page_title: Roman de Brut
section_title: Manuscripts
hierarchical_section_title: Roman de Brut / Manuscripts
caption_attribution_description: Fol. 30r. detail, Depicted person: Merlin. This illustration shows the construction of Stonehenge by a giant with the assistance of Merlin. It is the oldest known illustration of Stonehenge.
context_page_description: The Brut or Roman de Brut by the poet Wace, is a loose and expanded translation in almost 15,000 lines of Norman-French verse of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin History of the Kings of Britain. It was formerly known as the Brut d'Engleterre or Roman des Rois d'Angleterre, though Wace's own name for it was the Geste des Bretons, or Deeds of the Britons. Its genre is equivocal, being more than a chronicle but not quite a fully-fledged romance. It 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.
context_section_description: More than thirty manuscripts of Wace's Brut, either complete or fragmentary, are known to exist, though more fragments continue to be discovered from time to time.  They were produced in roughly equal numbers in England and in France, demonstrating that it was a highly popular work in both countries.  Nineteen of these manuscripts give a more or less complete text of the poem, of which the two oldest are Durham Cathedral MS C. iv. 27 (late 12th century) and Lincoln Cathedral MS 104 (early 13th century).  Both of these manuscripts also include Geoffrey Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis and the chronicle of Jordan Fantosme, the three works forming in combination an almost continuous narrative of Britain's story from Brutus the Trojan's invasion up to the reign of Henry II.  This indicates that early readers of the Brut read it as history; however, later manuscripts tend to include Arthurian romances rather than chronicles, showing that the Brut was by then treated as fictional.
caption: The construction of Stonehenge by Merlin, from British Library MS Egerton 3028, an early 14th century manuscript of Wace's Brut.  This is the earliest known image of Stonehenge.[79]
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