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On the Latin Sources of Thèbes and Énéas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

F. M. Warren
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Extract

The French poems Troie, Thèbes, and Énéas, contemporaneous with one another in the sixth and seventh decades of the twelfth century, have many characteristics in common. They each repeat in a modernized form, and with incidents and details suited to their own age, the story of one of the great epics of classical antiquity, the Iliad, the Thebaid, and the Aeneid. They also combine with this traditional outline of adventure and conquest the narrative of romantic love and courtship, as conceived by Western Europe in the Middle Ages. And finally they each and all show an effort to attain some degree of excellence in style and composition. Thus they form a class by themselves, animated, as they are, by the same spirit and having the same purpose in view, and are the first exponents in the modern tongues of the ideals of chivalry. The sources of these poems, therefore, are an object of unusual interest to the student of mediaeval literature.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , 1901 , pp. 375 - 387
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1901

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References

Note 1 in page 375 It is evident that there is no resemblance between these poems and the various versions of the story of Alexander the Great in the vernacular. The octosyllabic Alexandre is earlier than any of them and possibly also the decasyllabic ascribed to a certain Simon. But these versions do not seem to have affected our romances, unless the name of Naptanebus, who fights with Turnus in the Énéas (9496–9544), was suggested by the decasyllabic Alexandre. See Paul Meyer, Alexandre le Grand, etc., Paris, 1886, vol. i, page 28, line 61.

Note 2 in page 375 H. Dunger, Die Sage vom trojanischen Kriege, etc., Dresden, 1869.

Note 3 in page 375 W. Greif, Die mittelalterlichen Bearbeitungen der Trojanersage, etc., Marburg, 1886. No. 61 of Stengel's Ausgaben und Abhandlungen.

Note 4 in page 375 G. Körting, Dictys und Dares, Halle, 1874.

Note 5 in page 375 R. Jäckel, Dares Phrygius und Benoît de Sainte-More, Breslau, 1875.

Note 1 in page 376 L. Constans in Petit de Julleville's Histoire de la Langue el de la Littérature française, i, 204–214.

Note 2 in page 376 A. Joly, Benoît de Sainte-More et le Roman de Troie, etc., Paris, 1870–1871.

Note 1 in page 377 Le Roman de Thèbes publié par L. Constans, Paris, 1890. Société des anciens textes français. 2 vols.

Note 2 in page 377 Cf. Constans, op. cit., ii, 106:

Il le fist tout selonc la letre

Dont lai ne sevent entremetre;

Et por chou fu li romans fais

Que nel savoit hon ki fust lais. 27–30.

Note 3 in page 377 Op. cit., ii, cxix-cxxii.

Note 4 in page 377 Romania, xxi, 108.

Note 5 in page 377 See note.

Note 1 in page 378 Op. cit., ii, cxx-cxxii.

Note 1 in page 379 See also Constans, op. cit. ii, cxxi-cxxii.

Note 1 in page 380 Op. cit., ii, 341–342.

Note 2 in page 380 There is no corresponding passage in the Thebaid for either of these citations.

Note 1 in page 381 So does Honoré d'Autun in his De Imagine Mundi (i, c. 54), edited by Migne.

Note 2 in page 381 Is Capaneus's ancestry, “de l'orine as Geanz” (Roman, 2008) derived from the notion that, like them, he was undone by Jove's thunderbolts?

Note 3 in page 381 Poetae Latini Minores. Recensuit et emendavit Aemilius Baehrens. Vol. iii: Italici Ilias Latina, Leipzig, 1881.

Note 1 in page 382 See also Hyginus's Astronomica, B. Bunte's edition, Leipzig, 1875. Pages 27–29.

Note 2 in page 382 Énéas. Texte critique publié par Jacques Salverda de Grave. Halle, 1891.

Note 3 in page 382 The editor discusses this question in his Introduction (xxxi-xxxii) and decides in the negative.

Note 4 in page 382 Compare the Aeneid, vii, 195 ff., with Énéas, 3175 ff.

Note 1 in page 383 Pp. xxxvii-lxii. See also Constans in Petit de Julleville: Hist. de la Langue et de la Lit. fr., i, 223.

Note 2 in page 383 The arrow incident of this episode, much better told in the heroic epic of Girbert de Metz (Zeit. für neufr. Sp. und Lit., xix (Abh.) 296–304), furnishes an argument against the inventiveness of the translator. Was this episode first narrated in a Latin prose Aeneid and borrowed from it by the author of Girbert?

Note 1 in page 384 Op. cit., lxiii-lxix.

Note 2 in page 384 Romania, xxi, 285–286.

Note 3 in page 384 Apollonii Argonautica, etc. R. Merkel and H. Keil. Leipzig, 1854. Page 314, lines 19, 20.

Note 1 in page 385 The Pseudo-Turpin which narrates the exploits of the peers of Charlemagne as though they were actual deeds, is another indication of the romancing tendency of the times. It belongs to the first years of the twelfth century.

Note 1 in page 386 In the case of Thèbes see the remarks of the translator on page 377, note 2.

Note 1 in page 387 A study of the style of Thèbes would support the opinion that its direct model was not the Thebaid. Neither the figures of speech nor the locutions employed by Statius reappear in the French poem. Its author looks to nature for his similes and has a fondness for proverbs. His verse rarely allows overflow, so frequent in the Latin epic.