Wace (c. 1110 – after 1174), sometimes referred to as Robert Wace, was a Medieval Norman poet, who was born in Jersey and brought up in mainland Normandy (he tells us in the Roman de Rou that he was taken as a child to Caen), ending his career as Canon of Bayeux.
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Layamon's Brut (c. 1190 – c. 1215), also known as The Chronicle of Britain, is a Middle English alliterative verse poem compiled and recast by the English priest Layamon. Layamon's Brut is 16,096 lines long and narrates a fictionalized version of the history of Britain up to the Early Middle Ages. It was the first work of history written in English since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Named for Britain's mythical founder, Brutus of Troy, the poem is largely based on the Anglo-Norman French Roman de Brut by Wace, which is in turn a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin Historia Regum Britanniae. Layamon's poem, however, is longer than both and includes an enlarged section on the life and exploits of King Arthur. It is written in the alliterative verse style commonly used in Middle English poetry by rhyming chroniclers, the two halves of the alliterative lines being often linked by rhyme as well as by alliteration.
Like the earlier Latin works, it is now regarded as valueless as history. It gives the history of the Britons, largely ignoring the Anglo-Saxons. Its narrative ends with the Welsh king Cadwallon ap Cadfan, who died in 634.
Perceforest or Le Roman de Perceforest is an anonymous prose chivalric romance, written in French probably around 1340 with lyrical interludes of poetry, that describes a fictional origin of Great Britain and provides an original genesis of the Arthurian world. The lengthy work in eight volumes (over one million words long) takes its inspiration from the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, Orosius and Bede, the Lancelot-Grail cycle, the Alexander Romance genre, Roman historians, medieval travellers, and oral tradition. Perceforest forms a late addition to the collection of narratives with loose connections both to the Arthurian Romance and the feats of Alexander the Great.
The Round Table (Welsh: y Ford Gron; Cornish: an Moos Krenn; Breton: an Daol Grenn; Latin: Mensa Rotunda) is King Arthur's famed table in the Arthurian legend, around which he and his knights congregate. As its name suggests, it has no head, implying that everyone who sits there has equal status, unlike conventional rectangular tables where participants order themselves according to rank. The table was first described in 1155 by Wace, who relied on previous depictions of Arthur's fabulous retinue. The symbolism of the Round Table developed over time; by the close of the 12th century, it had come to represent the chivalric order associated with Arthur's court, the Knights of the Round Table.
The Brut or Roman de Brut (completed 1155) by the poet Wace is a loose and expanded translation in almost 15,000 lines of Norman-French verse of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin History of the Kings of Britain. It was formerly known as the Brut d'Engleterre or Roman des Rois d'Angleterre, though Wace's own name for it was the Geste des Bretons, or Deeds of the Britons. Its genre is equivocal, being more than a chronicle but not quite a fully-fledged romance.
It narrates a largely fictional version of Britain's story from its settlement by Brutus, a refugee from Troy, who gives the poem its name, through a thousand years of pseudohistory, including the story of king Leir, up to the Roman conquest, the introduction of Christianity, and the legends of sub-Roman Britain, ending with the reign of the 7th-century king Cadwallader. Especially prominent is its account of the life of King Arthur, the first in any vernacular language, which instigated and influenced a whole school of French Arthurian romances dealing with the Round Table – here making its first appearance in literature – and with the adventures of its various knights.
Jèrriais literature is literature in Jèrriais, the Norman dialect of Jersey in the Channel Islands.
The literary tradition in Jersey is traced back to Wace, the 12th century Jersey-born poet, although there is little surviving literature in Jèrriais dating to before the introduction of the first printing press in Jersey in the 1780s. The first printed Jèrriais appears in the first newspapers at the end of the 18th century, and the earliest identified dated example of printed poetry is a fragment by Matchi L’Gé (Matthew Le Geyt 1777–1849) dated 1795.
Norman law (Norman: Coûteume de Normaundie, French: Coutume de Normandie, Latin: Lex Normanica) refers to the customary law of the Duchy of Normandy which developed between the 10th and 13th centuries and which survives today in the legal systems of Jersey and the other Channel Islands. It grew out of a mingling of Frankish customs and Viking ones after the creation of Normandy as a Norse colony under French rule in 911.
There are traces of (Anglo-)Scandinavian law in the customary laws of Normandy. A charter of 1050 (Cartulaire Saint-Pierre-de-Préaux, concerning the land of Vascœuil), listing several pleas before Duke William II, refers to the penalty of banishment as ullac "(put) out of law" (from Old Norse útlagr "(be) banished"), well attested in the Norwegian and Anglo-Saxon laws as utlah and those sentenced for ullac are called ulages (< útlagi "outlaws"). The word was still current in the 12th century, when it was used in the Roman de Rou by Wace. Another word mentioned in the same charter is hanfare (or hainfare, haimfare, hamfare < Old Norse heimför) which punishes the offense of invasio domus, known mainly in England as hamsocn. In the Très ancien Coutumier (1218 - 1223) this crime is called in Latin assultus intra quatuor pertica domus "assault inside the house".
Brocéliande, earlier known as Brécheliant and Brécilien, is a legendary enchanted forest that had a reputation in the medieval European imagination as a place of magic and mystery. Brocéliande is featured in several medieval texts, mostly these related to the Arthurian legend, as well as in numerous modern works.
Brocéliande first appeared in literature in Wace's 1160 chronicle Roman de Rou that reported on the fanciful tales surrounding its location in Brittany. It is a place of legend due to its uncertain location, unusual weather, and its ties with Arthurian mythology, most notably the tomb of Merlin. In chivalric romance lore, the forest sheltered Morgan's magical Vale of No Return, the faery fountain of Barenton, and the place of Merlin's retirement, imprisonment, or death. Today, it is most commonly identified as Paimpont forest in Brittany, France.
Gesta Normannorum Ducum (Deeds of the Norman Dukes) is a chronicle originally created by the monk William of Jumièges just before 1060. In 1070 William I had William of Jumièges extend the work to detail his rights to the throne of England. In later times, Orderic Vitalis (d. c. 1142) and Robert of Torigni (d. 1186), extended the volumes to include history up until Henry I.
The Gesta Normannorum Ducum by William of Jumièges has become the principal work of Norman historical writings, one of many written to glorify the Norman Conquest of England. But unlike most it was probably started in the late 1050s as a continuation of Dudo's De moribus. The monk William returned to his writing after the Conquest, most probably at the request of William the Conqueror. The final version of his history was written at his monastery at Jumièges c. 1070–1071. During the twelfth century there were interpolations and additions, first by Orderic Vitalis, then by Robert of Torigni, who added an entire book on Henry I of England. During the medieval period his work was widely circulated and read, was an essential work in most monasteries and was the basic source on which the histories of Wace and Benoît de Sainte-Maure were based. William's Gesta Normannorum Ducum survives today in forty-seven manuscripts.