Benoît de Sainte-Maure
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Benoît de Sainte-Maure (French pronunciation: [bənwadəsɛ̃tmoʁ] ; 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
[edit ]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.[citation needed ]
Chronique des ducs de Normandie
[edit ]Another major work, by a Benoît, probably 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 first published edition was by Francisque Michel, 3 volumes, 1868–1844, based on the British Library manuscript. The standard edition[citation needed ] is by Carin Fahlin (Uppsala), 3 volumes, 1951–1967, and is based on the Tours manuscript with variants from the British one.
'Beneeit' is mentioned at the end of Wace's Roman de Rou , which is also on the subject of the Dukes of Normandy:
Die en auant que dire en deit:
I'ai dit por Maistre Beneeit
Qui cest[e] oure a dire a emprise,
Com li reis l'a desour li mise.[5]
Notes
[edit ]- ^ Benoît's diction, an admixture of western and southwestern traits, does not make a distinction between these two places possible.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Length 44,544 lines, see Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge.
- ^ Alfred Foulet, reviewing Fahlin in Modern Language Notes 70.4 (April 1955), p 313.
- ^ Wace, Maistre Wace's Roman de Rou et des ducs de Normandie, edited by Hugo Andresen, published 1877. Available online via Internet Archive (page 481).
References
[edit ]- Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman de Troie, edited by Léopold Constans, 6 vols., Société des Anciens Textes Français, Paris: Firmin Didot, 1904–1912.
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Benoît de Sainte-More" . Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Cristian Bratu, « Je, auteur de ce livre »: L’affirmation de soi chez les historiens, de l’Antiquité à la fin du Moyen Âge. Later Medieval Europe Series (vol. 20). Leiden: Brill, 2019 (ISBN 978-90-04-39807-8).
- Cristian Bratu, "Translatio, autorité et affirmation de soi chez Gaimar, Wace et Benoît de Sainte-Maure." The Medieval Chronicle 8 (2013): 135–164.
- C. Durand, Illustrations médiévales de la légende de Troie. Catalogue commenté des manuscrits fr. illustrés du Roman de Troie et de ses dérivés, Brepols Publishers, 2010, ISBN 978-2-503-52626-3
External links
[edit ]- (in French) Benoît de Sainte-Maure on Archives de Littérature du Moyen Âge, Laurent Brun et al., last updated January 2019.
- Chronique des ducs de Normandie, Francisque Michel (editor), available online via Internet Archive (tome I, tome II, tome III).