Reading Layamon's Brut : : approaches and explorations / / edited by Rosamund Allen, Jane Roberts and Carole Weinberg.

• TeilnehmendeR: Allen, Rosamund, 1942-; Roberts, Jane, 1936-; Weinberg, Carole.
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam : : Rodopi,, 2013.
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: DQR studies in literature ; 52; DQR Studies in Literature 52.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (756 pages) :; illustrations, map.

For Layamon, or Lawman (both forms are used), a parish priest living on the Welsh March c.1200, the criteria of language, race and territory all provided ways of defining the nation state, which is why his Brut commands a diverse readership to-day. The range of view-points in this book reflects the breadth and complexity of La3amon’s own vision of the way his world is moulded by past conquests and racial tensions. The Brut is an open-ended narrative of Britain, its peoples, and its place-names as they changed under new rulers, and tells, for the first time in English, the rise and fall of Arthur, highlighting his role in the unfolding history of Britain. Beginning with its legendary founder, Brutus, the story is imagined anew, and although it concludes with an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, La3amon’s closing words remind us that changes will come: i-wurðe þet iwurðe: i-wurðe Godes wille. Amen . This book offers detailed discussion and new perspectives. Its contributors explore aspects of behaviour and attitudes, personal and national identity and governance, language, metre, and the reception of La3amon’s Brut in later times. Comparisons are made with Latin writings and with French, Welsh, Spanish and Icelandic, placing La3amon firmly within a European network of readers and redactors. The book will interest those working on medieval chronicles, as well as specialists in medieval law, custom, English language and literature, and comparative literature.

Table of Contents

Introducion / Rosamund Allen, Jane Roberts and Carole Weinberg -- Did Lawman nod, or is it we that yawn? / Rosamund Allen -- The Brut as Saxon literature: the new philologists read Lawman / Haruko Momma -- "pe tiden of pisse londe": finding and losing Wales in La3amon's Brut / Simon Meecham-Jones -- The Severn: barrier or highway? / Andrew Wehner -- The political notion of kingship in La3amon's Brut / Eric Stanley -- Queer masculiinty in Lawman's Brut / John Brennan -- La3amon's leir: language, succession, and history / Kenneth J. Tiller -- Losing the past: Cezar's moment of time in Lawman's Brut / Joseph D. Parry -- Lawman, Bede, and the context of slavery / Daniel Donoghue -- Drinking of blood, burning of women / Andrew Breeze -- The coronation of Arthur and Guenevere in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, Wace's Roman de Brut, and Lawman's Brut / Charlotte A.T. Wulf -- La3amon's gestures: body language in the Brut / Barry Windeatt -- Conquest by word: the meeting of language in La3amon's Brut / Hannah McKendrick Bailey -- A tale of two cities: London and Winchester in La3amon's Brut / Ian Kirby -- When are Saxon's "©nglisc"?: language and readerly identity in La3amon's Brut / Margaret Lamont -- Mapping the national narrative: place-name etymology in La3amon's Brut and its sources / Joanna Bellis -- The lexical field "warrior" in La3amon's Brut: a comparative analysis of the two versions / Christine Elsweiler -- The language of law: lond and hond in La3amon's Brut / Deborah Marcum -- Fri©ʻ and Gri©ʻ: La3amon and the legal language of Wulfstan / Scott Kleinman -- La3amon's prosody: Califula and Otho, metres apart / Erik Kooper -- Getting La3amon's Brut into sharper focus / Jane Roberts -- Julius Ceasar and the language of history in La3amon's Brut / Carole Weinberg -- La3amon's Ursula and the influence of Roman epic / Neil Cartlidge -- Constructing tonwenne: a gesture and its history / Gail Ivy Berlin -- Wace to La3amon via Waldef / Judith Weiss -- Translating England in medieval Iceland: Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britannie and Breta sogur / Sarah Baccianti -- La3amon's Welsh / Jennifer Miller -- The wisdom of hindsight in La3amon and some contemporaries / M. Leigh Harrison -- Reading the lanscapes of La3amon's Arthur: place, meaning and intertextuality / Gareth Griffith -- La3amon's Brut and the vernacular text: widening the context / Elizabeth J. Bryan.