Roman de Troie
Also known as: Le Roman de Troie, Romance of Troy, Roman de Troie de Benoît
A vast Old French verse romance recounting the Trojan War and its aftermath from late antique sources, blending chivalric ethos and courtly love with heroic warfare, and introducing the influential love story of Troilus and Briseida.
Description
Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie retells the Trojan cycle for a twelfth-century audience, transforming classical materials into a chivalric romance. Drawing chiefly on Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, Benoît reshapes heroes and stratagems into courtly narratives, emphasizing counsel, honor, and the politics of siege. The poem is notable for its extended treatment of Troilus and Briseida, whose parted vows and shifting loyalties became a cornerstone of later European literature. Across some thirty thousand octosyllabic lines, the work surveys embassies, duels, treacheries, and divine portents through a medieval lens, culminating in the ruse of the Horse and the city’s fall. As one of the romans antiques, it mediated Greco-Roman myth to the Latin West, influencing subsequent vernacular and Latin histories of Troy, as well as Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s treatments of the lovers.
Historiography
Surviving in numerous manuscripts, often illuminated, the Roman de Troie circulated widely in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as part of the romans antiques alongside the Roman d’Eneas and the Roman de Thebes. Benoît’s principal sources were the Latin pseudo-chronicles attributed to Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, which provided a ‘historical’ frame distinct from Homer. The poem’s courtly elaborations, especially the Troilus–Briseida narrative, seeded later redactions, including Guido delle Colonne’s Latin Historia Destructionis Troiae and vernacular romances. Modern scholarship examines its adaptation strategies, manuscript variance, and reception across the Angevin domains.
Date Notes
Composed in Old French octosyllabic couplets, often dated c.1155–1165 within an Angevin court milieu, adapting late antique prose accounts of the Trojan War.
Archetypes
Symbols
Major Characters
- Paris
- Helen
- Hector
- Achilles
- Aeneas
- Priam
- Troilus
- Briseida
- Ulysses
Myths
- Troilus and Briseida
- Adventures of Paris and Helen
- The Siege and Destruction of Troy
- Aeneas’s Flight from Troy
Facts
- Composed in Old French octosyllabic rhymed couplets.
- Adapts late antique Latin narratives attributed to Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis.
- Part of the romans antiques alongside the Roman d’Eneas and the Roman de Thebes.
- Approximate length is about thirty thousand lines.
- Among the earliest full vernacular retellings of the Trojan War in Western Europe.
- The Troilus–Briseida love story here shaped later works by Chaucer and Shakespeare.
- Circulated widely in illuminated manuscripts across the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
- Influenced Guido delle Colonne’s Latin Historia Destructionis Troiae.
- Frames classical heroes within chivalric and courtly love ideals.
- Often associated with Angevin courtly audiences in the mid-twelfth century.