Layamon's Brut

Long before Shakespeare imagined his kings, before Malory spun his tales of Camelot, an English priest named Layamon sat down to write the story of Britain in his native tongue. The result was the first work of history written in English since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a sprawling 16,000-line epic that traces the mythical origins of Britain from Brutus of Troy through the legendary reigns of its rulers to the death of the Welsh king Cadwallon in 634. Written in the ancient alliterative verse style that links medieval English poetry to its Anglo-Saxon roots, Layamon's Brut is both a chronicle and a fever dream of national identity. It draws heavily on Wace's Anglo-Norman French romance and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin fictions, but Layamon expands wildly, particularly in his visionary treatment of Arthur, whose reign here swells into something grander and stranger than any earlier version. This is not history as we understand it. It is the story a conquered people told themselves about who they were, where they came from, and what they had lost. To read it is to hear English literature waking up after a long silence.