Wace – författare

'Whoever wishes to hear about, and to know about, kings and heirs, about who first ruled England and which kings it had, Master Wace, who is telling the truth about this, has translated this.'Wace's Roman de Brut (1155) can be seen as the gateway to the history of the Britons for both French and English speakers of the time, and thus to Arthurian history, as the first complete Old French adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin History of the Kings of Britain (late 1130s), in which Arthur appears for the first time as king of the Britons. The Roman de Brut was a foundational work, an inspiration for a series of anonymous verse Bruts of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries and for the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut -- the most widely read French vernacular text on this material in medieval England -- as well as a forerunner of the Middle English Brut tradition, including Layamon's Brut (c. 1200). Wace's poem thus inaugurates and shapes Brut traditions, including Arthurian tales, in verse and in prose, in historiography and in literature, including Wace's innovation of King Arthur's Round Table.This volume contains an English prose translation of Wace's Roman de Brut, accompanied by an introduction and notes, a select bibliography, a summary of the text, a list of manuscripts, and indexes of personal and geographical names.

Wace's Roman de Rou relates the history of the Normans from Rollo (Rou) to the battle of Tinchebray, establishing their right to the English throne.Wace's Roman de Rou relates the origins of Normandy from the time of Rollo (Rou) to the battle of Tinchebray. It was commissioned by Henry II as a way of both celebrating the Norman past and justifying the right of Norman rulers to the throne of England: the accounts it gives of the early life of William the Conqueror and of the battle of Hastings, which occupy a substantial portion of the work, make it a valuable historical document as well as an important work of literature. Wace related the events partly in Alexandrines and partly in the octosyllabic rhyming couplets used by the romance writers of the day; indeed, at a time when the boundary between romance and history was blurred, he created a cast of characters and recounted a series of battles and adventures in a style worthy of any of the great masters of romance. He was also exceptionally good, like other contemporary romance writers, at realistic conversations, such as those between King Harold and his brother Gyrth before the battle of Hastings. As a historian, Wace was dedicated to the truth and willing to undertake personal research in order to verify the accuracyof his statements. As a storyteller, he had the ability to render events more dramatic by showing how they arose from the interplay of human beings.The translation, by GLYN S. BURGESS, is accompanied by full editorial notes(in collaboration with Elisabeth van Houts) and an introduction; the volume is completed by a critical essay by Professor van Houts.GLYN S. BURGESS is Emeritus Professor of the University of Liverpool; ELISABETH VAN HOUTS lectures in medieval history, University of Cambridge.