History, Prophecy and the Arthur of the Normans: the question of audience and motivation behind Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae

Summary

Speaking at the Battle Conference for Anglo-Norman Studies in 1990, John Gillingham said that ‘it is unlikely there could ever be a single satisfying explanation for a book as extraordinary and influential as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain’. However, this has not prevented scholars attempting to find it, or, at the very least, to offer up some plausible argument which might shed light on both the Historia Regum Britanniae and its author. The continued interest in Geoffrey’s Historia is due largely to the fact that Geoffrey’s inspirations and appeal transcended social and political borders, while the history he produced very quickly became an inspiration for the writers of romance. Completed no later than January 1139, it provided an account of the history of Britain’s ancient kings and queens from its foundation to the Britons’ fall to the Saxons in the mid-seventh century; it included within its pages the first account of the reign of King Arthur, and was the first to link the story of Arthur with that of the prophet and magician Merlin. Though focused on the distant and largely fictional past, the work was immensely popular among Geoffrey’s contemporary audience and survives in an impressive 217 manuscripts. It also inspired a wealth of adaptations, commentaries and derivative histories and romances among the Welsh, English, Normans and French in the decades following its first appearance.

The far-reaching influence of the Historia, its appeal to diverse audiences and its situation somewhere between history and mythology have understandably led to an equally diverse range of reactions among scholars. Some of the most consistent questions which have been approached by modern scholarship concern Geoffrey’s motivations in writing the work, his intended audience, and his inspirations or source material. Scholars have also devoted a considerable number of pages to defining the Historia. While some have argued that it was written to poke fun at the genre of historical writing, or as parody, others have suggested that it belongs more to romance than to history, with Antonia Gransden describing Geoffrey as ‘a romance writer masquerading as a historian’.