Roman De Troie Research Articles

“Troy-upon-Guadalquivir: Imagining Ancient Architecture at King Alfonso XI’s Court”

The depictions of Troy in the Crónica Troyana de Alfonso XI (1350) —a Castilian illuminated manuscript with the Spanish version of the Roman de Troie— provide an exemplum to analyze the function of anachronism as a rhetorical device in Arts and Literature. Moreover, these urban images have an unmistakable Islamic appearance which allows us to go deeper into the comprehension of the multicultural context of the Iberian Peninsule, as well as into its singular artistic consequences.

“From Homer to Hermoniakos: Some Considerations of Troy Matter in Byzantine Literature”

A number of authors in Byzantium remodelled Homeric and non-Homeric material in different manners, not only citing and alluding to the epics but also discussing and remodelling the subject matter. Byzantine Troy matter appears in the chronographical tradition, in a series of commentares and paraphrases, and in romances and other texts belonging to the novelistic fringe. Drawing basically on Homeric and post-Homerica legends, these texts are to different degrees intrinsically interrelated not only to each other, but also to the so-called Komnenian novels and to the Western Troy matter in Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie. The present article attempts to briefly outline the complex relations between the texts and to considerer the links between ancient and Medieval, Western and Byzantine, epic, history and novel

"Una nota sobre la particular versión de la tumba de Héctor en la Crónica troyana de Alfonso XI"

The description of Hector's tomb in the Castilian translation of Benoît de Sainte Maure's Roman de Troie (ca. 1350) presents interesting variations that may be considered as a result of the interaction with the artistic and political context of the Iberian Peninsula in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Re-inventing the Homeland in the Historiography of Frankish Greece: The Fourth Crusade and the Legend of the Trojan War

AbstractA close reading of Western texts belonging to the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries reveals the process by which the legend of the Trojan War came to be associated with the conquest of Constantinople. After 1204, attempts in the Morea to re-work Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie attest to gradual changes in the relationship of the Frankish conquerors with their territories in the former Byzantine Empire, but also with their lands of origin. A parallel ideological transformation may be shown to have occurred within the Byzantine tradition. This evidence sheds light on the Late Medieval contexts in which were composed the Iliad of Constantine Hermoniakos, the anonymous Πόλεμος τῆς Τρωάδος, the Byzantine Iliad and Achilleid.

L'oubli d'Hésione ou le fatal aveuglement :

Ph. LOGIE, Forgetting Hesione, or a fatal blindness : the game of right and wrong in Benoit de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie. Benoit does indeed follow the mythological tradition when he has Helen as a major cause of the Trojan war. Yet he adds the game of right and wrong to the reasons for the sack of Troy : Troy was destroyed because Priam could not stay on the right side. The fate of Hesione, Priam’s own sister, plays an essential part in this failure. Indeed Priam is in the right as long as he wants to takes his sister away from Telamon : this even justifies Paris’ expedition since it follows upon Antenor’s embassy when he tried to get Hesione back. But then Pâris abducted Helen instead, in whom Priam first saw a bargaining prize. Unacccountably, though, Priam allowed Paris to marry Helen, thus forgetting all about his sister and stepping on the side of wrong. Agamemnon used the deception of a mock embassy to profit by this mistake, which led to the fall of Troy and the death of Priam.

Trojan Elements in the Old French Roman de Thèbes

The OF Roman de Thebes and the OF Roman de Troie emerge virtually simultaneously and in the same place during the twelfth century. The two poems more often than not appear in the same manuscripts together, and, as manuscript evidence suggests, twelfth-century readers perceived a causal relationship between the events at Thebes and the later disaster at Troy. Troy and its outcome provided a vital framework for understanding the siege of Thebes. This accounts for the numerous echoes of the Trojan war in the Roman de Thebes, including the appearance of personnel from the Trojan conflict among the ranks at Thebes, the enlistment of those personnel into the opposing sides that we later encounter at Troy, the re-configuration of the armies of Eteocles and Polynices into "Greeks" and Thebans (anticipating the future conflict between Greeks and Trojans), and the alteration of the terrain and aspect of the final battle so that it resembles the siege of Troy. Most interesting, however, is the outcome of this conflict, for in the Roman de Thebes, the "Greeks" are the victors over the Thebans whose ranks include Trojans. I argue that, among other things, the Thebes poet attempts to re-fight the Trojan war, inverting the winners and losers, and that we can account for this inversion by looking to poem's historical and political milieu within the Angevin empire.

Historical Fabrication, Ethnic Fable and French Romance in Twelfth-Century England

This study addresses perceptions of national difference and affinity in the wake of the Norman Conquest and the use of a fabricated past variously to justify or to attenuate ethnic discord and dynastic conflict in Britain, Brittany and Ireland. Six of its chapters are devoted to the Insular romances of Wace and Benoit de Sainte-Maure; and six engage works produced by Latinate authors, some of them in equal measure canonical to the medieval period and sadly marginal to the modern discipline of medieval literary studies. Part One, Fabrications of Britain: ca. 1125-1150, demonstrates that the literary and nationalistic resurrection of Arthur was first formulated as a political necessity by William of Malmesbury and only then concluded by Geoffrey of Monmouth; and it collaterally shows that pseudepigraphic writing had become an Insular trend before the advent of Henry II Plantagenet, creating fertile circumstances in which England, and not France, witnessed the maturation of a new vernacular genre, the roman antique. The literary and historical circumstances that inform these developments are central to Part Two, Dynastic Legitimacy, Vernacular Translation, and the French Romance of England: ca. 1155-1180. Through analyses of the Roman de Brut, the Roman de Rou, the Roman de Troie and the Chronique des ducs de Normandie, Wace and Benoit emerge as self-conscious artisans of apocrypha, creating visions of a past they know to be false and employing their fabrications as a prism through which to dramatize, to interrogate and,

Criseyde, Cassandre, and the Thebaid: Women and the Theban Subtext of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde

Criseyde, Cassandre, and the Thebaid: Women and the Theban Subtext of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde Catherine Sanok Vniversity ofCalifornia, Los Angeles hen Pandarus first v1s1ts Criseyde to inform her of Troilus's love in book 2 of Troilus and Criseyde, he interrupts his niece and her companions as they listen to a maiden read "the romaunce of Thebes," a text that turns out to be Statius's Thebaid. Throughout Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer borrows widely from the Latin epic, em­ ploying Statian invocations and incorporating into his poem elaborate references to the Theban story. In a text replete with allusions to the Thebaid, however, the most explicit and extended of them are associated with women. Criseyde reads Statius's poem in book 2, and Cassandre recounts its argument in her interpretation of Troilus's dream of Criseyde's betrayal in book 5. Indeed, the narrative of the love of Troilus and Criseyde is bracketed by the Thebaid: Criseyde's reading marks the beginning of the affair, and Cassandre's explanation of Troilus's dream marks its end. These two extended references and most of the incidental allusions to the Thebaid are original to Chaucer's version of the story. In fact, the Theban subtext may well be the most significant addition Chaucer makes to Boccaccio's Filostrato.1 Although the groundwork for an analy­ sis of Chaucer's use of the Latin epic was laid in 1911 with Boyd Ashby Wise's study, The Influence ofStatius upon Chaucer, subsequent attempts to refine his work were until recently largely confined to tracking down 1 The Filostrato is Chaucer's primary source. He also used Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie and Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae. Chaucer's engage­ ment with Boethius is, of course, also highly important. Winthrop Wetherbee suggests the Divine Comedy as another significant source ofinfluence; Chaucerand the Poets: An Essay on Troilus and Criseyde (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984). 41 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER rather than interpreting Chaucer's Statian references.2 A renewed interest in the Theban material in Chaucer's poem has prompted a reconsideration of Statius's influence, especially in the important work of David Anderson and Winthrop Wetherbee,3 but has perhaps also served to obscure the marked relationship between the Latin epic and women. Anderson does link Criseyde's reading of the Theban story to Cassandre's summary ofit, but he finds the significance of this juxta­ position in a comparison ofPandarus and Cassandre, not Criseyde and Cassandre. Wetherbee is interested in the issue ofTheban references in the poem, those derived from Dante and Ovid as well as from Statius, and his broader area of inquiry also obscures the particular conjunction of these two scenes. As the scenes of Criseyde's reading and Cassandre's interpretation suggest, the relationship between women and the Statian epic is highly textual,4 and a broad interest in allusions to Thebes-or what Lee Patterson calls "Thebanness"-rather than the Thebaid, tends to obscure it. But it is also the strangeness of Chaucer's use ofthe Thebaid that has obscured its striking association with women in Troilus and Criseyde. Statius's epic seems at first an extraordinary text to give to female char­ acters, especially to the heroine of a love story, even one as ambiguous as Criseyde. Epic is hardly a genre associated with women in modern critical canons,5 and Statius's poem, with its vividly gory account of the 2 Boyd Ashby Wise, The Influence ofStatius upon Chaucer (New York: Phaeton Press, 1911; rpt. 1967), especially pp. 4-36. 3 See David Anderson, "Theban History in Chaucer's Troilus," SAC 4 (1982): 10933 , and Wetherbee, Chaucer and the Poets, esp. ch. 4, "Thebes and Troy: Statius and Dante's Statius." See alsoJohn Fyler's discussion in "Auctoritee and Allusion in Troilus and Criseyde," RPLit 7 (1984): 73-92. A. C. Spearing questions the assumptions that under­ write the interpretations ofFyler and Wetherbee in "Troilus and Criseyde: The Illusion ofAllusion," Exemplaria 2 (1990): 263-77. Paul Clogan discusses Criseyde's book and Cassandre's interpretation in relation to the Thebaid and the Roman de Thebes...

Remembering Troie : the Implications of Ymages in the Roman de Troie and the Prose Lancelot

The prose Lancelot 's salle aux ymages may be a rewriting of the Roman de Troie 's Chambre de Beautés . Through a shift in the representation of ymages , the former seeks to undermine the sense of historical continuity articulated in the latter.

Editorial politics in the Medieval Greek War of Troy

Editorial politics in the Medieval Greek War of Troy At a date in the fourteenth century, somewhere in the Greek-speaking Eastern Mediterranean, a massive translation was completed. The source text was the 30,316 eight-syllable lines of Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, written two centuries before as part of a movement to secularise the history of Western Europe andtogive its rulers a Virgilian aristocratic genealogy going back to Troy.1 The fourteendi-century translation was made into the mixed learned and popular Greek which was the lowest register then in use in writing.2 In the terms of Western Europe, this was a translation into the vernacular rather than into the equivalent of Latin—we may call it an early text of M o d e m Greek. The translation runs to 14,400 fifteen-syllable lines, making it the longest work in that genre of Greek literature. It is usually called the ri6Xep.og trie, Tpco&Scu;, the War ofTroy.3 The War of Troy was probably commissioned by a western ruler of Greek-speaking subjects, for there are persuasive hints that one of its purposes was to establish western connections to the Trojans, w h o were, marginally at least, older than the Greeks. This would ensure that Greek claims for special cultural and historical antiquity via Homer would not go uncontested. The Frankish principality of the Morea, set up by the Fourth Crusade, is a likely place for such a project.4 The poem also has interesting implications for medieval Greek society: though Homer was a major setbook of Byzantine education, his authority was insufficient, at least in a Greek outpost under western colonial rule,tokeep outtiiisrival and very 1 Published by L. Constans (ed.), Le Roman de Troie, 6 vols, Paris, 1904-12. For ideological implications see F. Ingledew, 'The Book of Troy and the Genealogical Construction of History: The Case of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae', in Speculum 69 (1994), 665-704. 2 R. Browning, Medieval and Modem Greek, 2nd edn, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 69-87. 3 An edition of the text by E. M . Jeffreys and M . Papathomopoulos has long been near completion. The writer of this article has been close to the process of edition, but this does not imply support from either of the editors for the arguments or conclusions expressed here. 4 E. M . Jeffreys, 'Place of Composition as a factor in the edition of early demotic texts', in N. Panayotakis (ed.), Origini della Letteratura Neogreca I, Venice, 1993, pp. 310-24. P A R E R G O N ns 13.2, January 1996—Text, Scribe, Artefact 38 M. J. Jeffreys different account. The War of Troy even mangles the names of Homeric heroes in returning them to Greek from a French source, itself derived via Latin from original Greek works of Dares and Diktys.5 Only the best-known heroes are recognised and restored to their authentic Greek forms. In this paper I will use the War of Troy to analyse the interface of a past manuscript world with modern scholarship and its print and electronic cultures. I shall concentrate on the impasse faced by those w h o wish to make the products of that past world available for m o d e m readers. There are extantfivemajor manuscripts and two substantial fragments of the War of Troy, all probably written somefiftyto one hundred and fifty years after the estimated date of its composition.6 It m a y be proved conclusively, by referencetomissing passages, that no manuscript is a direct or indirect copy of another. All the manuscripts tend to vary more from one to another than w e can accept with comfort under the rubric 'copy'. This substantial variation in copying results in part from the fact that the poem had been translated into the vernacular. It seems clear that in many cultures manuscripts using something like the regular spoken language of their scribes were less often copied with word-for-word accuracy than those adopting more learned linguistic levels. This has been shown, for example, by analysis of the flexibility of Anglo-Saxon and the comparative stability of Latin...

La description de Troie et ses avatars dans le Roman de Troie en prose du XIIIe siècle

The success of the Trojan legend in the Middle Ages is mainly seen in the huge posterity known by the Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure in its translations into prose in the 13th century. Some important transformations can be observed from versus to prose, like the evolution of a basic motif for the versifier, the description of Troie. Although the novels in prose are obviously influenced by Benoît, with regard to the structure and the representation of a strong and courteous space, there are deep differences due to the absence of rhymes and the drastic abbreviatio. They offer a more realistic description while suppressing, reworking, interpolating and specifying. The splendid legendary town, one of the keys for reading Benoît's novel, has becomed a « historical » town with a less imaginary meaning. The description which was both suggestion and representation becomes a mere representation. However, this evolution means some loss of descriptive matter, which raises questions about the place of the description in the 13th century's prose.

Shifts and Transpositions in Medieval Narrative: A Festschrift for Dr Elspeth Kennedy

Vers, prose et fiction (1150-1240), Emmanuele Baumgartner Renoart in Avalon - generic shift in the Bataille Loquifer, Sara Sturm-Maddox and Donald Maddox motherhood - the case of the epic family romance, Sarah Kay from lyric to play - thematic and social structure in Le Jou de Robin et Marion, Roger Pensom Tristan and his doubles as singers of Lais - love and music in the prose of Roman de Tristan, Maureen Boulton transformations of a theme - marriage and sanctity in the old French St Alexis poems, Janice M. Pinder outdoing Chaucer - Lydgate's Troy Book and Henryson's Testament of Cressied as competitive imitations of Troilus and Criseyde, Nicholas Watson transpositions of dreams to reality in Middle High German narratives, Albrecht Classen the story's voyage through the text - transformations of the narrative in Beowulf, Anne Savage how long is a Trojan war? - aspects of time in the Roman de Troie and its sources, Penny Eley transposing the enterprise of adventure - Malory's Take the Adventure and French tradition, Joy Wallace Lancelot in Wales, Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan translation as reception - La danse macabre, Jane Taylor.

Studies in Troilus: Chaucer’s Text, Meter, and Diction by Stephen A. Barney

REVIEWS conspicuously polarizes the classical and Christian elements that Spenser mixes together, thus emphasizing their mutual antagonism and putting it to creative use. {P. 185} In her "Conclusion" (pp. 211-15), Astell relates her complex thesis about "heroic poetry" in the Middle Ages to several earlier attempts by critics to explain the essential features of epic and romance. It would be churlish to fault a book that includes so much that is innovative and worthwhile for not having said everything. Nevertheless, a few omissions are puzzling. Because Astell is arguing for the continuity of "epic truth" in the later Middle Ages, one would have expected her to consider the influence ofHomer and Virgil not only as they were allegori­ cally refined into Boethian and Joban substitutes but also as they survived in works that treat the Homeric and Virgilian subject matter, albeit trans­ mogrified. Do Job and Boethius help account for works like Dictys's Ephemeridos be/Ii Troiani and Dares's De excidio Troiae historia {both ofwhich are mentioned briefly in passing on p. 73, without the further interpretive comment that seems called for); and what about Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie and Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae, nei­ ther of which is mentioned at all? A major study of epic and romance that Astell does not mention is Morton W. Bloomfield's "Episodic Motivation and Marvels in Epic and Romance" (in his Essays and Explorations: Studies in Ideas, Language, and Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 97-128). One would like to know how Astell would extend the complex thematic argument she has put forward in Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth to account for the very different structural features of epic and romance that Bloomfield identifies. Judging by the quality of the present book, Astell's answers to these questions would be of interest not only to all medievalists, including Chaucerians, but to anyone inter­ ested in literary theory or the history of ideas. LAWRENCE BESSERMAN Hebrew University STEPHEN A. BARNEY. Studies in Troilus: Chaucer's Text, Meter, andDiction. Medieval Texts and Studies, vol. 14. East Lansing, Mich.: Colleagues Press, 1993. Pp. viii, 167. $28.00. Stephen Barney is like many other Middle English textual editors: frus­ trated that not all (or even most) of their editorial labors may ever be 163 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER included as part of the apparatus of an edited text. Unlike these textual editors, however, Barney chose to do something about his frustration. Hav­ ing previously edited and annotated Troilus and Criseyde for The Riverside Chaucer, Barney in the present work presents a fulle_r exposition of his editorial methodologies in the Riverside. What is presented in the book becomes fascinating reading for any scholar who has had to wrestle with an array of variant readings for a text with multiple manuscript attesta­ tions and who thus had to "discriminate" often between scribal variance and supposed archetypal authority, or authorial intention and aesthetic preference. In the introduction Barney persuasively rationalizes the need for Studies by emphasizing the "foundational" role of textual, linguistic, and prosodic scholarship in understanding a Middle English literary document: such scholarship is "the technical retrieval of a poet's art [that} imitates the production of that art" (p. 1). Barney supplements this assertion with list­ ings of the sixteen important manuscript authorities for the poem (the most important of these manuscripts being, in descending order, the Mor­ gan Library , the Corpus Christi College, the British Library: Harley 2280, and St. John's College); the three early printed editions of Caxton, Thynne, and Wynkyn de Worde; and eight important modern editions (most im­ portantly the editions of Root, Robinson, Donaldson, and Windeatt). Also included are briefdefinitions ofsuch editorial terms as "archetype," "exclu­ sive common ancestor," and "convergent variation," altogether a succinct·' overview of the Gregian model of textual criticism for the beginning editor. Following the introduction are six chapters that present at least three broad arguments. The first argument-in chapter 1 ("Two New Editions of Troilus"), chapter 2 ("Discrimination"), and chapter 4 ("Glosses")--is a cautious yet pointed critique of Windeatt's edition. In chapter l, Bar­ ney particularly criticizes Windeatt...

Chaucer and the Tradition of the “Roman Antique.” by Barbara Nolan

REVIEWS Finally, Bland proposes that Chaucer's decision to write in English, not French, may be partly due to his having learned latin through the medium ofEnglish, and that an English explanation oflatin grammar may underlie the odd phrase conservatyfthe soun (House ofFame 2: 847): "The only place where Chaucer was likely to hear a phrase constructed like 'conservatyfthe soun' was in a grammar school classroom in which the master gave English sentences to exemplify the latin" (p. 225). As one would infer from the titles ofthe chapters, this collection is not a comprehensive inquiry into issues and questions in manuscript studies, nor does it embody the type of focused debate among participants that can sometimes break new theoretical ground. Instead, as is common with com­ memorative volumes, it reflects the specific topics on which the contribu­ tors chose to write. Not surprisingly, much that might be germane to "the use of manuscripts in literary studies" is omitted. For instance, there is little discussion of how the new information technologies will affect literary-codicological research, a topic addressed in projects such as Biblio­ graphic Accers to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts: A Survey of Com­ puterized Data Baser and Information Servicer, ed. Wesley M. Stevens (New York and London: Haworth, 1992; see James J. O'Donnell's review in Speculum 68 {1993]: 1118-19). But to point this out is only to acknowl­ edge that the present work reflects the eclectic nature ofmost projects ofits kind. That is perhaps as it should be, insofar as the legacy ofJudson Boyce Allen may be more appropriately reflected in these individual studies­ contributed by scholars who see themselves as working in his tradition­ than in a more comprehensive or innovative type ofwork designed to meet other goals. As a memorial offering, this is a fine tribute to a medievalist who loved manuscripts and who will long be missed. CAROLINE D. ECKHARDT Pennsylvania State Universiry BARBARA NOLAN. Chaucer and the Tradition ofthe "Roman Antique." Cam­ bridge Studies in Medieval Literature, vol. 15. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xv, 391. $69.95. This is a stimulating, erudite study of relationships among seven key ro­ mance texts of the later Middle Ages as part of what Barbara Nolan calls 231 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER the tradition of the roman antique. The seven texts under close scrutiny here, from three generations of vernacular writers, are Beno'it de Sainte­ Maure's Roman de Troie, the Roman de Thebes, the Roman d'Eneas, Boccac­ cio's Filostrato and Teseida, and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight's Tale. By "tradition of the roman antique" Nolan means a group of texts that manifest "a formally significant conjunction ...between a me­ dieval vernacular language and the language and matter of classical history, between modem authorial composition and ancient Latin models for writ­ ing" (p.7).The moral concerns and explorations of "hypothetical or possi­ ble rules for secular ethical conduct" (p.9) mark these texts as different from the chronicles and the chansons de geste. Other aspects ofthis tradition, which Nolan examines in chapters 2 and 3, include "systems of multiple perspective," "academically based moral questioning"---even "situational ethics"-and "medievalized Ovidian poetics of secular love. " The strength of Nolan's essay is her persuasive demonstration of the importance of the schools-specifically, of glosses on Ovid-to the roman antique. This is especially true of the French works, which were clearly influenced by scholia on the Ars amatoria, the Remedia amoris, and the Heroides. She brings forward the arguments on Joie amor ("Ovidian" or passionate love), bone amor (chaste love), and even married love ("Lavinian love"), and she demonstrates that debates about these kinds of love to a large degree structure the Roman de Thebes, the Roman de Troie, and the Roman d'Eneas. In the twelfth-century romans antiques, she finds: The dominant interests in school commentaries on Ovid's love poems--and in the classicizing romances influenced by them-are political, social, and moral, but they are not religious ....The most basic school commentaries on Ovid's love poems, together with the influential Eneas and Roman de Troie, seem to...

La beauté littéraire dans le Roman de Troie de Benoît de Sainte-Maure

Placed in the majority of the manuscripts in the middle of the Benoît de Sainte-Maure Roman de Troie, the episode of the Chamber of the Beauties develops a general aesthetic reflexion wich articulates beauty, love and writing. The Chamber circumscribes the space of an utopia defining a behavior in love ideal exempting morbid fascination with the image that the partner incarnes. The description of the automats produces a corrected image of the mankind and world which makes aesthetic experiment a subjective and moral experiment. The beauty whose Chamber returns the image reflects also a perfection of the novel being written. The aesthetics of Benoît is also a literary aesthetics providing to the novel incipient the éléments from a theory inséparable from the fiction.

The Myth of Trojan Descent and Perceptions of National Identity: The Case of Eneas and the Roman de Troie.

The Myth of Trojan Descent and Perceptions of National Identity: The Case of <i>Eneas</i> and the <i>Roman de Troie.</i>

Le Roman de Thèbes (The Story of Thebes) trans. by John Smartt Coley

I only wish to God that it were night, That night would last for ever and a day, And all these people here had gone away. REVIEWS (cf. MerTl762-64). Most often it is hard to see the point of the technique: A hard-up widow, getting on in age, Once on a time lived in a small cottage. (cf. NPT2821-22). It does not seem possible that one is intended to draw out the second syllable of cottage here to bring out the rhyme; but if not, what is achieved by eye rhyme on an unstressed syllable? I do not want to denigrate this translation, or its author. What has been done has been done conscientiously and worthily: the translations are careful and maintain a high level of accuracy, and there are times, especially in the comic tales, when one can take genuine pleasure in the translator's skill. My argument is simply that translation of Chaucer is not only unnecessary but undesirable, since it does, in the end, a disservice to Chaucer's poetry. DEREK PEARSALL University of York JOHN SMARTT COLEY, trans. Le Roman de Thebes (The Story ofThebes). Garland Library of Medieval Literature, vol. 44, Series B. New York and London: Garland, 1986. Pp. xliv, 240. $40.00. Along with the Roman de Troie and the Roman d'Eneas, the twelfth­ century French verse narrative known as the Roman de Thebes helped to convey the legends of classical antiquity to the later Middle Ages. Thebes begins with a brief retelling of the story of Oedipus and then focuses upon the dispute between the fated king's sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, who become embattled over the question of which of them should rule Thebes. As onewouldexpect, the poem reflects not only the ancient themeof a feud between brothers, but also various medieval preoccupations, including the nature of feudal loyalty and the conduct of love affairs. Chaucer may well have used Thebes (see, e.g., Trot/us and Criseyde, II.100) and the poem is important in its own right. Until the book under consideration here, no 203 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER modern English translation of the whole of Thebes seems to have been published. It must be said that Coley's decision to base his translation on the 1890 edition ofLeopold Constans (Le Roman de Thebes, Paris: SATF, 2 vols.) is disquieting. Constans, working according to the editorial conventions of his time, produced a reconstructed text that he regarded as capturing the lost "original" form ofthe poem. As Coley himselfdescribes it, Constans accomplished this goal "by selecting and bringing together (sometimes in different order) various passages and episodes from the various manuscripts and by adding, deleting, correcting, and changing lines on the basis ofhis conception of the twelfth-century original" (p. xviii). Constans' edition, therefore, is an editorial creation.Modern editors, workingnearly a century later and following the conventions of our own time, have shown an increasing preference for establishing a text according to one specific manuscript, achieving by this method an undeniable authority: such an edition is authenticated by its manuscriptforebear, despite whatever flaws that forebear might contain. (Even its mistakes are genuine, i.e., medieval, ones.) The Variorum Chaucer project, for instance, exemplifies this principle by choosing the Hengwrt manuscript as its basis for The Canter­ bury Tales, rather than trying to editorially reconstruct an "original" Chaucer text. Given this evolution of editorial expectations, one regrets Coley's re­ liance upon Constans-especially in view ofthe fact that a good modern edition of the oldest complete Thebes manuscript, MS C, was known to Coley (Le Roman de Thebes, ed. Guy Raynaud de Lage, Paris: CFMA, 1966-1967, 2 vols.).A partial edition ofthis manuscript was also known to him (A CriticalEdition ofthe "Roman de Thebes, "Lines 1-5394, ed. Dana PhelpsRipley, AnnArbor: University Microfilms, 1960).An explanation of Coley'schoice ofConstans may perhaps lie in the fact that, as he explains, the first half of his translation had been submitted as part of his Ph.D. requirements in 1965 (p. xlii). This would have taken place just before the edition by Raynaud de Lage appeared. It is understandable that in 1965 Coley was...

The Narrative Format of Benoit's Roman de Troie

The Narrative Format of Benoit's Roman de Troie

Argus and Argyve: Etymology and Characterization in Chaucer's Troilus

WHEN Criseyde first contemplates the prospect of separation from Troilus, she curses both her father, Calchas, for arranging her impending removal to the Greek camp, and the day on which her mother, Argyve, gave birth to her (IV, 761-763). Neither Boccaccio's Filostrato nor Benoit's Roman de Troie, Chaucer's major sources for his Troilus and Criseyde, includes the heroine's curse of her birth day, and neither makes mention of her mother. Successive editors of Troilus, Professors Skeat, Root, and Robinson, suggest that Chaucer's Argyve is a medievalized form of Argia, the name of Polynices' wife.' This assumed correspondence is no doubt correct, for in Cassandra's later summary of the events of Statius's Thebaid, Argyve appears as the name of Polynices' lamenting wife (V, 1509), while its equivalent in the Latin argument accompanying Cassandra's summary is Argia.2 But none Qf these editors finds any clear reason for Chaucer's selection of this particular name for Criseyde's mother, and one must wonder why he risked possible confusion on his audience's part between Calchas's wife, Argyve, and Polynices' wife, Argyve. I will suggest below that Chaucer invented a literary mother for his heroine and re-used the name Argyve for her because he saw in the medieval etymology of this personal name the opportunity to create in one word a character with some personality or meaning of her own, to create a most appropriate mate for the shrewd Calchas, and to create a highly ironic mother for the improvident Criseyde. Furthermore, in this and other uses of etymology in his Troilus, Chaucer shows awareness of and puts to poetic use contemporary linguistic theories of the origin of words and the nature of language itself.3 The pseudo-Fulgentian Super Thebaidem, a brief moral allegory of the

Structural Unity in Benoit's Roman de Troie

Structural Unity in Benoit's Roman de Troie