de Vogüé, Adalbert. “Le sens d’antifana et la longueur de l’office dans la Regula Magistri.” Revue
bénédictine 71(1961):119–24.
Nowacki, Edward. “The Gregorian Antiphons and the Comparative Method.” Journal of
Musicology 4(1985–86):243–75.
ANTIQUITY, ROMANCES OF
. 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
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 92