SOURCE: Houck, Margaret. “Wace's Individuality and Narrative Technique.” In Sources of the “Roman de Brut” of Wace. University of California Publications in English. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941, pp. 167-95.

In the following essay, written in 1938, Houck examines the techniques through which Wace transforms Geoffrey of Monmouth's narrative history into a stylized work approaching fiction.

Most of the alterations made by Wace in Geoffrey's narrative have their source in his characteristic technique of storytelling and his poetic individuality; that is, in his style as a narrative poet. His style manifests itself chiefly in his development of dramatic settings for events, in his use of various devices to give an effect of lively action, in his tendency to enter sympathetically into the situation he is presenting, in his frequent additions of realistic circumstances not mentioned by Geoffrey, in his expression of certain characteristic sentiments, and in the technique of...