SOURCE: “New Light on a Shadowed Past,” in The Passage of Dominion: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Periodization of Insular History in the Twelfth Century, University of Toronto Press, 1981, pp. 29-54.

In the following excerpt, Leckie discusses the many problems faced by medieval historians in chronicling Britain's past and traces the reaction to and impact of Geoffrey's effort.

Prior to the second quarter of the twelfth century information on pre-Saxon Britain was sparse and largely discontinuous. The deeds of the island's early Celtic inhabitants had left few traces in extant sources. Scattered entries afforded brief glimpses of isolated events, but no coherent account of British rule had survived. In fact, the period of Roman domination constituted the first discernible epoch in Insular history. For Bede and the annalists of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the record of events began with Caesar's expeditions (he, 1.2, pp 20-2; asc, pp 5-6). Of the...