Legends of the Middle Ages / Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art

by H. A. Guerber

[Sidenote: Classical cycle.] A very large class of romances, common to all European nations during the middle ages, has also been purposely omitted from the foregoing pages. This is the so-called "classical cycle," or the romances based on the Greek and Latin epics, which were very popular during the age of chivalry. They occupy so prominent a place in mediaeval literature, however, that we must bespeak a few moments' attention to their subjects.

In these classical romances the heroes of antiquity have lost many of their native characteristics, and are generally represented as knight-errants, and made to talk and act as such knights would. Christianity and mythology are jumbled up together in a most peculiar way, and history, chronology, and geography are set at defiance and treated with the same scorn of probabilities.

The classical romances forming this great general cycle are subdivided into several classes or cycles. The interest of the first is mainly centered upon the heroes of Homer and Hesiod. The best-known and most popular of these mediaeval works was the "Roman de Troie," relating the siege and downfall of Troy.

Based upon post-classical Greek and Latin writings rather than upon the great Homeric epic itself, the story, which had already undergone many changes to suit the ever-varying public taste, was further transformed by the Anglo-Norman trouvère, Benoît de Sainte-More, about 1184. He composed a poem of thirty thousand lines, in which he related not only the siege and downfall of Troy, but also the Argonautic expedition, the wanderings of Ulysses, the story of Aeneas, and many other mythological tales.

This poet, following the custom of the age, naïvely reproduced the manners, customs, and, in general, the beliefs of the twelfth century. There is plenty of local color in his work, only the color belongs to his own locality, and not to that of the heroes whose adventures he purports to relate. In his work the old classical heroes are transformed into typical mediaeval knights, and heroines such as Helen and Medea, for instance, are portrayed as damsels in distress.

This prevalent custom of viewing the ancients solely from the mediaeval point of view gave rise not only to grotesque pen pictures, but also to a number of paintings, such as Gozzoli's kidnapping of Helen. In this composition, Paris, in trunk hose, is carrying off the fair Helen pickaback, notwithstanding the evident clamor raised by the assembled court ladies, who are attired in very full skirts and mediaeval headdresses.

On account of these peculiarities, and because the customs, dress, festivities, weapons, manners, landscapes, etc., of the middle ages are so minutely described, these romances have, with much justice, been considered as really original works.

[Sidenote: The Roman de Troie.] The "Roman de Troie" was quite as popular in mediaeval Europe as the "Iliad" had been in Hellenic countries during the palmy days of Greece, and was translated into every dialect. There are still extant many versions of the romance in every European tongue, for it penetrated even into the frozen regions of Scandinavia and Iceland. It was therefore recited in every castle and town by the wandering minstrels, trouvères, troubadours, minnesingers, and scalds, who thus individually and collectively continued the work begun so many years before by the Greek rhapsodists. Thus for more than two thousand years the story which still delights us has been familiar among high and low, and has served to beguile the hours for old and young.

This cycle further includes a revised and much-transformed edition of the adventures of Aeneas and of the early history of Rome. But although all these tales were first embodied in metrical romances, these soon gave way to prose versions of equally interminable length, which each relator varied and embellished according to his taste and skill.

The extreme popularity of Benoît de Sainte-More's work induced many imitations, and the numerous chansons de gestes, constructed on the same general plan, soon became current everywhere. Sundry episodes of these tales, having been particularly liked, were worked over, added to, and elaborated, until they assumed the proportions of romances in themselves. Such was, for example, the case with the story of Troilus and Cressida, which was treated by countless mediaeval poets, and finally given the form in which we know it best, first by Chaucer in his "Canterbury Tales," and lastly by Shakespeare in his well-known play.