Walter Map and the Matter of Britain by Joshua Byron Smith (review)

Joshua Byron Smith's book Walter Map and the Matter of Britain starts with a mystery: why would medieval audiences attribute one of the grandest and most sprawling works of Arthurian literature, the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, to an author whom most modern scholars deem scatterbrained, flighty, and incapable of staying on topic? This author is, of course, Walter Map, whose splintered book De nugis curialium appears so disorganized and incoherent that it has been taken as evidence of his supposedly cluttered and chaotic mind. Smith, however, seeks to restore some dignity to the much-maligned cleric and argues that it was not so unreasonable for medieval readers to think that Map had been involved in the creation of one of the most celebrated works of their day. In doing so, he also makes bold claims about the way in which the Matter of Britain was transmitted from its original Welsh milieu to English and French audiences.

Smith begins his project by situating Walter Map within the context of twelfth-century geopolitics. He believes that Map's presumed Welsh identity has been overemphasized in the past and instead argues for an English Map who hailed from the Welsh Marches, where English and Welsh culture met and overlapped. This backdrop of cultural liminality gave Map the authority he needed to present himself as an expert on the Welsh to the Anglo-Norman court of Henry II. Most of the middle chapters of the book are dedicated to rescuing Map's reputation by arguing that the De nugis curialium was never intended to be a single harmonious work. Rather, it consists of rough drafts for several different works in various stages of completion and revision. Smith makes a thorough analysis of the individual distinctiones, demonstrating how Map was in the process of revising his works stylistically while also "Britonicizing" (to use a word Smith coins himself) them to create a more fashionable ancient setting. Much of this analysis is rather technical and intended primarily for specialists, but Smith's discussion of the expansion of the Herlething story to the longer Herla version should be fascinating to anyone interested in the otherworldly in medieval literature. The remaining chapters tie the discussion of Walter Map's interest in the Matter of Britain to the larger question of how such literature was transmitted from Welsh audiences to the wider medieval world. Smith points out that the role of Latin literature and clerical networks has too often been ignored in favor of more fanciful notions of traveling Breton minstrels transmitting stories orally. He also notes that by placing the primary emphasis on the figure of Arthur himself, scholars have ignored the general interest in ancient Britain, which provides the context for the king's introduction into English and French literature. Smith ends with a clarion call for scholars to engage in more interdisciplinary work and treat medieval Britain as a complex, multilingual, and multicultural landscape deserving of a wider perspective.

While some of Smith's claims may be controversial, his careful analysis of the De nugis curialium is quite convincing and does much to explain why an author whose work was highly regarded by medieval readers seems so slipshod to scholars today. Moreover, as Smith himself points out, it appeals to the common experience of all writers, who rarely complete a work from beginning to end in an orderly fashion and almost never without needing to edit and revise through several drafts. He also makes a convincing case for the need for more communication between Celticists and medievalists at large. Implicit in his work is the cogent suggestion that Welsh—like French, Middle English, and Latin—should be considered a relevant language of study for scholars of medieval Britain.

There were some issues with Smith's presentation, though not with his arguments. For a book with such high ambitions, both the introduction and conclusion felt rather short and rushed. Moreover, a subject such as Walter Map really deserves an engaging introduction...