Message #183094

[Jana Chand-Medlock]

These fabulous chronicles were for a while imprisoned in languages
of local only or of professional access. Both Turpin and Geoffrey
might indeed be read by ecclesiastics, the sole Latin scholars of
those times, and Geoffrey's British original would contribute to the
gratification of Welshmen; but neither could become extensively
popular till translated into some language of general and familiar
use. The Anglo-Saxon was at that time used only by a conquered and
enslaved nation; the Spanish and Italian languages were not yet
formed; the Norman French alone was spoken and understood by the
nobility in the greater part of Europe, and therefore was a proper
vehicle for the new mode of composition.