- Title Pages
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Connections in Archaic Latin Prose
- The Language and Style of the Fragmentary Republican Historians
- The <i>Bellum Africum</i>
- Hair, Hegemony, and Historiography: Caesar’s Style and its Earliest Critics
- Cicero’s Adaptation of Legal Latin in the <i>De legibus</i>
- The Language of Epicureanism in Cicero: The Case of Atomism
- Pope’s Spider and Cicero’s Writing
- The Impracticability of Latin ‘Kunstprosa’
- Poetic Influence on Prose: The Case of the Younger Seneca
- The Language of Pliny the Elder
- Omisso speciosiore stili genere
- The Poetics of Fiction: Poetic Influence on the Language of Apuleius’ <i>Metamorphoses</i>
- ‘Langues réduites au lexique’? The Languages of Latin Technical Prose
- Gregory of Tours and Poetry: Prose into Verse and Verse into Prose
- Poeticism in Pre-Conquest Anglo-Latin Prose
- The Varieties of Bede’s Prose
- Translator’s Latin
- Realistic Writing in the Tenth Century: Gerhard of Augsburg’s <i>Vita S. Uodalrici</i>
- William of Malmesbury and the Latin Classics Revisited
- Metrical and Rhythmical Clausulae in Medieval Latin Prose: Some Aspects and Problems
- Bibliography
- Index verborum
- Index locorum
- Index rerum
William of Malmesbury and the Latin Classics Revisited
William of Malmesbury and the Latin Classics Revisited
- Chapter:
- (p.383) William of Malmesbury and the Latin Classics Revisited
- Source:
- Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose
- Author(s):
R. M. Thomson
- Publisher:
- British Academy
William of Malmesbury was probably the greatest historian of England between Bede and Macaulay. He was born around 1090 and disappears from the historical record late in 1142; from childhood until the end of his life he was a monk of the ancient Benedictine foundation of Malmesbury in Wiltshire. The chapter mentions his florilegium, the Polyhistor, a compendium of information about ancient peoples and places that drew on both pagan and Christian writers of antiquity: there are eighteen pagan works. William’s invocation of ancient texts certainly adds dignity to his narrative, but it did not necessarily contribute to his historical accuracy. His classicizing occasionally led him to surprisingly unmonastic, and indeed un-Christian, sentiments and language.
Keywords: William, Malmesbury, Polyhistor, language, Wiltshire
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- Title Pages
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Connections in Archaic Latin Prose
- The Language and Style of the Fragmentary Republican Historians
- The <i>Bellum Africum</i>
- Hair, Hegemony, and Historiography: Caesar’s Style and its Earliest Critics
- Cicero’s Adaptation of Legal Latin in the <i>De legibus</i>
- The Language of Epicureanism in Cicero: The Case of Atomism
- Pope’s Spider and Cicero’s Writing
- The Impracticability of Latin ‘Kunstprosa’
- Poetic Influence on Prose: The Case of the Younger Seneca
- The Language of Pliny the Elder
- Omisso speciosiore stili genere
- The Poetics of Fiction: Poetic Influence on the Language of Apuleius’ <i>Metamorphoses</i>
- ‘Langues réduites au lexique’? The Languages of Latin Technical Prose
- Gregory of Tours and Poetry: Prose into Verse and Verse into Prose
- Poeticism in Pre-Conquest Anglo-Latin Prose
- The Varieties of Bede’s Prose
- Translator’s Latin
- Realistic Writing in the Tenth Century: Gerhard of Augsburg’s <i>Vita S. Uodalrici</i>
- William of Malmesbury and the Latin Classics Revisited
- Metrical and Rhythmical Clausulae in Medieval Latin Prose: Some Aspects and Problems
- Bibliography
- Index verborum
- Index locorum
- Index rerum
