Thus far we have discovered 16 early anonymous French verse versions of the Galfridian material: of those 16, 8 contain versions of Merlin’s Prophecies (one octosyllabic, four decasyllabic, and three alexandrine), and the rest have various sections of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae; all of the manuscripts are Anglo-Norman, except two, and the majority of the texts themselves date from the twelfth century, though they are found in manuscripts largely from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (see note 1). We will examine four of these early anonymous French verse Bruts, chosen because they contain important sections of the Galfridian material, that is, either the foundation myths of Britain, the adventus Saxonum (i.e., the arrival of the

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Citation: Blacker, Jean. "The Anonymous French Verse Brut Tradition". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 April 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19708, accessed 22 November 2024.]