Narrators, Messengers, and Lawman's Brut

Abstract

As Lawman uses the messenger motif in his Brut both to facilitate and to interpret the role that knowledge and power play in British history, the poet also imagines his own role as history's authorized messenger. Messengers model and endorse Lawman's gestures at writing himself a place next to the people of British history and, perhaps more importantly, to the places in which that history occurred.

‘Þus heo hit speken’: Direct and Indirect Speech in the Two Versions of Laȝ amon’s Brut

“…For further discussion of the messenger motif and its relationship to Laȝamon's role as narrator, seeParry (1998).…”