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.
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
[See also: ALEXANDER ROMANCES; BENOÎT DE SAINTE-MAURE; OVIDIAN
TALES; ROMANCE]
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.]
The Encyclopedia 93