. The three Romances of Antiquity, the Roman de Thèbes (ca. 1152), the Roman d’Énéas (ca. 1160), and the Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure (ca. 1165), made classical antiquity accessible to a vernacular audience. All are linked to the literary currents of the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and are based on classical epics: Statius’s Thebaid, Virgil’s Aeneid, and the late-antique accounts of the Trojan War by Dares and Dictys, respectively. In their concerns (celebrating ancient heroes and civilization as forerunners of the present) and techniques (rewriting, rearranging, and medievalizing classical material), they form a coherent body of texts. They appear together in some manuscripts (e.g., B.N. fr. 60).
The Roman de Thèbes (10,562 lines) popularized the traditional romance form of the octosyllabic rhymed couplet. Its prologue characterizes the concerns of the genre of Romances of Antiquity as a whole. The poet, identified in the first line as he “who is wise,” has the duty to share his knowledge in order to be remembered forever. Homer, Plato, Virgil, and Cicero are adduced as examples of men who did just that. This list exemplifies the translatio studii topos, a concept central to the Romances of Antiquity: civilization began in Greece, moved to Rome, and has now arrived in French-speaking territory. The subject matter is worthy since it derives from ancient auctores; it also teaches a moral lesson, which for Thèbes is inherent in the story of Oedipus and his sons, Eteocles and Polynices, who begin a civil war after Oedipus’s abdication. One should not act against nature—this is in fact the final lesson pronounced by the Thèbes poet. Whether this lesson refers to Oedipus’s incestuous marriage or to the dangers of waging war is not clear. In any case, the poet accentuates the ravages of war and in particular denounces the horrors of fratricidal, that is, civil war. Although the story is set in antiquity and the characters are called “pagans,” many features are medieval: people go to church, there are convents and archbishops, medieval weapons and armor. The tragic love story between Atys and Ismene, not found in Statius’s Thebaid, inaugurated the strong love interest evident in later romances.
In the Roman d’Énéas (10,156 lines), love plays an especially important role and is, for the first time, expressed in the Ovidian forms that later become commonplace. Unlike Thèbes, Énéas has no prologue but starts with the prehistory of Aeneas’s voyage, the Trojan War. A digression recounts the Judgment of Paris: the three goddesses who were present at the origin of the Trojan War seem to provide the structural principle for the romance. In the promises made to Paris, Venus gives passion (i.e., Dido) to Aeneas; Athene oversees Aeneas’s victorious battle against Turnus; and Juno is responsible for Aeneas’s winning of Lavinia and the all-important demesne, the land that will be Rome. On the whole, the story line follows Virgil’s Aeneid, but the medieval poet adds a lengthy development on the love between Lavinia and Aeneas. Monologues and dialogues spin out the growing love between the two, and Lavinia often takes the initiative. The poet clearly wants to celebrate the success of a dynastic marriage, perhaps not unlike that of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Thus, in contrast to the Aeneid, which ends with Aeneas’s killing of Turnus, the Énéas closes with the joyous description of Aeneas’s and Lavinia’s wedding and the celebration of their lineage, which engendered the founders of Rome. Other important additions to Virgil include long passages describing marvelous works of art, such as Pallas’s tomb.
Benoît’s Roman de Troie, with 30,316 lines by far the longest of the Romances of Antiquity, tells the story of the Trojan War from Jason’s winning of the Golden Fleece to the homecoming of the Greek heroes and Odysseus’s tragic death at the hands of Telegonus, the son he had by Circe. Benoît’s lengthy prologue, introduced by the topos of the duty of imparting one’s knowledge to others, justifies in detail his rejection of Homer as an authoritative source: he was not a participant in the Trojan War. Dares and Dictys, on the other hand, Benoît insists, fought by day and wrote by night. Benoît thus accepts the claims of these late-antique writers as authentic. The story of how their texts came to light underlines the continuity of the geographical and linguistic translatio of his source, which ensures Benoît’s own authority.
From a didactic perspective, the numerous diplomatic missions and attendant discourses could provide models of political behavior to a medieval audience, while the story of Troilus and Briseida posed the problematics of prowess in war and love. The theme of Briseida’s inconstancy, taken up later by Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, led Benoît to some misogynistic tirades, which he interrupted only to praise Eleanor of Aquitaine.
All three romances brought pagan antiquity into medieval literature and thus participated in the “renaissance of the 12th century.” Their adaptations of Latin epics introduced new concepts of love and history underlining the disruptive power of war in both domains.
Benoît de Sainte-Maure. Le roman de Troie, ed. Léopold Constans. 6 vols. Paris: Didot, 1904–12.
Raynaud de Lage, Guy, ed. Le roman de Thèbes. 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1968.
Salverda de Grave, Jean-Jacques, ed. Le roman d’Énéas. 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1964.
Coley, John S., trans. Le roman de Thèbes (The Story of Thebes). New York: Garland, 1986.
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate. “Old French Narrative Genres: Towards a Definition of the Roman Antique.” Romance Philology 34(1980):143–59.
Cormier, Raymond. “The Problem of Anachronism: Recent Scholarship on the French Medieval Romances of Antiquity.” Philological Quarterly 52(1974):145–57.
Faral, Edmond. Recherches sur les sources latines des contes et romans courtois du moyen âge. Paris: Champion, 1913.
Petit, Aymé. Naissances du roman: les techniques littéraires dans les romans antiques du XIIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris and Geneva: Champion-Slatkine, 1985. [With bibliography.]
This is the complete article, containing 989 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
