Wace

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Wace

Wace (c. 1115 – c. 1183) was an Anglo-Norman

Anglo-Norman

The Anglo-Normans were mainly the descendants of the Normans who ruled England following the conquest by William I of England in 1066, although a few Normans were already in England before the conquest....
poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
, who was born in Jersey

Jersey

The Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes the nearly uninhabited islands of the Minquiers, ?cr?hous, the Pierres de Lecq and other rocks and reefs....
and brought up in mainland Normandy

Normandy

Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is situated along the coast of France south of the English Channel between Brittany and Picardy and comprises territory in northern France and the Channel Islands....
(he tells us in the Roman de Rou that he was taken as a child to Caen

Caen

Caen is a commune in France in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the Calvados Departments of France and the capital of the Basse-Normandie r?gion in France....
), ending his career as Canon

Canon (priest)

A canon is a priest who is a member of certain bodies of the Christianity clergy subject to an ecclesiastical rule .Originally, a canon was a cleric living with others in a clergyhouse or, later, in one of the houses within the precinct or close of a cathedral and ordering his life according to the orders or rules of the church....
of Bayeux

Bayeux

Bayeux is a Communes of France in the Calvados Departments of France in Normandy in northwestern France.Bayeux is the home of the Bayeux Tapestry, one of the oldest surviving complete tapestries in the world....
.

His extant works include:

Roman de Brut (c.

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Wace (c. 1115 – c. 1183) was an Anglo-Norman

Anglo-Norman

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
, who was born in Jersey

Jersey

Normandy

Caen

Canon (priest)

Bayeux

His extant works include:

Roman de Brut
Roman de Brut

Roman de Brut or Brut is a verse literary history of Britain in the Middle Ages by the poet Wace. Written in the Norman language, it consists of 14,866 lines....
- a verse history of Britain
Roman de Rou
Roman de Rou

Roman de Rou is a verse chronicle by Wace in Norman language covering the history of the Duchy of Normandy from the time of Rollo of Normandy to the battle of Tinchebray in 1106....
- a verse history of the Dukes of Normandy
Duchy of Normandy

The 'Duchy of Normandy' stems from various Denmark, Hiberno-Norse, Orkney Viking and Anglo-Danish invasions of France in the 8th century. A fief, probably as a county, was created by the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte in 911 out of concessions made by Charles the Simple, and granted to Rollo of Normandy, leader of the Vikings known as Nort...
Other works, also in verse, include lives of Saint Margaret and Saint Nicholas
Saint Nicholas

Saint Nicholas is the common name for Nicholas of Myra, a saint and Bishop of Myra . Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker....
.

Roman de Brut (c. 1155) was based on the Historia Regum Britanniae
Historia Regum Britanniae

The Historia Regum Britanniae is a pseudohistory account of Great Britain history, written c.1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It chronicles the lives of the List of legendary kings of Britain in a chronological narrative spanning a time of two thousand years, beginning with the Troy of Homer's Iliad founding the Brython nation and conti...
of Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth was a clergyman and one of the major figures in the English historians in the Middle Ages and the popularity of tales of King Arthur....
. It cannot be regarded as a history in any modern sense, although Wace often distinguishes between what he knows and what he does not know, or has been unable to find out. Wace narrates the founding of Britain, by Brutus of Troy

Brutus of Troy

Brutus or Brute of Troy is a legendary descendant of the Troy hero Aeneas, was known in medieval British legend as the eponymous founder and first king of Great Britain....
, to the end of the legendary British history created by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The popularity of this work is explained by the new accessibility to a wider public of the Arthur legend in a vernacular language. In the midst of the Arthurian section of the text, Wace was the first to mention the legend of King Arthur

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary Britons leader who, according to medieval histories and Romance , led the defence of Britain against the Saxon invaders in the early 6th century....
's Round Table

Round Table (Camelot)

The Round Table is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his Knights of the Round Tables congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status....
and the first to ascribe the name Excalibur

Excalibur

Excalibur is the legendary sword of King Arthur sometimes attributed with magical powers or associated with the rightful sovereignty of Great Britain....
to Arthur's sword, although he on the whole adds only minor details to Geoffrey's text. The Roman de Brut became the basis, in turn, for Layamon

Layamon

Layamon , or Lawman, was a poet of the early 13th century, whose Brut is a history of England in verse written in a form of Middle English, although this is at times bastardized to include more modern Anglo-Norman forms, and at times, deliberately "archaistic" Saxon forms which were quaint even by Anglo-Saxon standards....
's Brut
Brut (Layamon)

Brut is a Middle English poem compiled and recast by the English priest Layamon. It is named for Great Britain's mythical founder, Brutus of Troy....
, an alliterative Middle English poem, and Piers Langtoft

Piers Langtoft

Piers Langtoft, also known as Pierre de Langtoft was an English historians in the Middle Ages who took his name from the small village of Langtoft, East Riding of Yorkshire in what was then Yorkshire ....
's Chronicle. Historian Matthew Bennett, in an article entitled "Wace and Warfare," has pointed out that Wace clearly had a good understanding of contemporary warfare, and that the details of military operations he invents to flesh out his accounts of pseudo-historical conflicts can therefore be of value in understanding the generalities of warfare in Wace's own time.

His later work, the Roman de Rou, was, according to Layamon

Layamon

Henry II of England

Henry II, called Curtmantle ruled as King of England , Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France....
. A large part of the Roman de Rou is devoted to William the Conqueror

William I of England

William I , better known as William the Conqueror , was Duke of Normandy from 1035 and English monarchy from later 1066 to his death. William is sometimes also referred to as "William II" in relation to his position as the second Duke of Normandy of that name....
and the Norman Conquest. Wace's reference to oral tradition within his own family suggests that his account of the preparations for the Conquest and of the Battle of Hastings

Battle of Hastings

The Battle of Hastings was the decisive Normans victory in the Norman Conquest of England. It was fought between the Norman army of William I of England, and the English people army led by Harold Godwinson....
may have reliant not only on documentary evidence but also on eyewitness testimony from close relations-- though no eyewitnesses would have been still alive when he began work on the text. The Roman de Rou also includes a mention of the appearance of Halley's Comet

Comet Halley

Halley's Comet or Comet Halley is the most famous of the periodic comets and can currently be seen every 75?76 years. Many comets with long orbital periods may appear brighter and more spectacular, but Halley is the only short-period comet that is clearly visible to the naked eye, and thus, the only naked-eye comet certain to return wi...
. The relative lack of popularity of the Roman de Rou may reflect the loss of interest in the history of the Duchy of Normandy following the incorporation of continental Normandy into the kingdom of France in 1204.

The Anglo-Norman language

Anglo-Norman language

The Anglo-Norman language is a term traditionally used to refer to the variety of French used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles following the Norman conquest in 1066....
Wace wrote in is variously regarded as a dialect of the Norman language

Norman language

Norman is a Romance languages and one of the Langues d'o?l. The northern Norman can be classified in the septentrional O?l languages with Picard language and Walloon language....
, a dialect of Old French

Old French

Old French was the Romance languages dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 1000 to 1300....
, or specifically the precursor of Jèrriais

Jèrriais

J?rriais is the form of the Norman language spoken in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, off the coast of France. It has been in decline over the past century as English language has increasingly become the language of education, commerce and administration....
. Writers in Jersey have looked on Wace as the founder of Jersey literature, and Jèrriais is sometimes referred to as the language of Wace although the poet himself predated the development of Jèrriais as a literary language. Wace is the earliest known Jersey writer.

Although the name Robert has been ascribed to Wace, this is a tradition resting on little evidence. It is generally believed nowadays that Wace only had one name. As a clerc lisant, he was proud of his title of Maistre (master) and is consequently sometimes referred to as Maistre Wace.

It has been claimed that Wace's descriptions of militarily strategic points on the coast of Normandy were used in the early planning stages of the Battle of Normandy

Battle of Normandy

The Invasion of Normandy was the invasion and establishment of Western Allies forces in Normandy, France, during Operation Overlord in World War II....
. There is a granite memorial stone to Wace built into the side of the States Building in Jersey

Jersey

Jo di e dirai ke jo sui

Wace de l’isle de Gersui

Modern French:

Je dis et dirai que je suis

Wace de l'île de Jersey

English:

I say and will say that I am

Wace from the Island of Jersey

Bibliography

Charles Foulon, "Wace" in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, Roger S. Loomis (ed.). Clarendon Press: Oxford University. 1959. ISBN 0-19-811588-1
WACE, Roman de Brut, édité par I. Arnold, 2 vols., Paris, 1938-1940.
WEISS, Judith, Wace's Roman de Brut. A History of the British. Text and Translation, Exeter, 2006.
ARNOLD, I., & PELAN, M., La partie arthurienne du Roman de Brut, Paris, 1962.
WACE, Roman de Rou, édité par J. Holden, 3 vols. Paris, 1970-1973.

Wace

Bibliography

See also

External links