Troy and Medieval Romance

Two of the three earliest medieval romances were Troy stories: the Roman de Troie by Benoit de Ste. Maure and the anonymous Eneas, a retelling of the Latin Aeneid with an added happy ending.

History was an important factor in the renewed popularity of Troy, which medieval Europeans considered a real place, from which real people had fled to found the Roman Empire and their descendents and had then gone on to found the ruling classes in other countries.

It is also possible that the crusades also contributed to interest in Troy, since crusaders were travelling into the Near East and visiting cities such as Constantinople, only a few miles from the ancient site of Troy.

The retelling of the Eneas made one radical departure from the ancient Troy tradition of lawless passion leading to war. The author of the Eneas added a final section onto the Aeneid, in which love, leading to marriage, finally became a positive force for good. The literary celebration of love became a hallmark of medieval literature.

It was these retellings which formed the basis for Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and, in turn, Henryson's Testament of Cresseid and later, Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.

These notes are based on and extracted by permission from Dianne Thompson’s pages on the Northern Virginia Community College site TROY - Medieval Trojan Romance - http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/Troy/troysites.html

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Testament of Cresseid: Literary Background

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