I - From ‘The Matter of Britain’ to ‘The Matter of Rome’: Latin Literary Culture and the Reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth in Wales

Summary

The Welsh reception of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, an important facet of Geoffrey's reception into the vernacular literary cultures of medieval Britain, is a topic that has fascinated and at times stymied scholars of Arthurian literature over the years. The Historia was first translated into Middle Welsh in the mid-thirteenth century, and by the mid-fourteenth century at least six distinct Welsh versions circulated, the result of several acts of translation and redaction. This proliferation of translations and manuscript copies suggests a considerable popularity in Wales. Scholarly attention to this important group of texts, known collectively as Brut y Brenhinedd (History of the Kings), has been hampered by a lack of published editions and of translations into English. With several digital transcriptions now available, supplementing the earlier partial efforts at publishing and translating the texts in the twentieth century, the field is at last able to go forward. Scholarship to date has focused on analyzing the differences between the various versions of Brut y Brenhinedd, their complex relationships to the Latin texts, and what the translators’ modifications of their Latin exempla reveal about Welsh attitudes towards history, conquest and their English neighbours.

The circumstances of the origins of these Welsh translations, however, remain murky – they were likely monastic, though even this is not certain – and the initial motivations and intentions of the translators are very much open to interpretation. When exactly Geoffrey's Latin text reached Wales, and why it first appeared in Welsh c. 1250, is also unclear. Furthermore, the status of Latin-language literature and historical writing in Wales has not been adequately understood or appreciated to date, with Latin literary culture often passed over in favour of studies of Welsh-language literature and historical writing.

The present study addresses this last desideratum, demonstrating that Latin was in fact a very important part of Welsh literary culture. It argues that Welsh-language literature and historical writing arose out of, and alongside, Latin writing and should not be considered as separate from it. This interpretation has the potential to alter scholarly perceptions of the intellectual and literary context into which Geoffrey's history was received in Wales, shedding light on this important group of Welsh texts, their ideologies and the circumstances of their translation into Welsh.