Fiction and History in Late Medieval England: Arthur in the Brut Manuscripts

This article argues that the way in which late medieval historical chronicles known as the Prose Brut developed in English in the fifteenth century was key to both how Arthurian tradition changed to accommodate the political agendas of the Wars of the Roses in England and the shaping of readership of Arthurian romance among all the social classes. Originating in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, the ‘Brut’ chronicles were added to by numerous named and anonymous writers, and became the best-selling secular narrative in the vernacular in fifteenth-century England. With more than 200 extant manuscripts and 13 printed editions between 1480 and 1527, the Middle English Prose Brut (MEPB), as it is known among specialists, was likely the most widely commissioned Arthurian narrative late English audiences would be aware of, more so than the 25 extant manuscripts that contain English Arthurian romance, mostly associated with London, and even if we also consider the numerous manuscripts of French romance in circulation in England at the time. What this tells us is that Arthur’s figure would have been by far better known from historical writing, so widely spread to be ubiquitous in the town as in the countryside, judging by the quality, distribution, and social class background of owners and readers of chronicle manuscripts, than from Arthurian romances alone. I argue that the chronicles that included the story of Arthur, such as his rise and fall, his deposition at the hands of one of his own blood, were deemed useful tools to develop politically-inflected thinking around contemporary events taking place in the fifteenth century, by the upper and middle classes, who played important roles in events of national importance. If one knew about Arthur in fifteenth-century England, it would have been from a history book, not from a courtly or even what we now call a popular romance. MEPB speaks to us as Arthurian specialists not necessarily about new stories of Arthur, but rather about continuity, as well as acceptance of the role played by the writing of change into the seemingly unchanged story of time.