SOURCE: Grout, P. B. “The Author of the Munich Brut, His Latin Sources, and Wace.” Medium Aevum LIV, no. 2 (1985): 274-82.

In the following essay, Grout compares two versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, the anonymous Munich Brut, and Wace's Brut, especially with regard to their treatment of the story of King Leir.

It is generally known that in addition to the more famous Brut by Wace, the Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth gave rise to a number of verse translations, of which some fragments and some longer versions are still extant.¹ Of the longer versions, the Munich Brut (so called because the single MS is to be found in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich), first published in its entirety by Hofmann and Vollmöller in 1877,² aroused some interest over the following sixty years for two particular reasons: philologists wished to examine...