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.
