Wace,
trans. Glyn S. Burgess; text, Anthony J. Holden.
The Roman de Rou.
St. Helier:
Société Jersiaise, 2002.
Publisher's
recommended price
Hardback
ISBN 0901897345, £50.00
Special edition (leather bound with slip
case) ISBN 0901897337, £95.00
Perhaps
the most
famous date in English history, 1066, and its associated events, has
benefited
- or suffered - more than most from many accounts and interpretations.
To their contemporaries and near contemporaries, especially those on
the
Jersey side of the English Channel, these events would probably stand
out
quite importantly, even from the almost continuous succession of bloody
conflicts, great and small, which form the backbone of historical
accounts
of the relationships between Normandy and its neighbours, France and
England,
in the tenth to thirteenth centuries.
Following
the
popular success of the Roman de Brut, his earlier story of the
Britons
which includes the chronicles of Arthur and his court, Wace appears to
have embarked on this history of the Duke of Normandy at the behest of
King Henry II, in order, perhaps, both to provide an account of the
reigning
dynasty and to substantiate its right to the throne.
An
almost bewildering
cast of characters passes across the sometimes bloodstained stage of
the
history of these two to three hundred years but, as the translator
points
out in the Introduction, "...Wace was more interested in truth than
propaganda".
Thus this work, about which the Société des Anciens
Textes
Français can say "Les deux poèmes majeurs de Wace, le Roman
de Brut, ... et le Roman de Rou comptent parmi les
principaux
monuments littéraires que nous a laissés le XIIe
siècle",
is both an important work of literature and a valuable historical
document.
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