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Monmouth Geoffrey of. The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of the “De gestis Britonum” [Historia Regum Britanniae]. Edited by Michael D. Reeve. Translated by Neil Wright. Arthurian Studies 69. Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2007. Pp. 392. $95.00 (cloth).
Few books purporting to be historical have so consistently annoyed historians as the one by Geoffrey of Monmouth usually referred to as The History of the Kings of Britain, probably written by 1137. Many would prefer not to call it a history at all, since it is a highly imaginative work incorporating earlier Latin histories, oral tradition from various languages, allusions to scripture and classical sources, and, most prominently, Geoffrey's own fanciful intellect (which he hid under the improbable conceit that he was simply translating “a very old book in the British tongue”). Already in the late twelfth century, astute readers knew much of it was fiction. From Geoffrey we learn of the comings and goings of the Romans in Britain, of Leir and Cordelia, and, most famously, of Arthur and Merlin. Now that historians and scholars of medieval literature have gotten past their positivist misgivings about Geoffrey as a purveyor of fact, however, they can draw from the History a sense of the intellectual culture of the early twelfth century, the interaction between Latin and vernacular traditions, and of the very notion of historiography in the High Middle Ages. Because of the cultural richness of Geoffrey's book,...