Images of Rome in Anglo-Norman and German Historical Writing

This thesis is a comparative study of images of Rome in Anglo-Norman and German historical writing. It traces the development of a 'discourse of Romanness' from antiquity to the Middle Ages. This discourse consisted of a variety of 'images of Rome', such as the idea that Rome was ‘the head of the world’ and the concept of the ‘new’ or ‘second Rome’. As well as tracing the development of these images from antiquity to the Middle Ages, this thesis reconsiders medieval concepts of Roman renewal. It also offers the beginnings of a new interpretation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (Historia regum Britanniae).