Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis: Kingship and Power
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A01=Gemma Wheeler
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Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Author_Gemma Wheeler
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSBB
Cnut
COP=United Kingdom
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eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
historical representation
history
history writing
Kingship
Language_English
medieval history
monarchs
PA=Available
power
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
softlaunch
William Rufus
Product details
- ISBN 9781843846079
- Weight: 364g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 10 Sep 2021
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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An important text from the "twelfth-century Renaissance" of history writing re-evaluated, drawing out its complex representations of monarchs from Cnut to William Rufus.
Geffrei Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis is its author's sole surviving work. His translation and adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, expanded with a number of lengthy interpolations which appear to draw upon oral traditions and other, unknown written sources, is all that remains of an ambitious history which once reached back as far as Jason and the Golden Fleece. However, the extent of Gaimar's achievement - as poet, historian, and translator - has been obscured by a tendency among scholars to dismiss him as a writer of romance masquerading as history, his work riddled with guesswork, errors, and outright fabrications.
This volume aims to challenge such views of Gaimar by providing the first holistic study of his Estoire's incisive commentary upon kingship: its virtues, vices and conflicting models, as applied to rulers such as Edgar "the Peaceable", Cnut, and the ill-fated William Rufus. One good king, for Gaimar, is much like another. A bad king, by contrast, is vividly characterised as ineffectual, tyrannical, or both. Gaimar, a product of that extraordinary period in medieval English culture often termed the "twelfth-century Renaissance'" blends history with literary tropes to yield a sophisticated account of the invasions, betrayals, and familial conflicts that shaped his England's history.
GEMMA WHEELER gained her PhD from the University of Sheffield.
