The History of the Kings of Britain

Though Geoffrey calls his work a history, historians of his time dismissed it as a fanciful and romanticized account of the island’s kings, calling it more myth than history. Modern historians uphold this position. As such, The History of the Kings of Britain is treated as a literary text. The author’s use of language supports this designation, at times mirroring literary devices employed by ancient epic poets who shaped the mythologies of ancient Greece and Rome: direct speech, direct address, similes, metaphors, aphorisms, narrative set pieces, and pathos. Further, some scholars believe that Geoffrey wrote his history to be read by individuals rather than orally performed to groups. Supporting this belief are the author’s visual imagery and tight narrative structure.

The History of the Kings of Britain provides a history of purported battles as much as it does of kings, since most of the kings Geoffrey discusses were obliged to battle for legitimacy and supremacy. As in Homer’s Iliad, battle scenes in Geoffrey’s text proceed within a set narrative structure: Geoffrey reports the speeches of each side’s leaders. The men arm themselves, and the opponents meet on the battlefield, each side fighting boldly and fiercely and holding the upper hand in turns. A significant death is described, and the winner declared. Until the final section in book eight, which chronicles the Saxon domination of Britain, battles typically show the Britons under early duress and in danger of losing to their formidable opponents, but bravely and ferociously roaring back to victory. Among the most notable examples are the battles fought by King Arthur. These heroic (in the mythical sense) battle reconstructions—which may have some historic precedent but broadly diverge from historical fact as it is known—fulfill the author’s patriotic purposes to construct a mythology of Britain and showcase the island as an inheritor of the Roman Empire.

Geoffrey uses direct address to speak to the Britons within his narrative. For example, in Part 8, he addresses the Saxon domination and the conditions that enabled it. In the midst of his discussion, Geoffrey breaks the narrative to address the people about whom he is writing: “You foolish people, weighed down by the sheer burden of your own monstrous crimes, never happy but when you are fighting one another” (226). His speech continues, berating the people for having brought on their own destruction through their bad acts. In the process, he invokes both biblical imagery (“a house divided against itself shall fall”) and the animal imagery from Merlin’s prophecies: “They will see the cubs of the wild lioness occupy their castles, cities and other possessions” (226).

Though his narrative is not saturated with aphorisms, similes, and metaphors, Geoffrey makes occasional use of them. For instance, in Part 3, Geoffrey laments that Maximianus “stripped this kingdom of all its army and all its young men” to pursue distant territories (120). The Romans also withdraw from Britain, leaving the land in the hands of its peasantry, who are eventually overwhelmed by their enemies, leading Geoffrey to remark that “it is easier for a kite to be made to act like a sparrow-hawk than for a wise man to be fashioned at short notice from a peasant” (121). Geoffrey uses similes to describe men falling in battle, as in Part 2: “Those who were wounded where the battalions met in conflict fell to the ground as if they had been standing corn cut by the reapers’ sickles” (75). Similarly, in Part 3, Geoffrey uses a simile to describe the hardships the peasantry suffer at the hands of their enemies: “Just as sheep are torn apart by the wolves, so were the wretched plebs maltreated by their enemies” (122, italics in original). Also in Part 3, Geoffrey uses a metaphor to describe a chastened Julius Caesar, who is forced to bribe Gaul’s chieftains previously subdued: “He who had once raged like a lion, as he took from them their all, now went about bleating like a gentle lamb, as with muted voice he spoke of the pleasure it caused him to be able to give everything back to them again” (92).

Though Geoffrey somewhat dispassionately approaches battles scenes, describing the carnage without expressing sentiment about it, he diverges from this pattern on two occasions in Part 7 when he writes about Arthur’s battles. The first instance occurs during the battle between the armies of Arthur and Lucius Hiberius: “There ensued the most pitiable slaughter on both sides, with a bedlam of shouting and with men bungling head foremost or feet first to the ground all over the place and vomiting forth their life with their heart’s blood” (214). The second involves the battle between supporters of Arthur and Mordred, essentially an instance of civil war as Arthur battles his nephew: “It is heartrending to describe what slaughter was inflicted on both sides, how the dying groaned, and how great was the fury of those attacking” (222).