Layamon's Brut and the March of Wales: Merlin, his Prophecies, and the Lex Marchia

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2011-04-08
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Virginia Tech
Abstract

This study explores Layamon's engenderment of cultural unification for the explicit purposes of an Anglo-Welsh cultural resistance to the Norman overlords in the March of Wales. In essence, I examine some of the most important cultural signifiers in medieval English and Welsh culture and the methods by which the poet adapts and grafts them together to form a culturally amalgamated text—neither explicitly English nor Welsh but yet simultaneously both - and the political implications of this amalgamation. Though Laymon's methodology emanates from multiple aspects of the text, I have concentrated here on what I feel are the most explicit manifestations of this theme: Merlin, his prophecies, and the Law of the March.

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Keywords
Prophecy, British History, Layamon, Merlin, Norman Conquest, "March of Wales", March Law, Middle Ages, Lex Marchia, cultural unification, Middle Welsh, medieval historiography, Layamon, Lazamon, Lawman, Middle English, revolution
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