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Havelok in the Prose Brut Tradition

Havelok in the Prose Brut Tradition by Julia Marvin HE written versions of the story of Havelok most widely distributed in the Middle Ages are also among the least known today: they are found not in romance, nor even in verse, but in the prose Brut chronicles. Surviving in some 50 manuscripts in Anglo-Norman, 180 in English, and 20 in later Latin versions, the prose Brut in its various manifestations was the most popular secular, vernacular work of the late Middle Ages in England. As Lister Matheson says, ``as a cultural artifact the Brut is of the first importance.'' 1 From its oldest AngloNorman version, running from the fall of Troy to 1272 and thought to have been composed near the end of the thirteenth century, to its thirteen printed editions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and beyond that through the works it influenced, the Brut provided generations of English readers with a fundamental narrative of the history of their land.2 In his 1828 edition of the Middle English Havelok, Frederic Madden printed extracts from the prose Bruts, observing that the Havelok tradition was ``not only admitted from the 12th to the 15th centuries as historical fact, but mingled in the same stream http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Studies in Philology University of North Carolina Press

Havelok in the Prose Brut Tradition

Marvin, Julia
Studies in Philology , Volume 102 (3) – May 7, 2005
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by The University of North Carolina Press.
ISSN
1543-0383
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Abstract

by Julia Marvin HE written versions of the story of Havelok most widely distributed in the Middle Ages are also among the least known today: they are found not in romance, nor even in verse, but in the prose Brut chronicles. Surviving in some 50 manuscripts in Anglo-Norman, 180 in English, and 20 in later Latin versions, the prose Brut in its various manifestations was the most popular secular, vernacular work of the late Middle Ages in England. As Lister Matheson says, ``as a cultural artifact the Brut is of the first importance.'' 1 From its oldest AngloNorman version, running from the fall of Troy to 1272 and thought to have been composed near the end of the thirteenth century, to its thirteen printed editions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and beyond that through the works it influenced, the Brut provided generations of English readers with a fundamental narrative of the history of their land.2 In his 1828 edition of the Middle English Havelok, Frederic Madden printed extracts from the prose Bruts, observing that the Havelok tradition was ``not only admitted from the 12th to the 15th centuries as historical fact, but mingled in the same stream

Journal

Studies in Philology – University of North Carolina Press

Published: May 7, 2005

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