A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth ed. by Georgia Henley and Joshua Byron Smith (review)

Is it not strange that well into the digital age, by which time we should be experiencing the end of the printed book as we know it, we should see the production of, not just many hard-copy books, but so many large and expensive ones? The present, with over 500 pages and a hefty price tag, is one such. And like many of its bulk, this one is a multi-authored volume, with no fewer than twenty-five contributors, some of them graduate students, for whom it might be their first publication (once it might have been a journal article). Yet some of the most central names in recent Geoffrey of Monmouth studies, such as Julia Crick, Michael Reeve, and Neil Wright, are missing.

A 'Companion' such as this should do at least three things: it should describe its subject-matter in minute detail; it should summarize the past and current state of scholarship on it; and it should point to issues and questions for further research. This volume is divided into four parts: Part I offers four chapters on Geoffrey's sources (Welsh, classical and biblical, English, and the special case of the Prophetiae Merlini); Part II, named 'Contemporary Contexts', contains six chapters, mainly focused on the earliest reception of the Gesta regum Britanniae; Part III, 'Approaches', has four chapters exploring aspects of Geoffrey's book ('colonial preoccupations', gender, race, religion, and the Church), and Part IV, 'Reception', has no fewer than thirteen (mostly short) chapters, each a case-study of the work's reception in various areas of western Europe (and Byzantium!) from the twelfth century to the early 1500s. I can dispose of Part IV quickly as providing little advance on, and no replacement for, Julia Crick's survey of the dissemination of the Gesta which forms the fourth volume of The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth (Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages, D. S. Brewer, 1991). The book under review has an excellent, full bibliography of Geoffrey of Monmouth studies (pp. 499–551) and good indexes. It is largely free from typos ('Geoffrey of Viterbo' and 'boarder country' in Chapter 24 are unfortunate exceptions).

Geoffrey Monmouth is an author who deserves a 'Companion' such as this, not because we know very much about him and his writings, but because he provokes so many difficult questions: what sort of a person was he; where was he born?; what was his ethnicity?; why did he write the Gesta (and what sort of work is it?; who were his audience?); was he a defender of the British against the Anglo-Saxons or Anglo-Normans of his day?; and did he intend it to be read as real history (however propagandistic), or as light entertainment (whether romance or satire)? All of these questions are canvassed in the present book, but not one is answered definitively. There is agreement that the work is not—at least unambiguously—in favour of the British (certainly not the contemporary Welsh) against the English or Anglo-Normans. Instead, the focus is rather on the work's sources and on its Europe-wide reception. One cannot help gaining the impression that the best and most fundamental work on Geoffrey has been done and that there is little to add. We now have the best possible edition and account of its transmission; we have the best possible account of the copies and their distribution; and with Christopher Brooke and Valerie Flint (in this reviewer's estimation) we have the best accounts of the work's character and purpose. Where to go from here? This book contains little to help us, although Jaakko Tahkokallio in his intriguing chapter on the early manuscript dissemination suggests that much more codicological work is needed on the manuscripts.

Fiona Tolhurst's account of the prominent place and status of women in...