5 romance and history
Section outline
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The various versions of and references to the Havelok story form a fascinating conglomerate. The earliest account is found in Gaimar's L'estoire des Engleis, our core text and the first history to be written in Anglo-Norman verse (around 1140, the verse form being that of the octosyllabic couplet, which became the "default" form of French romance). There it opens the second part of the Estoire, the only extant today, focused on the history of Anglo-Saxon and Norman England. The first part, focused on history of the Britons, had been pushed into obscurity by Wace's Roman de Brut.
Subsequently, we find the story included in several chronicles and elaborated in an Anglo-Norman and a Middle English romance version (all represented in the additional materials). In addition, there is the local Grimsby and Lincoln tradition. Though the basic plot remains the same in all versions (a pair of dispossessed heirs eventually coming into their own), the individual versions differ in a number of details as well as in the names of most of the characters.-
forum: I'd like to ask you to compare the versions and see how the narrative is reorganized in the historical and the romance context respectively; where the emphasis is placed, how the sujet changes.
session: we will talk further about the uses of romance narrative / motivic patterns in historical writing.
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