In the field of literary studies of historiography, the idea of unity—stylistic unity in historical composition, and unity in the past—has attracted a good deal of attention. We have learned how medieval writers addressed all sorts of unities: polities shaped by unification; continuities in Latin composition; resilient biblical morals. Jacqueline M. Burek, offering an intriguing and original contrast in her questions about the sources, places the idea of literary variety center stage. This varietas takes many forms in a work of historical writing. The book explores change, range, and exchange in medieval historical writing, across writers’ ideas, their form, and their expression.

“Variety,” as Burek warns us, can sound like a grab-bag of notions. She shows how this concept—itself a unifying theme—helps to illuminate what medieval writers were trying to do and why. The idea of variety is creative because it allows Burek to do two things at once. Burek's thematic focus on variety is thematically consistent, enabling her to compare and to contrast what medieval writers did with the idea. At the same time, the vast remit of variety's meaning permits her to discuss the diversity of ideas and forms within each literary composition. Her book contributes a fresh perspective to the discussion on medieval literature and historical writing.

Burek's book examines how British historiography evolved in the High Middle Ages. The book takes five works as its case studies. Part One examines three Latin prose works about English and British history, written in the second quarter of the twelfth century: William of Malmesbury's Gesta regum Anglorum; Henry of Huntingdon's Historia Anglorum; Geoffrey of Monmouth's De gestis Britonum, also known as Historia regum Britanniae. Part Two considers Middle English verse chronicles: Laȝamon's early thirteenth-century Brut (a translation of Wace's Anglo-Norman French translation of Geoffrey's De gestis) and Robert Mannyng's early fourteenth-century Story of Inglande (which drew on the tradition of Wace's Roman de Brut). It discusses their debt to classical Latin works of rhetoric, such as those by Quintilian, and to earlier works of history written in England, including the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica. The twelfth-century writers were innovators in using formal variety to make historical meaning, Burek contends. The two Middle English case studies reveal the long legacy of literary varietas beyond Latin, and they contest scholarly framing binaries: English/British; Latin/vernacular; history/literature; poetry/prose.

Burek argues that medieval writers thought that literary variety—that is, combining different forms and styles in a single work—could create harmony and conceptual clarity. Variety made a work accessible. The key was to judge well its quality and quantity. Too much could be superficial and cause confusion; too little could generate boredom. Literary variety was rarely purely ornamental. To get medieval patrons, readers, and listeners to learn from the moral lessons of the past, and from the meaning of its events, writers had to spark their interest. The audience had to be paying attention.

Using close readings, Burek shows how writers used variety in literary form to create historical narratives. They organized their works in various ways: with micro-biographies, with revelations about past ruptures and crises, and with adjustments in chronology. Some even tried their hand at writing as though in the distant past. They did not always try to smooth over the past into a neat, continuous story. Stylistic control, with a healthy dose of literary variety, enabled them to tell a coherent narrative that included the surprises, crises, and paradoxes that made up Britain's past.

Burek's approach permits William, Henry, and Geoffrey—chosen because of their literary dexterity and long-term influence—to emerge not as opponents, but as stylists comparable in their history-writing endeavors. William sought a culturally enriching Anglo-Roman style in his history of the English kings. Burek argues that Henry approached varietas less by aspiring to create formal balance, and more by finding creative ways to recombine Christian ideas. Geoffrey, like William, deployed classically inspired varietas, but used the idea to express imbalances in politics and sovereignty in the past. Varietas persisted in Middle English writing. Laȝamon, who drew on classical and Christian ideas of varietas, strengthened and spiced his Brut with a variety of poetry, songs, and stories to make historical arguments. Mannyng tried to match style with era in representing conquest and regime change.

Burek aims to encourage historians and literary scholars to think with a wider variety of tools and techniques about their sources. She shows how detailed literary study of the twelfth-century Latinists illuminates their historical ideas, and why historians should pay attention to Mannyng's Story, better known in literary circles.

One of the reasons why this book is stimulating is because it juxtaposes Latin and Middle English expressions of the idea of variety, as well as prose and verse. Burek's comparisons take a deliberately anthropological stance: she shows the value of comparing distinct works, literary communities, and eras by placing them beside one another in a book. The force of these comparisons would be lost were we to impose a sequential, and ultimately artificial, narrative about the supposed evolution of historical writing in England from Latin to Anglo-Norman French to Middle English. Variety in literary form, used to make historiographical points, did not happen only in the Middle Ages. Burek marshals its meaning-making power to clear effect in her book.

The “long twelfth century” of Burek's title is very long indeed, and that is precisely the point. Long after 1300, writers in England kept drawing inspiration from that trio of twelfth-century writers, who credited themselves with bringing new form and piquancy to the assorted and contentious events of Britain's past. In fourteenth-century England, Burek suggests, writers generally preferred consistency to variety in form. But the lingering legacy of those writers keen on varietas shows that medieval writers long remained intrigued by the possibility that, by replicating historical ruptures in written style, they could approach nearer to the every-varying nature of the way things were in the past.