Series:

Exeter Studies in Medieval Europe

2 total works

Cover of Twenty-Four Lays from the French Middle Ages
This prose translation of twenty-four lays from the French Middle Ages brings to the general reader as well as to scholars a complement to the twelve well-known lays by Marie de France, the possible creator of the genre. These lays are mostly anonymous, and the majority, but by no means all of them, are, like Marie's lays, centred on a love interest of some kind in a variety of settings. But, unlike Marie's lays, their treatment varies from the courtly and sophisticated to the comic or the tragic, thereby illustrating the range of poems covered by the term lai in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France. A significant number of these lays, based in the courtly world, contain supernatural elements or magic objects that are fundamental to the story as it is related, and sometimes the heroes leave the real world to dwell forever in an otherworldly domain. Other lays have a more mundane feel to them and seem closer to the fabliau in tone. In one instance, the lay of Haveloc, the tale owes more to legendary history than to pure fantasy. Overall, this collection stakes a claim to make an important contribution to the Medieval French lay within the wider European tradition of the short story and the literature of love.

Cover of The Roman de Thebes and The Roman d'Eneas

The two romances translated in this volume, the Roman de Thebes and the Roman d'Eneas, form, along with the Roman de Troie by Benoit de Sainte-Maure, a group of texts that are of considerable importance within French and European literature and culture. Composed between c. 1150 and c. 1165, these romances create a bridge between classical tales (the Thebes is based on the Thebaid of Statius, the Eneas on the Aeneid of Virgil) and the burgeoning vernacular romances, represented especially by Chretien de Troyes. As a group, these three works are frequently known as the romances of antiquity (romans d'antiquite) and they introduce into French literature the dominant contemporary themes of chivalry and love. They are set against a feudal and courtly background in which themes such as war, prowess inheritance and the possession of land are crucial. As they adapt their Latin sources, these romances, especially the Eneas, exploit the works of Ovid, especially in the presentation of the theme of love, and they also make use of the principles of rhetorical composition as studied in the schools (both romances contain remarkable examples of descriptions of both people and objects).

This is the first volume to contain two complete translations of the three romances of antiquity. The translation of the Roman d'Eneas is the first English translation of this text since that of John A. Yunck in 1974.