamon’s Brut Contents Ackowledgements Abbreviations List of figures Introduction I Approaching the Brut Did Lawman Nod, or Is it We that Yawn? The Brut as Saxon Literature: The New Philologists Read Lawman "þe tiden of þisse londe" – Finding and Losing Wales in Lazamon's Brut The Severn: Barrier or Highway? II Behaviour and Customs The Political Notion of Kingship in Lazamon's Brut Queer Masculinity in Lawman's Brut Lazamon's Leir: Language, Succession, and History Losing the Past: Cezar's Moment of Time in Lawman’s Brut Lawman, Bede, and the Context of Slavery Drinking of Blood, Burning of Women The Coronation of Arthur and Guenevere in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, Wace's Roman de Brut, and Lawman's Brut Lazamon's Gestures: Body Language in the Brut III Words and Meanings Conquest by Word: The Meeting of Languages in Lazamon's Brut A Tale of Two Cities: London and Winchester in Lazamon's Brut When Are Saxons "Ænglisc"?: Language and Readerly Identity in Lazamon's Brut Mapping the National Narrative: Place-name Etymology in Lazamon's Brut and Its Sources The Lexical Field "Warrior" in Lazamon's Brut - A Comparative Analysis of the Two Versions The Language of Law: lond and hond in Lazamon' s Brut Frið and Grið: Lazamon and the Legal Language of Wulfstan Lazamon's Prosody: Caligula and Otho – Metres Apart Getting Lazamon's Brut into Sharper Focus IV Sources and Explorations Julius Caesar and the Language of History in Lazamon's Brut Lazamon's Ursula and the Influence of Roman Epic Constructing Tonwenne: A Gesture and Its History Wace to Lazamon via Waldef Translating England in Medieval Iceland: Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britannie and Breta sǫgur Lazamon's Welsh The Wisdom of Hindsight in Lazamon and Some Contemporaries Reading the Landscapes of Lazamon's Arthur: Place, Meaning and Intertextuality Lazamon's Brut and the Vernacular Text: Widening the Context Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index