Reading Ruins: Arthurian Caerleon and the Untimely Architecture of History

This article considers the literary deployment of the ruins of Caerleon within the Itinerarium Cambriae of Gerald of Wales. In describing the city, Gerald significantly notes both its Galfridian status as an Arthurian rival to Rome and the Roman origins of the city itself. Read in the context of Gerald’s own re-reading of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia, the episode reveals Gerald’s deployment of an Arthurian past and place as commentary upon the present colonial space of Wales. (RR)