Edited and translated in this volume is the anonymous Anglo-Norman prose Brut as it appears in British Library, Additional MS 35092 (collated with Bibliothèque Nationale MS f.f. 1440, Bibliothèque Nationale MS n.a.f. 4267, Bodleian Library MS Wood empt. 8, and Bodleian Library MS Douce 120). The base text dates to the third quarter of the fourteenth century (58), but the composition date of this oldest version of the prose Brut likely sits ca. 1300. This is the text that--through the vagaries of transmission, interpolation, and continuation--becomes the Anglo-Norman Long Version, which was translated into English in the late fourteenth century. While foundational work on, and classification of, the Anglo- Norman Bruts was done by F.W.D. Brie early in the twentieth century, [1] the complete text of the oldest Anglo-Norman Brut has not been edited until now (in fact, none of the Anglo-Norman Bruts has been edited in full, save Childs and Taylor's edition of the Short Continuation). [2] It records English history, as it was widely accepted in both Latin and vernacular historiography throughout the middle ages, from the fall of Troy to the death of Henry III. The edited text is 4,218 prose lines long, set with a good facing-page English translation, and framed by careful and thorough introductory material, explanatory and textual notes, and appendices that record significant continuations from the collated manuscripts.
In her critical introduction, Marvin discusses the text and its tradition, previous scholarship, sources, dating and authorship, later versions, influence, and the relevant manuscripts and their relations; but she also offers arguments for the importance of historiographical literature in general and of this Brut in particular. Marvin's stated goal is "to encourage work on the entire prose Brut tradition by making available a complete text and translation of the Oldest Version, and by offering a more complete account of its source relations and content than has previously been made" (19). Certainly, the most exhaustive and significant contribution that Marvin provides here is her work on the Brut's sources; she argues ultimately that, in the main, the author "knew and used both Wace and [Geoffrey of Monmouth's] Vulgate Historia," along with Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis and various clerical histories (24ff). Her conclusion that this is the work of a single author who compiled, recast, and translated his sources into a consistent and unadorned prose is no small point. While the author must remain anonymous, Marvin takes his distinctly secular and baronial perspective, and the range of source materials used, to suggest an author who "would seem to be a clerk connected in some way with, or commissioned by, a baronial household, perhaps one with a history of association with a monastic institution that provided him with access to the books he consulted" (43).
Like many, Marvin has had to make this argument in the face of previous generations of scholars who read medieval historiography and scribal practice and authority much differently than we now do. Brie's foundational work was, not unusually for his time, primarily interested in manuscript classification; he assigned the Brut no literary worth, and, as Marvin puts it, "gave no consideration to the ideas, interests, and methods of presenting history that the Brut might bespeak" (18). Brie was likewise unwilling to imagine originality on the part of the author and, while he categorized a good portion of the text's source material correctly, he gave little credence to the idea of a Latin-literate author who made no explicit mention of his sources and no attempt to demonstrate clerical authority. Marvin gives due respect to the essential work that Brie did and corrects him when necessary, but elsewhere leans heavily (and appropriately) on Lister M. Matheson's comprehensive work on the Middle English prose Brut tradition. [3] Her overarching argument about the author's use of his sources is a strong and definitive response to those who may have dismissed the text: "The writer of the Oldest Version forgoes one gesture of authority--the scholarly one--in favor of another, even more impressive one: his ultimate literary and interpretive model is that of the most authoritative prose history of all, the Bible" (6-7). This is both an inevitable and difficult argument to make about such a text, as it relies not so much on demonstrable comparisons or biblical parallels as on expectations of reading practices, the (probably true) assumption that the writer and audience read history on an exegetical model.
The text of the chronicle itself is edited in an unobtrusive and readable manner, in accordance with the standards established by the series' editors "of minimal intervention and maximal faithfulness to the manuscript used as the base text" (67). Marvin bucks editorial tradition somewhat in her manner of recording the Anglo-Norman text (she privileges scribal practice over editorial practice), though not jarringly so. The facing-page translation is not elegant, but Marvin did not seek to make it so. It is a correct, mainly literal translation that seeks to offer "an experience fairly analogous to that of reading the original" and does not comment on or interpolate that experience (70). The literalness of it also makes the Anglo- Norman easier to navigate for the non-expert reader, and, in the handful of passages that this reviewer chose to check very carefully, no fault could be found. The explanatory notes are not exhaustive and focus mainly on the text's relations to, and deviations from, its sources and analogues, in the spirit of the volume's goals. Brut scholars will be interested in this text's most distinctive elements, which include the relative minimizing of the role of Rome in British history, the downplaying of battle scenes that are elaborate in sources, the omission of the Cadwallader story, the near unqualified support of the baronage, the characterization of Arthur as a conqueror and a crusader king (as Marvin puts it, "an exemplar for, and ideal version of, Edward I" [11]), and the naming and secularization of Merlin's mother.
The availability of this text and its critical apparatus should be much appreciated by teachers and scholars of English literature and historiography, and particularly by those interested in the transmission of Arthurian material or in the baronial classes. It is a welcome addition to Boydell's well-received and important Medieval Chronicles series (general editors are Dan Embree and Lister M. Matheson, who have also published editions in the series) and will be useable by multiple levels. Each of its sections is easily navigable and lucidly set out, and there is a wealth of knowledge and information offered by the introduction's footnotes and the explanatory notes alone. Marvin makes a valuable and necessary contribution to the growing body of scholarship in English historiography and Anglo-Norman studies.
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Notes:
1. Geschichte und Quellen der mittelenglischen Prosachronik, "The Brute of England" oder "The Chronicles of England" (Marburg: Friedrich, 1905).
2. Wendy R. Childs and John Taylor, eds., The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1307-1334. (Yorkshire Archeological Society, Leeds, 1991).
3. The Prose "Brut": The Development of a Middle English Chronicle (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998).