LAYAMON

flourished 12th century also spelled Lawamon early Middle English poet, author of the romance-chronicle the Brut (c. 1200), the outstanding literary product of the 12th-century revival of English literature, which had been virtually suppressed in favour of French and Latin after the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is the first work in English to treat of the matter of Britaini.e., the legends surrounding Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. Layamon describes himself as a priest living at Arley Kings in Worcestershire. His source was the Roman de Brut by Wace, an Anglo-Norman verse adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. In about 16,000 long alliterative lines (often broken into short couplets by rhyme), the Brut relates the legendary history of Britain from the landing of Brutus, great-grandson of the Trojan Aeneas, to the final Saxon victory over the Britons in 689. One-third of the poem deals with Arthurian matter, but Layamon's is not a high chivalric treatment: mass war is the staple, with Arthur the splendid war leader of Germanic tradition. Many incidents, notably the account of the founding of the Round Table and details connected with the lives of Lear, Cymbeline, and Merlin, first appeared in the Brut.