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Wace Robert
(c. 1100–after 1174)

Anglo-Norman author of two verse chronicles, the Roman de Brut (1155) and the Roman de Rou (1160-74), named respectively after the reputed founders of the Britons and Normans.

The Rou was commissioned by Henry II of England, who sometime before 1169 secured for Wace a canonry at Bayeux in northwestern France. The Brut may have been dedicated to Henry's queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Written in octosyllabic verse, it is a romanticized account of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, tracing the history of Britain from its founding by the legendary Brutus the Trojan. Its many fanciful additions (including the story of King Arthur's Round Table) helped increase the popularity of the Arthurian legends. The Rou, written in octosyllabic couplets and monorhyme stanzas of alexandrines, is a history of the Norman dukes from the time of Rollo the Viking (after 911) to that of Robert II Curthose (1106). In 1174, however, Henry II transferred his patronage to one Beneeit, who was writing a rival version, and Wace's work remained unfinished.

Wace's conscious literary artistry in the Brut exerted a stylistic influence on later verse romances (notably on a version of the Tristan story by Thomas, the Anglo-Norman writer), whereas the English poem Brut (c. 1200) by Layamon was the most notable of many direct imitations. Three devotional works by Wace also survive.

Jersey, 1974, Robert Wace