Talk:Historia Regum Britanniae

message: I've leapt in started expanding the summary, as the tag says; I hope that's alright. I'll come back and finish at some point, but if anyone else wants a go be my guest. Questingbeast (talk) 00:30, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Summary

message: As this is the English Wikipedia should it not refer to the work by its English title? PatGallacher 19:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Title of article

message: I've decorated this with a direct quote from the cited source: it shouldn't be changed. There is a feasible explanation for the edit in the  summary, but the sources (two) take precedence. Reasons not to revert to the cited version please?--Old Moonraker (talk) 17:44, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There are actually three sources given. The quoted passage "a very ancient book in the British tongue" is actually taken directly from Wright; you're edit moved the citation away from the quote. The Thorpe book also says "British" (Wright goes into more detail about what this means before dismissing it entirely). The only one of the three sources that categorically has "Breton" is Lang, which was written in 1912. "British" is correct here.--Cúchullain t/c 18:09, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  True, I did collect together the citations at the end; does having them there make a difference? Both Wright and Lang specify "Breton" (or "Welsh"), and not "British" although you have deleted one of the supporting quotes containing this.  Where does "a very ancient book in the British tongue" come from: is it in these refs, some refs yet to be added, or a translation from the Latin? I'm happy to acknowledge the difficulty in specifying in translation which variation of Brythonic was originally meant and would willingly accept any sourced opinion on this. As you say, a source more recent than 1911, with benefit of modern scholarship, would be preferable; do you have any in mind? At present, though,  we only have sources for "Breton" and so, according to the firm WP:V policy, that's what the article should say. --Old Moonraker (talk) 20:11, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you're misreading the sources; Wright and Thorpe both have "British". The relevant part of Wright is p. xvii (1st complete paragraph): "Geoffrey claims that the Historia is a translation of a 'very ancient book in the British tongue' which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford brought Ex Britannia". Our line is a direct quote from that, which is why the citation initially followed it directly. Wright goes on to explain that it's not clear what language (Welsh or Breton), is intended by this, but that few believe the claim anyway. Thorpe (p. 14) says "...Geoffrey stated categorically that Walter the Archdeacon presented him with 'a certain very ancient book written in the British language'..." Both Wright and Thorpe are more recent than Lang and should be preferred.--Cúchullain t/c 20:31, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it's the  original language that Wright refers to, it's the supposed country of origin. Is adding a further quote from Wright, page xvii, out of the question: "Scholarly opinion is divided as whether Geoffrey intended this to be understood as a Welsh book brought from Wales or a Breton book from Brittany."? --Old Moonraker (talk) 05:27, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure I understand you. He's clearly talking about the language in the line "British tongue" and in his discussion of whether it was supposed to be a "Welsh book" or "Breton book". He's talking about the territory of origin in the line "ex Britannia" and the discussion of whether it was a "book from Wales" or a "book from Brittany". At any rate a line about the ambiguity of the statement would be fine.--Cúchullain t/c 16:11, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Breton tongue" 

message: This article was located at its Latin title Historia Regum Britanniae from the time it was created in 2004 until earlier this year. It was moved to the English translation The History of the Kings of Britain by Codenamecuckoo citing WP:BOLD, which is fine, but there was no discussion at the time. A quick Google Books and Google Scholar search reveals the former is much more common than the latter. English sources such as the New Arthurian Encyclopedia and standard reference works like The Arthur of the Welsh, The Arthurian Handbook, and Medieval Arthurian Literature all refer to the work as Historia Regum Britanniae. We should too.Cúchullain t/c 03:13, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree: the Latin name instantly puts the article  into its historical context, so that readers can distinguish the particular work being discussed, by its actual title; it  conveys that here we are talking about the specific, ancient  book dealing with the mythology of the kings of the Britons, otherwise it could be just any "history of British kings". --Old Moonraker (talk) 09:02, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree that WP:UCN should apply and would support a move back to the former title. (Presumably the Latin title remains a redirect, and yet some pages on my watchlist had the link piped to the English, an action that will obscure data about frequency of use of the Latin title if one checks "What links here".) Cynwolfe (talk) 17:51, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Nearly a week has passed, and I think the consensus is clear. I'm going to move the page back.--Cúchullain t/c 14:56, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Move

message: The text of googlebook at second extlink seems to be German. Can someone found Latin one? We have part in Source: s:la:Historia_Regum_Britanniae/Liber_I. Ignatus (talk) 18:37, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link to Latin text 

message: This article contains books 1-2, then 4-12, with no book 3. Is there a mistake, or is Book 3 a "lost" book?
: I have fixed it. Cagwinn (talk) 18:33, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Book Three Missing

message: Apparently not pseudohostory entirely after all. Its long irritated me that exactly the same story appear sin Monmouth and classical sources but one is considered myth the other history (eg sacking of rome). I just think there is a massive prejudice against British vs Anglo Saxon/Classical accounts of history to this day.  Anyway Id like to bring this to peoples attention - on person undid this because they said it was self promotion by this academic - nonsense - I included it because I thought it was a thoughtful study that made complete sense - whther its conclusive is not the point - the point is its a very recent serious academic study and excluding it is a sign of poor scholarship at best and censorship at worst :
"In 2017 the initial results of the Lost Voices of Celtic Britain Project established at Bournemouth University were published by the lead author Miles Russell.[20] The main conclusion of the study was that the Historia Regum Britanniae, despite being compiled many centuries after the period it describes, appears to contain significant demonstrable archaeological fact. "— Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.2.167.61 (talk • contribs) 
: Miles Russell's book is as fringe as they come - totally bonkers!! Russell has no qualifications in the field of Arthurian studies and it really shows. No Arthurian scholars that I am aware of take this book seriously - it's generally considered to be a cash grab and nothing else. Cagwinn (talk) 04:24, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite apart from anything else, the text this editor keeps copy-pasting over from Geoffrey of Monmouth doesn't say what he thinks it does. All it says is that Russell has posited the existence of a couple of hypothetical oral traditions as sources. That doesn't make the Historia reliable history! Oral tradition is by definition unreliable. The project's website also concedes that you have to break up the Historia into individual stories to find elements that have some historical basis, but that doesn't make the book as a whole reliable history. In any case, all you have to do is read his account of Caesar's invasions (a historical event) and compare it to Caesar's own account, and you'll see that, just because Geoffrey had a source, doesn't mean what he wrote was in any way accurate. --Nicknack009 (talk) 07:32, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm amazed to realise that this same overblown and uncritical account of Russell's theories has been sitting unchallenged over on the Geoffrey of Monmouth page for about a year (I thought that page was on my watchlist, but apparently not). Personally I've no objection to Wikipedia mentioning fringe theories, but this one certainly doesn't deserve so much emphasis. I've got Russell's book, but so far I haven't plucked up the courage to read it (I'd probably lose my temper!) - and frankly I doubt whether any academic who knows the subject is going to find the time or inclination to write a proper review. I'd like to know more about the status of the Bournemouth University Lost Voices of Celtic Britain project. Its webpage is peculiarly unhelpful. The only 'staff' listed is Miles Russell himself - I really hope no university funds or resources are being devoted to it! The introductory paragraph is misleading nonsense "For centuries, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s medieval best-seller, the Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), the book that first brought the exploits of King Arthur to the world’s attention, has been cast as a work of pure make-believe. Yet, once you look beyond the tales of magic, wizards and giants, what you have is a potential insight into what life was really like for the inhabitants of late prehistoric and Roman Britain." Seems to have been drafted in ignorance of both the content of HRB (there's no magic and no wizards - yes, there are giants but there's nothing "make-believe" about them) and the history of its critical reception. Why is it always archaeologists who make fools of themselves when faced with Geoffrey of Monmouth? John O'London (talk) 08:45, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: There are fragments of probable history in Geoffrey. I think it's plausible that Geoffrey had a source of some sort that told him Kimbelinus was Tenvantius's son (we know from coins that the historical Cunobelinus was the son of Tasciovanus) and was brought up at the court of Augustus (Augustus did take hostages of the sons of client rulers and educate them in Rome). The decapitation of the Roman legion by Asclepiodotus at the river Gualobroc is probably related to the skulls found in the river Walbrook, which may be related to the historical massacre of Allectus' Frankish allies in London by Asclepiodotus. The claims that Russell's project is actually making are quite modest (although that's not how they're being presented). The problem here is that our anonymous editor friend has read those overstated modest claims and decided that, if anything in Geoffrey can be shown to have some relationship to history, that suddenly makes everything in the Historia reliable history. This absolutist all-or-nothing approach is absurd. --Nicknack009 (talk) 16:46, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Kimbelinus and Tenuantius are not drawn from any ancient source (as is plainly obvious to anyone familiar with Brittonic and Welsh historical phonology); Geoffrey simply picked up the names (i.e., Cinbelin map Teuhant) from the Old Welsh pedigrees as found in Harley MS 3859 (and we know that Geoffrey used as one his main sources a manuscript closely related to Harley MS 3859, which contains the Historia Brittonum, Annales Cambriae, and the Old Welsh pedigrees). Geoffrey was highly inventive and perfectly capable of inventing intricate stories for people who are little more than names in Welsh pedigrees. As for the Walbrook skulls, people in Geoffrey's era easily could have come across them and assumed that they were ancient and associated with the Roman invasion. Cagwinn (talk) 03:23, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: If not for Augustus' practice of taking hostages of client kings' sons (see Creighton's Coins and Power in Late Iron Age Britain) and the massacre of the Franks at London during Asclepiodotus' invasion (known from the Panegyric to Constantius Chlorus) I'd agree with you. Geoffrey could have had a source that told him Cunobelinus was a hostage. Or yes, he could have invented it. The association of the massacre at the Walbrook with Asclepiodotus is probably beyond coincidence and is more suggestive of some kind of source, perhaps an oral tradition given how badly Geoffrey misunderstands who Asclepiodotus was and what side he was on, but more likely a badly garbled or misunderstood written one, given that he gets the spelling of his name right. But that's speculation and original research on my part. --Nicknack009 (talk) 14:55, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: No need for Original Research, Nicknack009 - see the latest issue of the magazine London Archaeologist for an article on the subject. - even some speculation that Geoffrey might have drawn on a lost written source for his knowledge of the 296 London massacre. It doesn't seem to have been the Constantius Chlorus Panegyric (which was only rediscovered in a supposedly unique surviving manuscript in a monastic library in Germany in 1433). The suggestion that skulls were being found in the Walbrook in Geoffrey's own time and that he came up with a story of a massacre to explain them has been around since the 1950s, and is now pretty well the consensus view among London archaeologists; the actual origin of the skulls is still disputed - they are certainly nothing to so with the events of 296! An earlier generation of archaeologists suggested that the skulls might relate to the massacre carried out by Boudica's followers in AD 60/61 (which Geoffrey of Monmouth didn't know about) - but the circumstances and dates don't suit that either. John O'London (talk) 08:22, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

text: The laudatory paragraph about Russell's theories, recently copied and pasted here, was originally added to the Geoffrey of Monmouth page last year by user Avebury123 - whose other contributions show an interesting correlation with the interests and publications of Russell himself - such as Piltdown Man, the Durotriges, the Legio IX Hispana - and even Miles Russell. John O'London (talk) 18:02, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Bournemouth University study: Miles Russell

message: Improperly displayed (wikicode insto href). And can English and Latin ones be there together? Ignatus (talk) 21:17, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikisource link in the box