Romans d'antiquité

Romans d'antiquité (or romans antiques). A group of verse romances dating from the mid-12th c., socalled in contradistinction to the romans bretons since they deal, at least loosely, with classical material, particularly that of ‘Rome la grant’. Conventionally included under this heading, in probable order of composition, are the anonymous Roman de Thébes and Roman d'Eneas, based respectively on Statius's Thebaid and on the Aeneid, and Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, elaborated on the primary sources of Dares Phrygius, De excidio Troiae, and Dictys Cretensis, Ephemeridos Belli Troiani. Often grouped with these full-length romances are the shorter anonymous poems Piramus et Tisbé and Narcisus, expanded from the stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The treatment of the classical accounts is cavalier, and the source is taken as pretext for adaptation and elaboration after the fashion of contemporary taste. While there are, notably in the Roman de Thébes, features reminiscent of the chansons de geste (lengthy and meticulous accounts of battles, discussions of strategy, and the use of epic formulae), authorial inventions tend to take one of two main forms. A considerable amount of space is devoted to description of the merveilleux, but the texts are less concerned with striking instances of the workings of magic and the supernatural—although the awesome portent may be retailed with relish—than with the wonders of the palpable world. They celebrate the marvels of nature and manufacture: amazing creatures of land and sea, artificial constructions of the architect, goldsmith, and weaver.

In the second place, the authors seize upon any textual opportunity afforded by their sources to construct a love-relationship between suitably qualified persons. The Roman de Thébes invents love-episodes between Antigone and Parthenopeus and Ismene and Aton; the Roman d'Eneas follows the story of the passionate love of Dido and Aeneas with an extended love-idyll between Aeneas and Lavinia. Benoît de Sainte-Maure presents a spectrum of relationships: between Jason and Medea, Paris and Helen, Achilles and Polyxena, as well as the Troilus-Briseida story later taken up and developed by Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. The attitude to love expressed across these texts is remarkably coherent, and differs profoundly from fin'amor. Frequently the initiative is taken by the woman, whose sentiments are explored and expressed, on the whole, to the same degree and extent as those of the man; the relationship is endorsed by society and tends, ideally, to lead to marriage between two persons suited in respect of age, background, and inclination. The thoughts of the characters are conveyed in often lengthy monologues, which describe their amorous states in a style conventionally, but vaguely, referred to as ‘Ovidian’. Recurring examples are descriptions of the ravages caused by love's arrow and its effect upon eyes and heart, and relations of the mysterious and contradictory symptoms of the ‘sickness’ of love.

Works of transition, brief flowering of a genre that did not survive, the romans d'antiquité had a decisive influence upon the future of the verse romance as it was shaped by Chrétien de Troyes.

[Rosemarie Jones]

Bibliography

• R. M. Jones, The Theme of Love in the ‘Romans d'Antiquité’ (1972)