Literary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain's Long Twelfth Century

A survey of the different literary forms adopted by history writers after the Conquest, exploring why and for what effects they were used. Histories of Britain composed during the "twelfth-century renaissance" display a remarkable amount of literary variety (Latin varietas ). Furthermore, British historians writing after the Norman Conquest often draw attention to the differing forms of their texts. But why would historians of this period associate literary variety with the work of history-writi