Networking of Texts and Construction of Identity in Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman HistoriographyThe Roman de Rou by Wace and the History of the Dukes of Normandy by Benoît de Sainte-Maure
Abstract: The twelfth-century Anglo-Norman historiography offers a privileged field of investigation to address the notions of “courtly communities”. A comparison of the episode of the Battle of Hastings offered by the works of Wace and Benoît de Sainte-Maure testifies to their profound differences in the writing of history: while the first is based on an exclusively Norman reading of events, the second was able to bend its narrative to the requirements of the construction of the Plantagenet Empire.
