[Note to the Reader: just in case Amazon's software merges reviews of different translations: This is a review of the Penguin Classics "History of the Kings of Britain" by Geoffrey of Monmouth, translated by Lewis Thorpe, originally published in 1966 (with some minor bibliographic additions and corrections in the early 1970s).]
[Further note: the Kindle edition of the Penguin translation is almost 100 pages shorter than tthe paperback, because it omits the invaluable index,which packs in a lot of information. Being able to.search the text isn't a good alternative. I can't recommend it as an alternative to the paperback if you're considering which translation to.buy.]
Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain" (as it is usually called) was, during the Middle Ages, one of the most influential books yet written in Britain. It was perhaps exceeded in European importance only by the Venerable Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English People" -- and Geoffrey's "Historia Regum Britanniae" is presented as a companion to Bede, covering topics that Bede, a mere Anglo-Saxon interloper, never knew. It purports to give the "real" history of the islands, from the advent of Brutus the Trojan and his followers to the successors of Arthur.
If one adds its numerous translations into vernacular languages (it was, of course, written in Latin -- only the English understood English) one can agree with the medievalist John Jay Parry that Geoffrey's book was simply one of the most influential of the Middle Ages, wherever written.
From the mid-1960s until 2007, anyone looking for a modern English translation of Geoffrey's Latin text had only one first-rate option: Lewis Thorpe's spirited English version for Penguin Classics, which first appeared in 1966. (And which I read sometime in the late 1960s.) This was based mainly on a single "good" manuscript, as edited by Acton Griscom in 1929, with consultation of the two other modern editions of the Latin text then available, by E. Faral (also 1929; an attempt at a critical text based on several manuscripts), and by Jacob Hammer (a "Variant Version," 1951).
In my opinion, Thorpe's translation, despite its restricted textual foundation, remains the best introduction to Geoffrey, and the "historical" Arthur he created; the introduction and notes assume no specialized knowledge on the part of the reader, and the translation itself is graceful, and divided in eight parts, which increase its intelligibility (instead of the traditional twelve-book format, with chapters of greatly varying lengths; marginal references to such divisions are included for ease of cross-reference.) Thorpe also includes a chronology ("Time Chart") and a good (amazing detail) index of characters and places, with details of events they are involved with.
In the Middle Ages, it was, of course, especially popular in England (where it was several times translated, sometimes by way of a French translation), and notably in Wales: Parry counted at least three Welsh translations, preserved in at least fifty manuscripts. (See Parry's Introduction to "Brut Y Brenhinned," or 'chronicle of rulers,' an edition and translation of one of the several Welsh translations, published in 1937, and now available on-line from the Medieval Academy of America). Indeed, little as the Welsh and the English agreed on other things, they both borrowed "Brut," i.e. "Brutus," originally a nickname for the "Historia," as a generic term for a national chronicle.
The book presents the British -- that is, strictly speaking, the Welsh and their ancestors -- as descendants of displaced Trojans, presenting itself as a sort of sequel to Virgil's "Aeneid," as well as "prequel" to Bede. Geoffrey claims to be translating an "Old British Book" (i.e., a book in Welsh, or, possibly Breton), a claim taken seriously into the early twentieth century, by which time it became reasonably clear that the supposed versions of the "old book" -- one of which had been dated to the seventh century! -- were in fact post-Geoffrey; although some of these Welsh translations did contain genuine old stories interpolated into Geoffrey's versions.
Geoffrey also claimed to be translating a separate "Prophecies of Merlin," usually incorporated into the larger work -- this too is no longer taken seriously. (He also wrote a verse sequel, "The Life of Merlin," which has been translated into English at least three times. Reviews of a Kindle edition of J.J. Parry's translation -- as "Vita Merlini" -- complaining of format issues, are not encouraging.)
King Arthur may already have been launched into European celebrity before the 1130s, when Geoffrey tied him down to a more-or-less recognizable time and place, and equipped him with the most up-to-date manners and customs of the early twelfth century, but it is to Geoffrey we owe the standard picture of Merlin as the adviser of kings, the stories of King Lear and of Cymbeline, and, perhaps, Old King Cole (or Coel) -- although not the nursery-rhyme that enshrines him.
"Historia Regum Britanniae" was a medieval equivalent of a best-seller, with at least 219 known surviving manuscripts of the Latin original, plus translations and paraphrases (as mentioned, into Welsh, French, and Middle English), in whole or in part, into most Western European languages (and rather quickly, by medieval standards). There was also at least one attempt to "dress up" its Latin style with classical and Biblical (Vulgate) tags. It was even turned it into Latin hexameters (which brought the story even closer to Virgil in form, if not quality).
A good part of the vast Arthurian literature derives its "historical" structure from Geoffrey's book, directly, or, probably more often, indirectly. (See the opening line of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," for one convenient example: "After the siege and assault were ceased at Troy...") Malory did not include Geoffrey's main Merlin material, but he did include Arthur's "Roman War" (as Book V of the Caxton edition), which is a highlight of Geoffrey's version. (The "Historia" is largely structured around clashes between the Romans and the Britons, as rival "Trojan" nations.)
Despite recurrent rejections of its historicity, in whole or in part, beginning with skepticism at its first appearance, it remained, right through the seventeenth century, an "authority" on Britain, from the settlement by Trojan exiles, through Roman invasions, to Arthur, and finally the Anglo-Saxon conquest; with intimations that the true Britons, that is, the Welsh, would regain sovereignty. The Welsh Tudors were particularly interested in it as a legitimating document.
The other translation available was that by Sebastian Evans, published in Dent's "Temple Library" in 1904, and included in the original Everyman's Library series a few years later, in which it was reprinted through much of the twentieth century. Evans' slightly bowdlerized translation, into Elizabethan-sounding prose, was at least readable, if not a good reflection of Geoffrey's style. Alas, it was based on the the derivative "San-Marte" edition (ed. A. Schulz, 1854), based mainly on the earlier, uncritical, printed texts, with some variant readings and corrections. It was improved with some later editing, notably by Charles W. Dunn in 1963, but could not escape the faults of its origin.
Since Thorpe's work, there have been two subsequent translations, both appearing in 2007, one of them, by Michael Faletra (Broadview Books), unfortunately, out-of-date almost as soon as printed. {Correction: as of 2020, it is available directly from the publisher, although it only shows up on Amazon as offered by dealers at inflated prices. It contains some valuable supplementary material, including the 'Vita Merlini;")
The other, part of an edition by Michael D. Reeve of the Latin text, was translated by Neil Wright, who, ironically, had edited the "provisional edition" used for Faletra's translation. I've been reading the Reeve/Wright version, with the object of reviewing it, and I like it very much; but as an edition it is anything but user-friendly, and probably downright intimidating to the novice. The introduction is given over almost entirely to problems in establishing the text, and takes for granted that the reader knows something about Geoffrey's life and times, and the significance of whether one or another of the book's various dedications to assorted 12th-century VIPs is original, interpolated later, or added by another hand. Wright's translation compares well with Thorpe's in most passages, and having the Latin text at hand to see what is being translated is often enlightening.
ADDENDA 2020
After a number of false starts, I finally determined that Michael B. Faletra's 2007 translation (as The History of the Kings of Britain), which I alluded to above, is in print from the publisher, Broadview Press, although Amazon seems to offer it only through dealers, at inflated prices. It is based an edition of a single (very good) manuscript, has useful footnotes, an index of proper names (although not as full as Thorpe's), and an appendix of translations of related medieval texts, including, finally, Geoffrey's "Vita Merlini" (Life of Merlin).. It appears to be an excellent choice for those who are too unfamiliar with Latin to make much use of the Neil and Wright edition and translation.
Also of possible interest is the 2019 "The History of the Kings of Britain: The First Variant Version," edited and translated by David W. Burchmore, in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, with facing Latin text. This uses the manuscripts of the "variant" manuscripts, a project started by Hammer's 1951 edition, and continued by Neil Wright in an edition based on more manuscripts (1988). Burchmore argues that this is not a draft by Geoffrey, not a re-writing in simpler Latin by someone else, but in fact Geoffrey's main source book: which requires that Geoffrey's "old British book" was neither old nor in Welsh (or Breton). He further identifies it as the base text form for Wace's French "Roman de Brut," and so was the ultimate source of all later vernacular versions -- including that in Holinshed's Chronicle, Shakespeare's source.
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My copy is missing the first 16 pages - it starts right in the middle of the introduction.
