Talk:Historia Britonum

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Sjc, I see from your recent changes to the Sites and places associated with Arthurian legend page that you are maing a lot of links to a proposed Nennius article. My research (which I'm compiling into a Historia Brittonum article) shows the likely possibility that N. had little to do with the HB. Would you like to see what I've written so far so that we aren't needlessly fighting over the best way to present a NPOV about this contraversial issue?

I would post it, but I want to make sure the material I'll be including does not violate wikipedia's policy about copyright. - llywrch 19:36 Nov 11, 2002 (UTC)

There's no problem here; I have more than enough work on my Wikipedia plate for the foreseeable future. You are more than welcome to do what you wish to Nennius, I am seriously busy on Arthurian places, British toponymy, and Old English language at the moment in between keeping the vandals at the gate at bay.... I think you're probably on the right track with Nennius/HB btw, in my view he always struck me as a clerical composite, but I never really went into it too deeply. I will try and chip in on Nennius if you steam in, where time permits. user:sjc

Just put my Historia Brittonum article up. Have a look, & fix any mistakes you see. (Although the names are as they appear in Giles' translation.) - llywrch 05:57 Nov 12, 2002 (UTC)

Excellent stuff. I have a couple of (minor) reservations but I'll give them some thought before coming back to you in seriousness. user:sjc

I had a second thought or two myself: I moved some of the material to its own article under Pillar of Eliseg - llywrch 02:34 Nov 16, 2002 (UTC)

A delayed addendum. First, as authoritative as this article may appear, I must admit I wrote much of it from memory with some fact-checking. As I've been scraping together the backup for my article on Nennius, I am relearning just how complex the subject of the Historia Britonum really is. It is a fluid text, so some discussion of the textual transmission must be added in this article. There are a number of chronological calculations that point to dates at which the Historia Britonum was revised. And some more attention must be made to non-Arthurian materials in this work, for example:

(1) The History of Britain that occupies chapters 7-49 served as the basis or inspiration of the psuedo-history Geoffrey of Monmouth fills much of his Historia Regum Britanniae;

(2) The Northern History of chapters 57-65 offer a history of the wars between Northumbria and the Celtic kings from the British point of view. There is a great deal of secondary literature about just how reliable this section is.

Is this short historical text of dubious value truly worth this much space in the Wikipedia? I believe that if the end result is an article that can be held up as an example of the critical process required to write history, then this article is justified. -- llywrch 05:37 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)