Literary Tombs and Archaeological Knowledge in the Twelfth-Century ‘Romances of Antiquity’

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter explores intertextual and intermedial encounters between imaginative literature and archaeological knowledge in Western Europe in the second half of the twelfth century. Several of the popular ‘romans d’antiquités’ from this period, such as the anonymous Roman d’Eneas (c. 1160), Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie (c. 1165), and Heinrich von Veldeke’s Eneit (1170–1788), feature elaborate ekphrastic descriptions of the tombs of legendary heroes and warriors. Although the romances of antiquity are works of fiction, their descriptions of ancient burial practices reflect the influence of written accounts of actual tomb openings and exhumations in the preceding century. Thus, the description of the burial of Pallas in the Roman d’Eneas is partly modeled on the chronicler William of Malmesbury’s account of the discovery of the ‘real’ tomb of Pallas in Rome, c. 1045. Similarly, in the Roman de Troie, the tomb of Hector with its distinctive enthroned burial is based in part on accounts of the opening of the tomb of Charlemagne by Otto III in the year 1000. Reading these romances alongside their archaeological intertexts sheds new light on the complex historical awareness of these literary works and the interpretative communities that received them.