Geoffrey Gaimar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Geoffrey Gaimar (flourished 1140?), was an Anglo-Norman chronicler. Gaimar's most significant contribution to medieval literature and history is as a translator from Old English to Anglo-Norman. His L'Estoire des Engles translates extensive portions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as well as using Latin and French sources. It is an octosyllabic rhymed chronicle written between 1136 and 1137 for Constance, wife of Ralph FitzGilbert, a Lincolnshire landowner. Geoffrey also used other sources for his text, and in particular it stands as the first witness to the legend of Havelok the Dane.

He claims to have written a version of the Brut story, probably a translation of the chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae into Old French verse. Yet the so-called L'Estoire des Bretons does not survive, and his indebtedness to Geoffrey of Monmouth appears only in Gaimar's knowledge of Galfridian legendary history.

[edit] See also

• British literature
• Anglo-Norman literature

[edit] References

• Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background, Legge, Oxford 1963
• A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World, Woodbridge, 2003 ISBN 0-85115-673-8
• Bell, Alexander (ed.), L’Estoire des Engleis by Geffrei Gaimar, Anglo-Norman Texts, 14–16 (Oxford, 1960)
• Gaimar, Geffrei, Lestoire des Engles, ed. and trans. Thomas Duffus Hardy and Charles Trice Martin, The Rolls Series, 91, 2 vols (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1888-89). The only complete English translation comprises volume 2. The edition of volume 1, however, has been superseded by Bell 1960.

This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.