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.

Die Alexandreis als typologisches Epos

The paper deals with the Alexandreis, a successful 12th-century Alexander-epic by French poet and scholar Walter of Châtillon. It argues that the essential ambiguity of the text manifests itself as an analogy to biblical and exegetical typology. To reflect both the production and the reception of the typological epic, Walter modifies the ancient concept of poetry as an enduring monument. This is demonstrated by analysing three cases of authorial self-reflection: the prose prologue, Alexanders visit in Troy, and the Greek-Jewish sculptor-painter Apelles.

"...DRAWS US UPWARD". TOPOS IN THE FINAL LINES OF GOETHE’S "FAUST"

In the final lines of “Faust” the attention of researchers was primarily attracted by the image of the Eternal Feminine (Das Ewig-Weibliche) that has given rise to a lot of interpretations. However, from the point of view of “Toposforschung” as a philological method developed by Ernst Robert Curtius, the very last line (“Draws us upward” – “Zieht uns hinan”) is no less important: it places the image of the Eternal Feminine in the historical sequence of variations of a topos which expresses the idea of a certain spiritual power that draws man upward. Various concepts can act as such a power: hope (John Chrysostom), wisdom (Hugo of Saint-Victor), right reasoning (anonymous medieval poem), eternity (Walter of Châtillon), anagogical sense in the system of polysemous interpretation of the Bible (Absalon of Springiersbach), Virgin Mary (Hildegard of Bingen), Jesus Christ (Anselm of Canterbury, Georgette de Montenay), poetry (Giovanni Boccaccio). Goethe updates the topos inserting in its scheme a new image of the Eternal Feminine. While the nominative part of the topos (designation of the force acting on man) was continually changing, the predicative part (designation of the action itself) remained unchanged: in all the analyzed examples, as in Goethe’s Faust, there is the verb “to draw” (Latin “trahere”, French “tirer”, German “ziehen”) which shows that the spiritual principle has material power.

Autorschaft durch Autorisierung

Medieval authorship is characterized by parameters fundamentally different from early modern or modern parameters. On the basis of the popular matter of Alexander, this article investigates into the different ideas that individual authors connected with their writing activity, into how they thought about themselves and what image they created of themselves, and into what traditions they positioned themselves in. This paper considers the Latin text of Archipresbyter Leo of Naples and that of Walter of Châtillon, as well as Lamprecht’s and Rudolf von Ems’s Middle High German Alexander verses.