Talk:Layamon

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The page title

Can anyone justify this page being at "Layamon", which even the article itself admits is incorrect, rather than "Laȝamon" (with a redirect for those without a yogh on their keyboards)? Marnanel (talk) 20:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody has said why it shouldn't be moved, so I'm being bold. Marnanel (talk) 15:11, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I moved it back (several months later). Though it may not be the best transliteration, Layamon is the common version in modern English.--Cúchullain ^t/c 21:58, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

--- As part of a research paper, I am required to conduct research and include a bit of my findings in a Wikipedia article. If you do not mind, I will print off this page later today -- so I have record of it for my professor -- and then you may delete/edit it as you see fit. Thanks so much!

{{lnuse}} Laζamon's "Brut" remains one of the best extant examples of early Middle English^[1]. During an era in English history when most prose and poetry were composed in French, including Wace's Roman de Brut, Laζamon main resource for the "Brut,"^[2] and the lais of Marie de France, Laζamon wrote to his illiterate, impoverished religious audience in Worcestershire.

In 1216, around the time Laζamon was likely scribing this work, King Henry III of England came to reign. Henry regarded himself as an 'Englishman,' unlike many of his recent predecessors, and transitioned his kingdom away from more than 50 years of feudalism and the Old French dialects that had ruled the country's cultural endeavors^[3].

Several original passages in the poem -- or at least in accordance with the present knowledge of extant texts from the Middle Ages -- suggest Laζamon is interested in carving out the history of the Britons as the people 'who first possessed the land of the English'^[4]. His imitations in the "Brut" of certain stylistic and prosodic features of Old English alliterative verse show a knowledge and interest in preserving its conventions as well^[5].

References

^ Solopova, Elizabeth, and Stuart D. Lee. Key Concepts in Medieval Literature. 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
^ Everett, Dorothy. "Laζamon and the Earliest Middle English Alliterative Verse." Essays on Middle English Literature. Ed. Patricia Kean. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978.
^ Ackerman, Robert W. Backgrounds to Medieval English Literature. 1st. New York: Random House, Inc., 1966.
^ Everett, Dorothy. "Laζamon and the Earliest Middle English Alliterative Verse." Essays on Middle English Literature. Ed. Patricia Kean. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978.
^ Ackerman, Robert W. Backgrounds to Medieval English Literature. 1st. New York: Random House, Inc., 1966.

Imbalance

I find it curious that this article, in spite of its title, is almost exclusively about the Brut, and hardly about the man, while a very much shorter 'main' article, in fact a stub, exists about the Brut (Layamon). If this is a Wikipedia policy, I wopuld very much like to understand why, as I have come across other such instances, and it does not help either my using the WP as a source of information, or my attempts at editing or copy editing articles. I would also have found the article far more interesting had the tone been a little less academic in its paraphrasing of the source material.--Kudpung (talk) 04:54, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Solopova, Elizabeth, and Stuart D. Lee. Key Concepts in Medieval Literature. 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

[2] Everett, Dorothy. "Laζamon and the Earliest Middle English Alliterative Verse." Essays on Middle English Literature. Ed. Patricia Kean. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978.

[3] Ackerman, Robert W. Backgrounds to Medieval English Literature. 1st. New York: Random House, Inc., 1966.

[4] Everett, Dorothy. "Laζamon and the Earliest Middle English Alliterative Verse." Essays on Middle English Literature. Ed. Patricia Kean. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978.

[5] Ackerman, Robert W. Backgrounds to Medieval English Literature. 1st. New York: Random House, Inc., 1966.

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