Troianalexandrina

In the sixth century, the Byzantine chronicler John Malalas composed a history of the world from the Biblical story of creation to the author’s own day. The largest narrative unit within this Chronicle was a retelling of the Trojan War. For the most part, Malalas narrated his account within the generic constraints of traditional Byzantine historiography. He also, however, adopted styles from other more literary genres: the allegory and the novel. He thus introduced into the Byzantine tradition of the Trojan War new modes of narration which would be more fully developed by subsequent authors. With Malalas as his source, the twelfth-century grammarian John Tzetzes, for instance, wrote his Allegories of the Iliad, which rendered the story entirely as allegory, while Tzetzes’ contemporary Constantine Manasses and the later anonymous author of The Byzantine Iliad narrated the Trojan War as a novel or medieval romance. Comparing the later works to their sources and examining the contexts in which they were produced demonstrates how the mutability of genre and aesthetics made the Trojan War a subject that could be continuously reshaped to suit the ideology of the times.

The interpretation of the verse 348 of the so-called Vorau Alexander (according to the most recent edition by E. Lienert) made arise a remarkable and lively discussion among scholars. However, until the 40s of the twentieth century the debate focussed not only on verse 348 but also on its immediate context and the corresponding passages in the Strasburg Alexander (traditionally dated before 1187) and the Basel Alexander (end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century), that is, the two other versions deriving from Lambrecht’s lost original. The main issue in this debate was whether Lambrecht’s original included the mention of a tribute or not, a topic that was deemed instrumental in many interpretations of the three sister versions. Therefore, this article attempts a revision of these three different readings of the passage by taking into account the divergent ways in which the three texts exploited this narrative motive. Eventually, the rewriting of the passage by the last redactor of the Strasburg version might provide an argument in favour of a later dating of this work.

This comparative study examines three Virgilian descriptions re-invented by the anonymous medieval romancer of the Roman d'Énéas. They include 1) an allegory («Fama» -Aeneid IV); 2) a dramatic scenario of a siege from Aeneid IX; and 3) the final dramatic struggle between Eneas and his nemesis, Turnus (Book XII). The romance, an amplified version of Virgil’s masterpiece, is a careful re-imagining of the classic. The author’s voice is unique, one that creates a free and original imitation. Through amplification, chronological reorganization, or a reduced role for divine intervention, the result is a humanist-inspired exposition, at once personal and subjective, which draws on mid-twelfth century historical realities.