(fl. 1160–70). Little is known about Benoît de Sainte-Maure that does not emerge directly from his texts. The author of the Roman de Troie names himself in line 132 as Beneeit de Sainte-More, and as Beneit in lines 2065, 5093, and 19,207. He praises Eleanor of Aquitaine in the Roman de Troie and flatters Henry II in the other text of which he is believed to be the author, the Chronique des ducs de Normandie. Here, the author is identified simply as Beneit from Touraine (albeit in summary passages that may not be by the author himself), who, it is presumed, took over for the aged Wace when the latter abandoned his Roman de Rou, also a history of the dukes of Normandy. Benoît’s Chronique has 44,542 lines in octosyllabic rhymed couplets. It begins with the creation and division of the world and ends with the death of Henry I of England. The Latin chronicles of Dudo de Saint-Quentin and Guillaume de Jumièges provided much of the material. But Benoît also invented long discourses for his historical characters and inserted countless proverbs into his narrative.
As in the Romances of Antiquity, anachronism and medievalization are rampant. The romance form of the Chronique suggests that it was part of the repertoire of texts recited in a courtly milieu. The Chronique, together with Wace’s Rou, is an excellent example of the desire of a new dynasty (as the Angevins with Henry II were in England) to celebrate their roots and their history in vernacular texts that would be accessible not only to a learned clerical audience but also to the aristocracy.
Benoît de Sainte-Maure. Chronique des ducs de Normandie, ed. Carin Fahlin. 3 vols. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1951–67. [A fourth volume of notes was published by Sven Sandqvist in 1979 with the same publisher.]
——. Le roman de Troie, ed. Léopold Constans. 6 vols. Paris: Didot, 1904–12.
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