Volume 210 pages
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About the book
'The Brut' or 'Roman de Brut' by the poet Wace is a loose and expanded translation in almost 15,000 lines of the Norman-French verse of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin History of the Kings of Britain. Its genre is equivocal, being more than a chronicle but not quite a fully-fledged romance.The book narrates a largely fictional version of Britain's story from its settlement by Brutus, a refugee from Troy, who gives the poem its name, through a thousand years of pseudohistory, including the story of king Leir, up to the Roman conquest, the introduction of Christianity, and the legends of sub-Roman Britain, ending with the reign of the 7th-century king Cadwallader. Especially prominent is its account of the life of King Arthur, the first in any vernacular language, which instigated and influenced a whole school of French Arthurian romances dealing with the Round Table – here making its first appearance in literature – and with the adventures of its various knights.