Introduction

By placing twelfth-century Latin epic in the context of the Virgilian tradition, this study seeks to promote wider interdisciplinary knowledge of these poems. At the same time, it attempts to bridge a gap in scholarship between late antique epic and early modern epic. The Introduction presents what information is known about the lives of Joseph of Exeter, Walter of Châtillon, Alan of Lille, and John of Hauville, as well as the chronology of the composition of their poems, the Ylias, Alexandreis, Anticlaudianus, and Architrenius, respectively. The poets all lived in close geographical proximity—all were active in northern France for all or much of their careers. There was also a narrow window of time in which all four poems were composed—roughly a decade, centered around the 1180s. These facts suggest the possibility of direct competition and mutual influence.

The Medieval Classic

This book considers how ancient and medieval commentaries on the Aeneid by Servius, Fulgentius, Bernard Silvestris, and others can give us new insights into four twelfth-century Latin epics—the Ylias by Joseph of Exeter, the Alexandreis by Walter of Châtillon, the Anticlaudianus by Alan of Lille, and the Architrenius by John of Hauville. Virgil’s influence on twelfth-century Latin epic is generally thought to be limited to verbal echoes and occasional narrative episodes, but evidence is presented that more global influences have been overlooked because ancient and medieval interpretations of the Aeneid, as preserved by the commentaries, were often radically different from modern readings of the Aeneid. By explaining how to interpret the Aeneid, these commentaries directly influenced the way in which twelfth-century Latin epic imitated the Aeneid. At the same time, these Aeneid commentaries allow us a greater awareness of the generic expectations held by the original readers of twelfth-century Latin epic. Thus, this book provides a new way to look at the development of allegory and contributes to our understanding of ancient and medieval perceptions of the Aeneid while exploring the importance of commentaries in shaping poetic composition, imitation, and reading.

Dares Survives

Chapter 6 moves both forward in time and outward in scope. It traces Dares’ afterlife well into the seventeenth century, and in doing so it moves beyond treatments of the text in isolation. Instead, it examines the afterlives of Dares’ “fellow travelers”—i.e., texts that circulated with him either in manuscripts, printed editions, or even the minds of critics—and reconstructs how together they wove webs of error and confusion that kept Dares alive for longer than we might think possible. These textual companions included such diverse sources as Joseph of Exeter, Dictys, (pseudo)-Pindar, and even Homer himself. As this chapter suggests, the legacy of medieval manuscript culture—and its many unintended consequences—was felt long into the early modern period. The second half of the chapter discusses the role that Dares, along with Dictys, played in debates over the historicity of the distant Trojan past, in an age marked by newfound historical skepticism.

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.

The 12th-Century Renaissance in Anglo-Norman England: William of Malmesbury and Joseph of Exeter

How did the ‘12th-century Renaissance’ impact on Anglo-Norman authors? This chapter explores the responses of two highly accomplished writers, William of Malmesbury and Joseph of Exeter, to the literary tradition in which they worked (such as epic and satire): by alluding to and skilfully modifying Classical (particularly post-Augustan) and late-Antique models, they masterfully played on their readers' recognition and expectations of familiar conventions of historiography, hagiography, and poetics so as to innovate and entertain, and in this way created something distinctive and fresh for their contemporary audience.