IMC 2010: Sessions

The first of four sessions devoted to discussions of vernacular historiographical writings of the British Isles during the high and later Middle Ages, this session explores Anglo-Norman and Middle English versions of the most popular secular vernacular text of later medieval Britain – the anonymous prose Brut chronicle. With a collective focus on manuscript evidence, the papers investigate significant additions to, omissions from, and continuations of individual versions of the chronicle and their implications for the wider Brut tradition. The first paper investigates the prophecies of Merlin in Anglo-Norman prose versions of the Brut to discover what it is about this vexed figure that sometimes seems to add and sometimes detract from the authority or comprehensibility of a 'Brut' text, and to develop a broader sense of Merlin's function and importance in the prose Brut tradition. The second paper considers the account of the last king of the Britons, Cadwallader, in Middle English versions of the chronicle, with particular attention to 'Þe noble queene þat was called Sexburga' who appears in it, to explore medieval multitextuality in the Brut's variable yet highly cohesive narrative of Britain's past. The final paper reconsiders the genesis of Caxton's 1480 publication, the Chronicles of England, especially its narrative continuation from 1419 to 1461, and discusses in detail the sole manuscript written by a single scribe that contains this section of text.