William of Malmesbury as Historian and Man of Letters

As a historian and man of learning, William of Malmesbury has over the last century drawn the most diverse reactions from those scholars whose work has brought them into contact with him. On the one hand, praise has been lavished on his wide reading, critical acumen and historical judgement; on the odier, his credulity, carelessness, wilful mishandling of evidence and meandering irrelevance have been stigmatised. One group of scholars sees him as head and shoulders above, and in advance of his time, a ‘modern’ writer; others see him as the creature of his epoch and immediate environment in a pejorative sense. Yet it would surely be true to say that no-one since or apart from William Stubbs has attained such a command of William's output as to be in a position to make an overall assessment of it. Even Stubbs did not claim to be attempting this and, in any case, he was unacquainted with several of William's works, and misattributed others.

[1]  R. Thomson.  The Reading of William of Malmesbury , 1975 .

[2]  J. Rosenthal.  Bede's Use of Miracles in ‘The Ecclesiastical History’ , 1975, Traditio.

[3]  R. Ray.  Medieval Historiography through the Twelfth Century: Problems and Progress of Research , 1974 .

[4]  B. Smalley.  Historians in the Middle Ages , 1974 .

[5]  R. Southern.  Presidential Address: Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 4. The Sense of the Past , 1973, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.

[6]  C. Morris.  The discovery of the individual, 1050-1200 , 1972 .

[7]  R. Southern.  Presidential Address: Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 1. The Classical Tradition from Einhard to Geoffrey of Monmouth , 1970, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.

[8]  R. B. Patterson.  Stephen's Shaftesbury Charter: Another Case against William of Malmesbury , 1968, Speculum.

[9]  P. Sawyer.  Anglo-Saxon Charters , 1968 .

[10]  J. Ogilvy.  Books known to the English, 597-1066 , 1967 .

[11]  L. D. Reynolds,et al.  The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Letters , 1967 .

[12]  R. B. Patterson.  William of Malmesbury's Robert of Gloucester: A Re-evaluation of the Historia Novella , 1965 .

[13]  H. Finberg,et al.  The early charters of Wessex , 1965 .

[14]  R. Southern,et al.  St. Anselm and His Biographer , 1964 .

[15]  J. M. Powell.  The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor , 1962 .

[16]  H. Farmer.  William of Malmesbury's Commentary on Lamentations , 1962 .

[17]  R. Southern.  The Canterbury Forgeries , 1958 .

[18]  J. Pritchard,et al.  The classical heritage and its beneficiaries , 1954 .

[19]  M.P.I. van den Hout.  Clavis Patrum Latinorum , 1952 .

[20]  N. Ker.  William of Malmesbury's Handwriting , 1944 .

[21]  Mariana Schütt.  The Literary Form of William of Malmesbury's ‘Gesta Regum’ , 1931 .

[22]  J. E. King.  Baedae : Opera historica , 1930 .

[23]  W. W. Newell.  William of Malmesbury on the Antiquity of Glastonbury With Especial Reference to the Equation of Glastonbury and Avalon , 1903, PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America.