De Gestis Britonum

Written in the 1130s, Geoffrey's imaginative history of the Britons from Brutus to Cadwallader, and the first to recount the woes of Lear and the glittering career of Arthur, rapidly became a bestseller. An ideal text for scholars, this is a reprint of the Latin text with a facing English translation.

Written in the 1130s, Geoffrey's imaginative history of the Britons from Brutus to Cadwallader, and the first to recount the woes of Lear and the glittering career of Arthur, rapidly became a bestseller. An ideal text for scholars, this is a reprint of the Latin text with a facing English translation.

The full, ancient text: Historia Regum Britanniae.Historia regum Britanniae (or The History of the Kings of Britain) is a supposedly historical account written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1136. Though much of the text is largely considered fiction, it does pull from several ancient texts and true historical events/personas.It is notable for being the first, major blockbuster-like success of the Arthurian legends, bringing the character to widespread popularity for the first time. Many of our modern myths (and ancient ones) have drawn from this text.

Historia regum Britanniae (The History of the Kings of Britain), originally called De gestis Britonum (On the Deeds of the Britons), is a pseudohistorical (fictitious) account of British history, written around 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It chronicles the lives of the kings of the Britons over the course of two thousand years, beginning with the Trojans founding the British nation and continuing until the Anglo-Saxons assumed control of much of Britain around the 7th century. It is one of the central pieces of the Matter of Britain.Although taken as historical well into the 16th century, it is now considered to have no value as history. When events described, such as Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain, can be corroborated from contemporary histories, Geoffrey's account can be seen to be wildly inaccurate. It remains, however, a valuable piece of medieval literature, which contains the earliest known version of the story of King Lear and his three daughters, and helped popularise the legend of King Arthur.

A study of a contemporary witness to the transformation of post-Roman Britain into Anglo-Saxon England. Gildas's De excidio Britonum is a rare surviving contemporary source for the period which saw the beginning of the transformation of post-Roman Britain into Anglo-Saxon England. However, although the De excidio has received much scholarly attention over the last forty years, the value of the text as a primary source for this fascinating if obscure period of British history has been limited by our lack of knowledge concerning its historical and cultural context. In this new study the author challenges the assumption that the British Church was isolated from its Continental counterpart by Germanic settlement in Britain and seeks to establish a theological context for the De excidio within the framework of doctrinal controversy in the early Continental Church. The vexed question of the place of Pelagianism in the early British Church is re-investigated and a case is put forward for a radical new interpretation of Gildas's own theological stance. In addition, this study presents a detailed investigation of the literary structure of the De excidio and Gildas's use of verbal patterns, and argues that his use ofthe Bible as a literary model is at least as significant as his well-documented use of the literary techniques of Classical Latin. Dr KAREN GEORGE is currently a tutor at the Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education.