The versification of the
Brut has proven extremely difficult to characterise. Written in a loose
alliterative style, sporadically deploying rhyme as well as a
caesural pause between the
hemistichs of a line, it is perhaps closer to the rhythmical prose of
Ælfric of Eynsham than to verse, especially in comparison with later alliterative writings such as
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and
Piers Plowman. Layamon's alliterating verse is difficult to analyse, seemingly avoiding the more formalised styles of the later poets. Layamon's Middle English is notably "native" in its vocabulary, i.e. devoid of words borrowed from Norman French; the scholar B.S. Monroe counted a mere 150 words derived from French in the poem's 16,000 lines. It is remarkable for its abundant
Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, including deliberately archaic Saxon forms that were quaint even by Anglo-Saxon standards. Imitations in the
Brut of certain stylistic and prosodic features of
Old English alliterative verse show a knowledge and interest in preserving its conventions. During an era in English history when most prose and poetry were composed in French, Layamon wrote for his illiterate, impoverished religious audience in
Worcestershire. In 1216, around the time Layamon wrote, King
Henry III of England came to the throne. Henry regarded himself as an Englishman above any other nationality, unlike many of his recent predecessors, and moved his kingdom away from the
Old French dialects that had ruled the country's cultural endeavors. Several original passages in the poem — at least in accordance with the present knowledge of extant texts from the
Middle Ages — suggest Layamon was interested in carving out the history of the
Britons as the people 'who first possessed the land of the English'. ==Manuscripts, editions and translations==