Troianalexandrina

In this brief article, I aim to show how the depiction of women in the Crónica troiana (the Galician version of Benoît de Sainte Maure’s Roman de Troie) are built according to the topos of the descriptio pulchritudinis puellae. Within this focus, then, the principal characteristics of this topos as defined by medieval grammarians (i.e., Matthieu de Vendôme and Geoffroi de Vinsauf) are sketched; this is followed by a study of the image of women in the Crónica troiana, in particular that of Polixena. A further support for the study of this image and its assimilation to rhetorical principles is found in a diachronic and comparative analysis of the Priam’s youngest daughter in the epitome of Dares Phrygius, in the Roman de Troie and in the Crónica troiana.

Perceforest introduces an original union between Classical and the Arthurian subject-matter, and makes Alexander the Great into Arthur’s ancestor. This article presents Alexander’s virtues and values, paying attention to the poet’s original use of the topos of translatio, which converts Alexander into a character more Arthurian than Macedonian.

The BNE Ms. Vit. 15.10 is a reknown codex because it preserves the text of the Libro de Alexandre. Nevertheless, the study of its materiality has been almost neglected, and many questions related to its genesis and the context it belongs to remain open. This paper offers a description of its outer characters and an “archeological” approach to it.

This article proposes to look at the twelfth-century ‘poetics of appropriation’ of classical literature and more specifically on portrayal of literary production as a kind of dialogue with the dead. Although it was not uncommon to reuse ancient models and integrate them into new texts before the twelfth century, this paper argues that what was different in this period was the awareness with which the process of using earlier texts was carried out involving a conscious interaction with a previous model. This article suggests that this process should be referred to as ‘the poetics of appropriation’. What is more, it is argued that in Byzantium appropriation of previous literary models very often meant not only establishing a specific relationship with a text but also entering in ‘a dialogue’ with the work and/or its dead author. In the twelfth century the dead ancient authors were not only fully rehabilitated but, in fact, became almost unquestionably useful.

The aim of this paper is to study some of the images and topoi offered by the first of the poems of the Ripoll Song Book, which can be dated in the twelfth century. This programmatical poem seems to proclaim the conversion to a pagan view of life and love that is not at odds with the monastical one, since this can be seen as a modus vivendi parallel to a society lived in common which was not based upon mercantile production and sexual reproduction. The identification of the image of an idol on its base, as pagan idols are usually represented in medieval illuminated manuscripts, contributes to this reading and helps in understanding other images and quotations of the poem.

Paris: BnF, ms. esp. 533 has heretofore passed unnoticed: it contains, however, a new witness to Juan Rodríguez del Padrón’s Bursario, a fifteenth-century translation from a medieval version of Ovid’s Heroides, which forms part of the Versus bursarii. I discuss the status quaestionis, provide some notes towards a possible dating, and offer a resolution of the status of the allegorical gloss of Pero Guillén’s copla, which is found in the only full witness known so far. Finally we put forward some details which aid in the evaluation of the value of this new witness within the manuscript tradition of the work.

I analyse the continuous reworking of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus in the context of the city of Plasencia, from medieval times until the nineteenth century. In particular, I reflect on the commentary to the Æneid made by fray Juan Luis de la Cerda (1560-1643) and the subsequent assimilation of this invented story by Rodrigo Alemán, sculptor of the Choir stalls of the cathedral. Finally, I study new documents in which it is possible to see the reinterpretation of this myth from classical antiquity within the international scientific press of modern Europe.