The following essay is extracted from J.S.P. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1950).

Source: Reprinted from Arthur King of Britain: History, Chronicle, Romance and Criticism, ed. by Richard L. Brengle (New York, 1964), pp. 344-48.

The most original and pleasing feature of Geoffrey's manner is in the structure of the Historia. Here was a problem for him, which he seems to have been conscious enough to foresee. His book is not extremely long; had he written on William of Malmesbury's scale it would have been seven or eight times as long as it is. He had to cover some nineteen centuries,–was he to cover them pari passu in a bald and even summary like annals, or was he to attempt to enliven at frequent moments evenly throughout? Or in the midst of rapid summary with only brief slowings up was he to intersperse highly developed narratives? To perceive this last to be his solution a bird's-eye view of the narrative will be serviceable.

Brutus and his exile; becomes leader of the Trojan captives in Greece, defeats the Greeks, weds a Greek princess, and conducts his people through various adventures to found the Briton nation. His son Locrinus' marriages. This part full of exciting and romantic detail.

A long series of kings, with here and there an individual touch.

The Leir-story, detailed, romantic, touching and ethical.

A series of kings, with individual touches.

Belinus and Brennius, their relations, and conquest of Gaul and Rome; changeful and violent.

A long series of kings, here and there with striking brief incident.

Invasion by Caesar and later Romans, with exciting military and personal detail.

A series of kings, and relations to the Romans, with more incidental detail than usual, the most confusing part of the work.

The history of Vortigirnus, Uther and his brothers, the coming and struggle of the Saxons; Merlin, leading into the history of Arthur, his wars and conquests, his campaigns against the Romans and Modredus, and his passing away. The longest, and most unified and climactic part of the Historia.

A series of kings, as before.

The romantic and pathetic histories of Caduallo and Cadualadrus, and the downfall of the Briton monarchy.

There are two notable points in the structure. First is the alternation between rapid sketches covering much but undefined time, with enough varied brief detail and incident to prevent complete baldness; and more attractive expansive slower concentration dealing with the same dramatis personae and connected events. The premeditation of this technique is shown by the fact that while for all the other concentrations Geoffrey made more or less use of known sources, in the Leir-story he went [to] the length of introducing a mere folk tale because he needed some concentration between those with Locrinus and Belinus. The second point is the gradual working up to a climax three-quarters through, after Arthur's succession of triumphs, in his Pentecostal crown-swearing (IX, 12-14), picturesque, imposing, happy, described with controlled but perceptible enthusiasm; broken into dramatically by the ominous Roman threat, with themomentary relief in his following victory, but ending with a crash in Modredus' treachery and Arthur's end. This is followed by a descending action, which terminates with Cadualadrus in sad and resigned finality. The biography of Arthur itself, in composition wholly original with Geoffrey, is highly dramatic and climactic. It is hard to think of a single medieval work of any extent with such foresighted, indeed classical symmetry; it recalls the structure of good tragedy. It is thoroughly unlike medieval writers, who in structure were apt to drift; unless, that is, they followed the stiff regimentation of the scholastics, as men like Gower and scores of others did, including even Dante. Geoffrey's more subtle symmetry is hard to trace to any precedent. Unlike valid historians, who were apt to become more and more detailed as they neared their own time, and therefore found more matter, he had little obligation to facts and sources to prevent an appropriate but not inevitable architectonic symmetry. The structure alone would make any keen modern suspect that the work is not genuine tradition but invention. It is also extraordinarily interesting to see what an able medieval, free from any obligation to fact, made of his conception of the past. He could see it fundamentally only as a bodying-forth of his own present. And herein he was mostly wise. Until we can see humanity past, present and future as an essence and a whole, we shall never understand the present or determine the future.

For the rest, much use has been made here of the very thorough and judicious "Historiography of Geoffrey of Monmouth" by Dr. Francis J. Colligan. After a summary of the elements and traits which mark Geoffrey's manner as a pretended historian, he compares him with some nineteen earlier historical writers, chosen among some fifty, dating from Livy, Florus and Eutropius to Fulcher of Chartes and Henry of Huntingdon. The result is to confirm what might be expected in an able and rather individual writer who wished to seem authentic as well as attractive.

Even to summarize the usages he has in common with the more cultivated medieval historians is hardly necessary,–the quotations from classical writers, the citation of authorities, the prophecies recorded, the pretense of precision, the chronology, the orations and documents, the rhetorical style (less than in some). Certain traits are due to purpose and personality,–the racial partizanship (not uncommon elsewhere), the regnal framework, the centering on the kings' personal histories, the exhibition of the Britons' early advancement in civilization, as shown in great buildings, highways, codes of law, art...; the secular, non-ecclesiastical and usually rationalistic spirit (a trait uncommon elsewhere), with little of the Christian miraculous, though it has been pointed out by Dr. H. Richter that about Geoffrey's time writers were stressing the importance of ratio [reason] alongside auctoritas [authority]. The continuity, infrequency of digression, was called for by the immense time covered in a work by no means long. Other appropriate elements and usages are traceable to certain works familiar to Geoffrey, or at least are paralleled in them, though found elsewhere. The statement of how he came to write, and the naming of his authorities, are in Nennius, Bede, William of Malmesbury, and Henry of Huntindon. The last three further have dedicatory addresses, Geoffrey's two contemporaries directing them to the very men to whom he directed the whole Historia and the Prophecies of Merlin. The heading [of] the history with a description of the island is in all except William (in Nennius a little later). In narrating marvelous secular events he is rather moderate, compared with many contemporaries; his account of the outlandish physical marvels in Scottish lakes (IX, 6-7,–quite in Celtic taste) comes straight from Nennius...though not without parallels also in William and Henry. In Nennius too is Geoffrey's method of getting reality and solid chronology for his earlier part by means of parallel history and synchronisms,–by mentioning contemporaries of his kings among familiar classical and Hebrew worthies. The use of eponymy, a frequent medieval usage, is especially noteworthy in Nennius. Geoffrey gains solidity and unity by deriving place-names from persons' names, especially where he is establishing his beginnings. His insertion of prophecies is paralleled notably in William, Henry and Nennius. As something of a parallel to his scope Henry briefly traces the Franks from the Trojan War, and William from the fourth century A.D.

No one can say from what historians he got this or that trait, for he had read many. What they omit he omits, as well as more humdrum things which they include....as a model for form the chief was probably William of Malmesbury. William shows no such trimmed-down symmetircal structure as Geoffrey; he has also more grasp, philosophy and world view....Nearly all Geoffrey's chief features are in William and Nennius.

The Historia was written not for the intellectually ablest, and assuredly not for churchmen, or the populace, but for favorable specimens of the upper-class laity, though it came more and more to appeal to those for whom it was not designed. Geoffrey's own limitations in realistic subtlety (but who else would have had so much?), and his speed, ruled out much that might have made the book more like his models,–notice of strifes of church and state, of legislation and the courts, taxation, vexatious extortions, abuses and confiscations, rebellions, shocking events. His view of the fancied past is a glazed, distant, ideal view. He undertakes to be a historian, not a chronicler, according to the highly interesting distinction between the two made a half-century later by Gervase of Canterbury; the latter being simple, condensed, modest, annalistic, the former expansive, decorative, soberly charming, life-like. This was Geoffrey's aim.

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Last Updated on 14 February 2000.