Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth IV

Following her vital cataloguing of the surviving 200+ manuscripts of the "Historia Regum Britanniein Volume III", Julia Crick has been able in Volume IV to present the information which the manuscripts contain both about the textual development of Geoffrey's "History" and about its circulation and audience. Crick begins by exploring the evidence for grouping the manuscripts. External evidence such as associated texts found frequently with the "Historiais" is compared with the internal evidence of textual disruption, the notorious dedications, rubrication and trial passages collated from each manuscript. This information forms the basis for an account of the chronology and geography of the circulation of the work as a whole, which in turn sheds light on the audience of the Historia, their taste in reading, and their status. Julia Crick is a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and an Arthurian. Following the cataloguing of the 200 surviving manuscripts of Geoffrey's "Historia", Julia Crick sets out to assess what these reveal about the textual development of the work and about its circulation and audience. Her meticulous and scholarly approach prises out information which will prove invaluable to all students of the 12th century.