John Darnielle and the Two Medieval Geoffreys

John Darnielle’s 2022 novel, Devil House, explicitly alludes to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas to explore the ethics of writing historical narratives. We demonstrate that in Geoffrey of Monmouth Darnielle finds support for a historiography that is interested in promoting rhetorical and ethical concerns, even when that means inventing rather than simply reporting. We then turn to Darnielle’s second medieval Geoffrey, Geoffrey Chaucer, whose Tale of Sir Thopas offers a vehicle for exploring the limitations of genre fiction—in this case, “true crime”—as well as for understanding the complexities of multivocal history. Overall, we argue that Darnielle’s encounters with both medieval history and literature lead him to promote imaginative narrative as the best way to craft a history that is both ethical and whole.