“¿Mollis o fortis femina?”: la ambigüedad del personaje de Briseida en la Historia Troyana Polimétrica

El presente trabajo examinará la representación del personaje de Briseida en la Historia troyana polimétrica (HTP), tomando en consideración las diferencias con su fuente directa, el Roman de Troie, y las interpretaciones que podrían haber suscitado en sus contextos de circulación, la corte angevina del siglo XII y la castellana del XIV, respectivamente. Los temas principales de las obras son las armas y el amor, los cuales se ven sintetizados en el personaje de Briseida, la cautiva enamorada de Troylo, pero que luego lo olvida en favor del griego Diomedes. Aunque la trama amorosa tiene un importante desarrollo, en consonancia con los códigos del amor cortés, la volubilidad de Briseida es severamente reprochada por el narrador en un pasaje con una clara influencia del discurso misógino medieval. Allí se retoma el tópico de la mollis femina, la mujer de voluntad débil y cambiante, en contraste con la fortis femina, fuerte y constante. Esta última aparece identificada con la referencia a “una rica dama de rico rey”, que, según el texto y el contexto de recepción, puede interpretarse tanto como una dedicatoria a una dama de la corte, como a la Virgen María, modelo de virtud femenina.

Dares Translated

Chapter 3 turns to Dares’ place in complex medieval debates over the relative merits of history and fiction. Focusing on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it begins by discussing readings of the Destruction of Troy as moral exemplum and then examines how Dares sheds new light on an oft-discussed topic in the medieval reception of antiquity: i.e., allegory. From allegory and exemplarity it moves to poetry, exploring how sources including the Old French Roman de Troie of Benoît de Sainte-Maure, the Iliad of Joseph of Exeter, and the Troilus of Albert von Stade appropriated the supposed truth of the first pagan historian and then translated it into verse. In particular, it reconstructs how medieval poets who claimed to follow Dares engaged in both imitation of—and polemic against—ancient poets like Virgil. This chapter closes with considerations of Dares’ role in later medieval literature, including his use by figures like Guido delle Colonne, Petrarch, and Chaucer.

Descripción de los usos fraseológicos en la 'Crónica troiana' gallega (c. 1373) a la luz de los testimonios peninsulares de materia troyana

La presente investigación tiene como finalidad el estudio de los tipos fraseológicos documentados en el testimonio gallego de la materia troyana emanada del Roman de Troie de Benoît de Saint–Maure: la Crónica troiana (c. 1373). A su vez, los resultados se pondrán en contraste con el fragmento del Libro de Alexandre, la Historia troyana polimétrica (c. 1270) y la traducción ordenada por Alfonso XI (c. 1350). Todo ello permitirá describir con mayor profundidad el estadio variacional de las unidades fraseológicas medievales del occidente peninsular propias de una de las ramas procedentes de las traducciones de la materia de Troya.

Chaucer and the Textualities of Troy

This chapter traces the transmission of the matter of Troy from its entrance into the textual traditions of the Latin West until Chaucer’s composition of Troilus and Criseyde. This tradition includes late antique Latin prose texts attributed to Dares and Dictys, the twelfth-century Roman de Troie composed by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Boccaccio’s Filostrato, Guido delle Colonne, as well as the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à Cèsar. The narrator of Chaucer’s Troilus exhibits the poet’s self-conscious awareness of this complex textual network. The subject-position of Criseyde as a woman living within a city under siege is the product of this textual tradition. The second book of Chaucer’s House of Fame stages the poetic authority for the textual traditions on Troy.

Local French outside France

This chapter juxtaposes two case studies of texts in French with an exclusively local dissemination outside France: Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis (c. 1137) and the second mise en prose of the Roman de Troie (c. 1270). In these instances, French is used as a cosmopolitan language with a multilingual readership, but the particular form and the aesthetic developed have a local flavour. These texts are not in a two-way dialogue with literary culture in France but show the existence of autonomous Francophone literary cultures in other places. In the case of Gaimar, ‘French literary culture’ had barely emerged in France. In the case of the prose Roman de Troie, the manuscripts are our focus, for the local visual style of the manuscripts is as striking as the text’s formal and linguistic makeover.

The Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte- Maure: A Translation. Translated by Glyn S. Burgess, Douglas Kelly. Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2017. Gallica, 41. 486 pp.

In his Roman de Brut (1155), the Norman Robert Wace of Caen recounts the founding of Britain by Brutus of Troy to the end of legendary British history, while adapting freely the History of the Kings of Britain (1136) by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Wace’s Brut inaugurated a new genre, at least in part, commonly known as the “romances of antiquity” (romans d'antiquité). The Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, dating to around 1165, is, along with the Roman de Thèbes and the Roman d’Énéas, one of the three such romances dealing with themes from antiquity. These creations initiated the subjects, plots and structures of the genre, which subsequently flowered under authors such as Chrétien de Troyes. As an account of the Trojan War, Benoît’s version of necessity deals with war and its causes, how it was fought and what its ultimate consequences were for the combatants. How to explain its success? The author chose the standard and successful poetic form of the era—octosyllabic rhyming couplets; he was fond of extended descriptions; he could easily recount the intensity of personal struggles; and, above all he was fascinated by the trials and tribulations of love, a passion that affects several prominent warriors (among them Paris and his love for Helen, and Troilus and his affection for Briseida). All these elements combined to contour this romance in which events from the High Middle Ages were presented as a likeness of the poet’s own feudal and courtly spheres. This long-awaited new translation, the first into English, is accompanied by an extensive introduction and six-page outline of the work; two appendices (on common words, and a list of known Troie manuscripts); nearly twenty pages of bibliography; plus exhaustive indices of personal and geographical names and notes. As the two senior scholars assert (p. 3), By translating Benoît’s entire poem we seek to contribute to a greater appreciation of its composition and subject-matter, and thus to make available to a modern audience what medieval readers and audiences knew and appreciated.