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Winner of the 2025 Dhira B. Mahoney Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book in Arthurian Studies
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s immensely popular Latin prose Historia regum Britanniae (c. 1138), followed by French verse translations – Wace’s Roman de Brut (1155) and anonymous versions including the Royal Brut, the Munich, Harley, and Egerton Bruts (12th -14th c.), initiated Arthurian narratives of many genres throughout the ages, alongside Welsh, English, and other traditions.
Arthur, Origins, Identities and the Legendary History of Britain addresses how Arthurian histories incorporating the British foundation myth responded to images of individual or collective identity and how those narratives contributed to those identities. What cultural, political or psychic needs did these Arthurian narratives meet and what might have been the origins of those needs? And how did each text contribute to a “larger picture” of Arthur, to the construction of a myth that still remains so compelling today?
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s immensely popular Latin prose Historia regum Britanniae (c. 1138), followed by French verse translations – Wace’s Roman de Brut (1155) and anonymous versions including the Royal Brut, the Munich, Harley, and Egerton Bruts (12th -14th c.), initiated Arthurian narratives of many genres throughout the ages, alongside Welsh, English, and other traditions.
Arthur, Origins, Identities and the Legendary History of Britain addresses how Arthurian histories incorporating the British foundation myth responded to images of individual or collective identity and how those narratives contributed to those identities. What cultural, political or psychic needs did these Arthurian narratives meet and what might have been the origins of those needs? And how did each text contribute to a “larger picture” of Arthur, to the construction of a myth that still remains so compelling today?
Price: $222.00
Pages: 568
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Explorations in Medieval Culture
Publication Date:
27 March 2024
ISBN: 9789004691032
Format: Hardcover
Jean Blacker, Ph.D. (1984), University of California, Berkeley, is Professor Emerita of French at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio (USA). She has published articles, translations, and monographs primarily on Anglo-Norman and Old French historical and religious texts, including Wace, The Hagiographical Works: The Conception Nostre Dame and the Lives of St Margaret and St Nicholas, with Glyn S. Burgess (trans.) and Amy V. Ogden (Brill, 2013).