Boydell Press Literary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain's Long Twelfth Century: 10 (Writing History in the Middle Ages)

Histories of Britain composed during the "twelfth-century renaissance" display a remarkable amount of literary variety. But why would historians of this period associate literary variety with the work of history-writing? Drawing on theories of literary variety found in classical and medieval rhetoric, this book traces how British writers came to believe that varietas could help them construct comprehensive, continuous accounts of Britain's past. It shows how Latin prose historians, such as William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, filled their texts with a diverse array of literary forms, selected and ordered in accordance with their broader historiographical aims. The pronounced literary variety of these influential histories inspired some Middle English verse chroniclers, including Laȝamon and Robert Mannyng, to adopt similar principles in their vernacular poetry. This book provides a new framework for interpreting the stylistic and organizational choices of medieval historians.