Named for Britain's mythical founder, Brutus of Troy, the poem is largely based on the Anglo-Norman French Roman de Brut by Wace, which is in turn a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin Historia Regum Britanniae.
Imitations in the Brut of certain stylistic and prosodic features of Old English alliterative verse show a knowledge and interest in preserving its conventions.
[3] 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.
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.
[2] 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'.