Reimagining History in Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles by John Spence (review)

While attention has been given in recent years to individual chronicle traditions, such as the wider Brut tradition, this is the first study of insular French prose chronicles as a genre. The restriction of the corpus to chronicles covering more than one generation, thus excluding, for example, the Crusade and Death of Richard I, gives cohesion to an analysis that centres on the use of legendary material. The book addresses a main research question concerning the alterations that these chronicles made to their sources, with a focus on certain key elements: Britain’s legendary past, heroes from before the Conquest, and the treatment of the Conquest itself. The Introduction provides a clear road map of what is to follow. In an analysis of the prologues, especially that of the littlestudied Scalacronica, Spence compares the vernacular prose texts with both Latin chronicles and the older French verse chronicles. The first chapters concentrate mainly on a complex and interrelated group of texts that in different ways exploit the legendary history of Britain, including an excellent detailed study of Scalacronica. Extracts, with translation, given in an Appendix, are useful, although it is not clear why Spence provides his own edition here yet also uses Andy King’s published edition and translation (Sir Thomas Gray, Scalacronica (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005)). Spence’s consideration of the use that his chosen texts make of the legendary history of Britain, drawn from Latin and French predecessors, enables him to place his vernacular prose texts within their specific historical contexts. While he convincingly explores the political use of the material, he does not ignore the power of the narratives themselves. Manuscript evidence is also brought into consideration where it can help to shed light on the way that the text or legendary narrative is being used. Given the complexity of the tradition, a chronology of the texts would have been a worthwhile addition. One of the central theses of the study is the permeability of genre classifications, with these ‘historical’ narratives freely appropriating legendary tales such as those of Havelok or Arthur, even though they sometimes express anxiety about the truth of this matter. The inclusion of Fouke le Fitz Waryn, normally considered a romance, challenges traditional categorization, but it would have been useful to discuss this earlier in the book; while the ‘close relationship between romance and history’ is considered in the Introduction (p. 23), the definition of Fouke as a ‘family chronicle’ is not addressed until the last chapter, which is dedicated to this subgroup. The index is adequate, although chronicles with named author could also have been entered under the title of the chronicle itself, with crossreference to the author: to find Scalacronica, for instance, it is necessary to look under ‘Gray’. This is a quibble, however. The overall breadth of coverage is impressive and the bibliography is extensive. This investigation of an important genre is a very welcome addition to our understanding of insular French literature.