An Echo of Seneca’s Epistulae in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae
2020; Oxford University Press; Volume: 68; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/notesj/gjaa186
ISSN1471-6941
Autores Tópico(s)Scottish History and National Identity
ResumoThis note will examine how a hitherto-unrecognized quotation from Seneca’s Epistulae can shed new light on the prologue to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae (henceforth HRB). The HRB’s prologue has received a great deal of scholarly attention, thanks to Geoffrey’s now infamous claim that Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, had given him ‘quondam Britannici sermonis librum uetustissimum’ [a very old book in the British tongue] (Prol.2).1 Debates over the meaning of this claim continue to animate scholarship on the HRB, and they have also shaped how scholars interpret Geoffrey’s rationale for ‘translating’ this book, which appears in the following sentence. There, Geoffrey writes: Rogatu itaque illius ductus, tametsi infra alienos ortulos falerata uerba non collegerim, agresti tamen stilo propriisque calamis contentus codicem illum in Latinum sermonem transferre curaui; nam si ampullosis dictionibus paginam illinissem, taedium legentibus ingererem, dum magis in exponendis uerbis quam in historia intelligenda ipsos commorari oporteret (Prol.2). So I began at Walter’s request to translate that book into Latin, content with my own lowly style and not seeking to gather gilded expressions from other writers’ gardens. It would certainly annoy my readers if I attempted to render the original in flowery speech, since they would dwell more on unraveling my words than on understanding the history itself.2
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