The story of the Britons. Historia Brittonum. Monmut G.

The History of the Britons is a monument of medieval literature and the most signful work of the English writer and priest Galfrid of Montmutsky. The author himself presented his essay as a true story of Britain from the settlement of her brutus, a descendant of the Trojan hero of Aeneas, to the death of Cadvaladra in the 7th century and even outlined the source of her presentation - “a certain very ancient book in the British language”, awarded to him by Valter Oxford. However, most researchers are not inclined to trust these statements.

The time of creating a book is indicative of the beginning of the 12th century, marked by the heyday of medieval historiography. Overcoming the undivided dominance of the church tradition and the wingless facting of the monastery annals, the chronicles of this century began to be fed by non -canonical, including ancient sources, acquired new genre forms and even features of an individual author’s style and, as a result, were increasingly approaching artistic literature.

In this process of enrichment of literary life, the work of Galfrid of Monmutsky is inscribed. Skillfully connecting the motives and images of Celtic mythology, the plots and style of ancient epic legends (in particular, the “Aeneids” of Virgil), the elements of a courteous tradition and creative imagination, the author created an essay not so much historically accurate as artistically reliable. This property has been condemned more than once by later historians, but it was it that provided a long life of the book itself and the legends told in it, to which many writers, including Shakespeare, were so eagerly addressed.