Benoît de Sainte-Maure

Benoît de Sainte-Maure (died 1173) was a 12th-century French poet, most probably from Sainte-Maure de Touraine near Tours, France. The Plantagenets' administrative center was located in Chinon, west of Tours.[1]

Le Roman de Troie

Main article: Roman de Troie

His 40,000 line poem Le Roman de Troie ("The Romance of Troy"), written between 1155 and 1160,[2] was a medieval retelling on the epic theme of the Trojan War which inspired a body of literature in the genre called the roman antique, loosely assembled by the poet Jean Bodel as the Matter of Rome. The Trojan subject itself, for which de Sainte-Maure provided an impetus, is referred to as the Matter of Troy.

Chronique des ducs de Normandie

Another major work, by a Benoît, probably identical to Benoît de Sainte-Maure, is a lengthy[3] verse Chronique des ducs de Normandie. Its manuscript at Tours, dating to 1180–1200, is probably the oldest surviving text in Old French transcribed on the Continent.[4] The standard edition is by Carin Fahlin (Uppsala), 3 vols. 1951–195x.

Notes

  1. Benoît's diction, an admixture of western and southwestern traits, does not make a distinction between these two places possible.
  2. Roberto Antonelli "The Birth of Criseyde - An Exemplary Triangle: 'Classical' Troilus and the Question of Love at the Anglo-Norman Court" in Boitani, P. (ed) The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press) 1989 pp.21-48.
  3. Length 44,544 lines.
  4. Alfred Foulet, reviewing Fahlin in Modern Language Notes 70.4 (April 1955), p 313.

References