What does the story of Troy tell us about literary cultures in the later Middle Ages? This is a large question which the present essay considers with reference to two apparently different linguistic, cultural and political contexts as exemplified, first, by Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie (c. 1165) and Guido de Columnis's Historia destructionis Troie (1287) and, second, by John Lydgate's Troy Book (1412–20). The first context is the transnational Latin and French literary culture of the late thirteenth century that is found in a variety of intersecting forms across Europe (Troie and the Historia); the second is the more local English-language situation specific to England (Troy Book), which may be instructive for Bohemian Troy material despite the latter's cultural and linguistic separation from English since Czech literature, like that of England, is written in a vernacular with a limited rather than a transnational dissemination. Although these two contexts – the ‘learned’, Latinate transnational literary culture and the more demotic, vernacular local or (proto)national one – appear to be so different, there are in fact important connections between them that result from a shared approach to translatio studii, the ‘transfer of learning’, across Troy literature.

This essay focuses on the two most influential English authors of the later medieval period, Geoffrey Chaucer and his contemporary, John Gower, to analyse the roles of women within their corpus, both as subjects and as extra-textual readers. Bridges asks what femininity enables in their works and how ߝ and what ߝwomen mean, emphasising the embeddedness of both writers in long-established and international textual cultures. Central to her analysis is the notion of a hermeneutic that constructs women and femininity in ethical terms, as bound up with notions of vice and virtue. The essay explores questions of voice, agency, and genre across Chaucerߣs works to demonstrate the intimate connection of femininity with questions of reading and interpretation. For Gower too, ethics are shown to be a central focus, and treatments of femininity open onto moral and political debates. Differing presentations of women treated in common by Chaucer and Gower illuminate their ideological priorities and contrasting practices of poetic translatio studii. For both, womenߣs presence proves a complex, powerful, but often ambiguous textual phenomenon.

It may seem a contradiction in terms to think seriously about the ‘learning’ of romance, especially so-called ‘popular romance’. Despite the genre's increasingly acknowledged fluidity and open-endedness, and notwithstanding our greater understanding of the social, cultural, and material contexts for its production and dissemination, romance is still implicitly characterised as ‘not learned’, positioned on the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum from the kind of religious and classically derived texts that numerically dominate surviving medieval literature. ‘Popular’ romance or ‘pulp fictions’, the lowest of this ‘low’ genre, is surely beyond the cerebral pale: seen by some modern critics as ‘degenerate in form and style’, a ‘banal … pleasure’, such romances are tacitly equated with a lack of interest in ‘learned’ literary culture. Even when medieval romance seeks to instruct in its hagiographic or more generally didactic modes, it is rarely seen as ‘learned’ in the traditional textual sense outlined above. This is partly because of the lesser intellectual status still denoted by English as a language in contrast to Latin and French, an anxiety seen clearly in other English romances, for example Of Arthour and of Merlin. And yet romance texts share with aspects of that more elite and often Latinate/French linguistic culture the vital intellectual habit of translatio studii, retelling an old work for a new audience in a different context or language, whether that story be a prestigious narrative of the ancient pagan world, a Christian tale of an Arthurian knight, a crusading hero, or a vernacular presentation of Christian doctrine. If we conceive of ‘learning’ as not just including a knowledge of inherited material but also referring to the various practices involved in retelling such material, then this allows us to consider the ways in which popular romance may be integrated into the wider intellectual framework of later medieval literature, and to recuperate it from the charge of being merely ‘a collection of “dirty books”’ with a limited relationship to literary cultures. I shall consider the Middle English Seege or Batayle of Troye (SBT) and its presentation of learning from a wider perspective, therefore, focusing not only on its relationship with classical material but also on the generic and stylistic features of that relationship, in an attempt to demonstrate that its intellectual and literary translatio is more diverse than has been previously imagined.

The history of Heldris of Cornwall’s Roman de Silence, appropriately enough, is one of centuries of apparent silence followed by decades of excited debate. From its probable thirteenth-century composition to the end of the twentieth century it left no lasting trace, but the advent of Lewis Thorpe’s edition in 1972 (and others subsequently) has generated over fifty publications at the time of writing. Most of this modern critical interest has understandably focused on the prominent issue of gender and its expression, with a spectrum of opinion that ranges from, at one end, seeing Silence as ultimately presenting a protofeminist victory of sorts for its flexibly gendered protagonist to, at the other, claiming it as a more conservative work. The second dominant tendency of critical studies has been to highlight Silence’s concern for inheritance and social hierarchy, themes aligned with that of gender. These critical tendencies thus firmly situate Silence within romance culture and the pervasive concerns about gender roles and social hierarchy with which so many romance works engage. Although there has been some discussion of the work’s intertextualities, Silence’s relationships with other forms of wider literary culture have not been analysed in detail, despite critics calling attention to some important points of comparison. This essay seeks to highlight one particular parallel by considering Silence in the context of the scholastic culture of the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, interpreting the romance as an active participant in that culture and hence demonstrating the wider point that the genre is intimately enmeshed within apparently quite different literary contexts. This approach is especially apt given Elizabeth Archibald’s interest in Latin literature, medieval romance and gender, and her personal encouragement for my research in these areas, for which I continue to be extremely grateful; the current attempt to read them in creative dialogue is in great part inspired by her example, although of course she bears no responsibility for the results.

The intellectual culture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was defined by the philosophical, theological and literary studies of the monastic and cathedral schools and the first universities, studies characterized particularly during this time by interest in newly available learning from antique texts and thus by the creative interplay between a wide variety of works from different eras.

Walter of Châtillon, Alexandreis

The Alexandreis is an account of Alexander the Great's life and achievements in ten books, which broadly follows the known historical narrative. It is dedicated to Walter's patron, William of Champagne (also known as ‘William of the White Hands’) and begins with Alexander as a young man, although it does not include enfances. In book i, Alexander is taught wisdom and good governance by Aristotle (unsurprisingly one of the most-copied sections of the poem in medieval manuscripts) before taking up his crown at Corinth after his father's death. After a stand-off with a reluctant Athens is resolved peacefully, Alexander destroys rebellious Thebes, despite the pleadings of the poet Cleades. Since Greece is now subdued, Alexander prepares to head to Persia to attack Darius. A description of Asia follows, including an anachronistically Christian reference to Jerusalem. Alexander visits the site of Troy and makes a sacrifice at Achilles’ tomb, wishing for similarly lasting renown. There Alexander recounts a dream in which he is told by a mysterious priest that he will conquer every race, but to spare Jerusalem. After the sack of Tyre, he visits the holy city and enriches it. In book ii, Darius, who is portrayed as softened by luxury, hears of Alexander's approach, and sends him deliberately insulting childish gifts in reference to his youth (a harness and a ball). Alexander reinterprets these as signs of his harnessing of the Persians and future domination of the earth. He defeats Darius’ troops under Mennon at Granicus, and enters the city of Gordium, where he cuts the Gordian knot. Alexander then advances into Cilicia, sending his subordinate Parmenion to secure Tarsus. Here he swims in the freezing river Cignus in midsummer heat, and becomes seriously ill, finally being cured by his doctor Philip despite letters warning him that Philip intends to poison him. The unfair death of Sisenes, one of Alexander's commanders, at the Macedonian's command, is briefly mentioned. Darius refuses advice to retreat, and makes a stirring speech to his men. Troops on both sides prepare for battle; Alexander likewise makes a speech. Darius’ shield is described, on which is pictured the history of the Persians, another frequently copied and commentated on aspect of the poem.

Appropriating Adam Nicholson's quotation describing Homeric epic and applying it to twelfth- and thirteenth-century literature, material that is frequently defined by its distance from classical epic, may seem a deliberately provocative way to begin a study of Alexander narratives of the High Middle Ages. For Alexander the Great is the hero of no classical epic poem: no Homer or Virgil chose to immortalize him in prestigious verse, despite his extraordinary personal qualities and his imperial domination of the known world. Indeed, Alexander's self-proclaimed medieval Virgil, Walter of Châtillon, gleefully points out this glaring deficiency on the part of his classical rivals in his own twelfth-century treatment of the Macedonian. So Alexander would appear to be an unlikely participant, interpolated more by the academic need for a starting point rather than for his strict relevance, in Nicolson's memorable discussion of classical epic poetry.

Yet the elevated purpose that Nicolson here ascribes to epic surely transcends not only this particular poetic form but also the classical age that produced it. The idea of poetry making ‘the distant past as immediate to us as our own lives … the great stories of long ago beautiful and painful now’ describes, in far more inspiring terms than those habitual in academic analysis, the explicitly stated function of much medieval poetry focusing on the stories of the past, stories retold in and for different times but connected to that past via the act of translatio studii. Romance narratives of Troy, for example, frequently begin with the idea that hearing stories of the past will benefit the audience from a moral perspective, an attitude simultaneously found to justify the reading of pre-Christian classical poetry like the works of Ovid in medieval centres of learning.

‘In my end is my beginning.’ This book ends deliberately at the moment invoked in the introduction, when Alexander narratives are lampooned via Chaucer's Monk as ‘commune’. It is surely no coincidence that this Chaucerian witticism occurs at the same moment that such narratives start to be found more frequently in English, some decades after the author of Of Arthour and of Merlin is able belligerently to announce ‘on Inglisch ichil tel þerfore’. The link between language and ‘commune’ knowledge is implicit but clear in Chaucer's reference: the Macedonian has become ubiquitous, and in English, which is surely part of Chaucer's Monk's point that ‘every man’, rich or poor, educated or unlettered, is able to hear of the conqueror, and in his own vernacular. This powerful connection between language and cultural identity, made by the first English-language canonical author, may seem to contradict the complexities of Alexander's translatio claimed by this book. Instead of transnational and multilingual perspectives found in both insular and continental texts, we are faced here with the universalizing yet fundamentally local idea of Alexander as vernacular and therefore ‘commune’/common. The democratization of Alexander – his translatio from the traditional languages of learning and intellectual life to those of everyday exchange, his movement from elite circles to mixed audiences, his journey from transnational conqueror to local exemplum – appears to be complete, a movement that leaves little room for other perspectives.

Yet these other perspectives endure. The idea that Alexander has become ‘commune’ in this movement from learned languages to vernaculars and from elite to wider audiences presupposes a causal relationship between the range of a language and its approach to its subject, one of the key assumptions questioned in this book. In other words, it assumes a shift in focus inextricably linked to the remit, geographical, political, and cultural, of a particular language. The evidence highlighted in this study seems to answer sic et non to this assumption, for the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries at least. The analysis of the Roman de toute chevalerie (RTC) and Horn, for example, shows that Anglo-Norman romances do not necessarily engage with insular concerns in their translatio even if they do so in the historical events of their narratives; the characteristics of Anglo-Norman as an insular language do not inevitably define the presentation of the stories it tells.

The previous chapter outlined Alexander the Great's literary history from the classical era to the early medieval period, demonstrating the varied interpretative possibilities in his translatio that arose from early on in his afterlife as a literary figure. This chapter and the one that follows it set two Alexander texts, one in Latin, one en romanz, in what is recoverable of their twelfth-century compositional contexts (as defined both by location and also by contemporary works) in order to investigate the range of meanings in which Alexander participates at this later moment in literary history. Looking at these texts in this comparative way will uncover the political and cultural narratives into which Alexander is co-opted. This in turn will help to reveal the part his literature plays in the construction of the literary identities, whether political, religious, or linguistic, which are important in the northern France of this period, where different dynasties, institutions, and languages meet and compete, and therefore enable us to see whether similarly complex relationships between texts and contexts exist in the Middle Ages as well as in antiquity.

In this chapter I shall consider the Latin epic poem the Alexandreis of Walter of Châtillon (published c. 1180) with another Latin epic, the Ylias of Joseph of Exeter (1183–90), providing some contemporary context. I shall argue that despite their shared erudite Latinity and classical subject matter they differ in their views of translatio studii, and that this difference indicates an ongoing debate about how and why it should be done, a debate that has so far mainly been identified between Latin and vernacular French texts. I shall claim that this debate is a major concern of the Alexandreis in particular, and one that expands the poem's frame of reference beyond its immediate context. This interest in larger concerns is the basis for the idea that the Alexandreis, whilst implicated in local literary and political circumstances, is primarily a transnational text in its conception, allowing us to look beyond the confines of its local circumstances to set it and its impact in a wider perspective.

Literary Contexts: Exemplarity, History, and Fiction during the Twelfth Century

The twelfth century is one of the touchstone moments in Alexander's history, where ancient narratives, increasingly available to authors as classical studies flourished in newly important intellectual centres in northern France, became the focus for new literature.

Insular Exceptionalism: Anglo-Norman Romance, Alexander, and the Roman de toute chevalerie

In this chapter, my focus moves from Alexander texts composed in northern France (the Angevin, Capetian, and Champagne contexts of previous chapters) to those probably created in the British Isles or Angevin territories on the continent, often called ‘Anglo-Norman’ romances. This raises important questions of definition, geographical, political, and linguistic.

As discussed in the introduction, ‘Anglo-Norman’, ‘the French of England’, and ‘Anglo-French’ are all terms describing the French used in England after the Norman Conquest, in which many twelfth- and thirteenth-century romances were composed. My decision to opt for Anglo-Norman on linguistic grounds does not lay the issue of terminology to rest, however, but raises further questions highly relevant to any definition of insular literary culture in these centuries. Firstly, in addition to the problems inherent in the terminology, using language to define Anglo-Norman texts can be simplistic, since the manuscripts, often of later date than the works’ identified origins, sometimes alter linguistic features, recopying Anglo-Norman works into different French dialects and complicating the linguistic clarity implied by the label. Secondly, lost or fragmentary Anglo-Norman works sometimes have an afterlife via continental adaptations and reworkings, and thus may be included in surveys of Anglo-Norman literature although they no longer exist as complete works in that linguistic register. Thirdly, works like the romans d'antiquité are often excluded from analyses of insular literature, despite their potential connection to the Henrician court and their Anglo-Norman linguistic nature, being habitually discussed as continental productions relating rather more to the history of French national literature than to that of the British Isles. Describing a work as ‘Anglo-Norman’, then, leads to consideration of what makes a text ‘Anglo-Norman’ (or ‘insular’) beyond language and/or geographical location or circulation, facts that may well be redundant or assumed. Are there in fact distinctive identifying features enabling us to define Anglo-Norman texts as such and then to analyze them as a corpus?

Recent scholarship on twelfth- and thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman romances (here referring to texts’ linguistic status) answers yes to these questions. Rosalind Field, for example, considers these works to have a distinctive narrative identity:

What could medieval authors have read or heard about Alexander the Great? This is a vital question, since understanding the nature of the literary and cultural material to which writers in the Middle Ages had access helps us to identify their intellectual inheritance (both texts and also interpretative traditions) and thus to analyze their translatio studii more perceptively. To address this large question, I shall discuss the main narratives focusing on Alexander in the period between his life in the fourth century bc and the twelfth century ad, the point at which my analysis of medieval texts begins. I shall focus on the ways in which antique and early medieval authors engage with the narrative of Alexander's life and conquests, highlighting their preoccupations and approaches in order to characterize their performance of translatio. This allows me to identify similarities between texts that do not relate to one another directly but that may still share themes and interpretations.

The Alexander materials inherited by twelfth-century and later medieval authors were a complex mixture derived from a wide variety of direct and indirect sources. This complexity and variety may be one reason for the freedom with which high medieval authors treated Alexander, since there was no single prestigious account of the Macedonian king looming in the background to restrict their poetic imagination. Yet there was also an awareness of Alexander as a historical figure with a long and convoluted literary history, as demonstrated by Chaucer's Monk in the late fourteenth century. This history is important for later medieval Alexander works even if only in the sense of ‘known unknowns’, that is, material and/or authors that medieval poets knew about but to which they had no access. So this chapter will not only discuss works that were definitely used (directly or indirectly) by such poets, but also some important texts and authors who were mere names in the high Middle Ages. It will also analyze works and writers, such as Arrian, that were unknown in the medieval period but whose approach contextualizes other antique works.

The title of this chapter is a conscious invocation of Elizabeth Salter's work English and International: Studies in the Literature, Art and Patronage of Medieval England. In that work, Salter provocatively calls Chaucer's decision to write in English ‘the triumph of internationalism’, suggesting that his writing is an indication of a context that is ‘essentially European, not narrowly insular’. After the analysis of the RTC in chapter 4, this attitude should not be a surprise, nor especially provocative. However, in terms of critical context Salter's observation remains unusual. The increasing dominance of English in the insular literature of the later Middle Ages has naturally led to a scholarly focus on the local resonances of texts because of the limited geographical range of the language, and therefore the related idea that English-language material is interested in issues of identity that are local and/or peculiar to the English has been particularly to the fore in scholarship. Thorlac Turville-Petre's 1996 book England the Nation, which analyzes the period 1290–1340, is often cited as a key moment in crystallizing this approach. Although the final chapter, ‘Three Languages’, argues against ‘nationalist polemics’ regarding English, French, and Latin and for ‘a tradition of languages existing in harmonious and complementary relationship’, the book's main emphasis is firmly upon the construction of a single culture based upon national identity, ‘one culture in three voices’. This perspective incorporates Latin and French with English into a unified cultural and political narrative, but crucially in doing so it elides the possibility of difference, whether linguistic or in terms of function: all three languages have effectively become, or have been subsumed into, English, culturally and politically. Geraldine Heng sums up the prevailing critical view of the coterminous relationship between the English language (or languages) and insular culture succinctly:

This ‘exclusivity’ makes English romance actively insular, ‘eschewing … international reception’. From this perspective, Salter's observation about Chaucer's internationalism seems remote, applicable perhaps only to a poet composing in multilingual and cosmopolitan court circles for elite patrons rather than to the more widely consumed popular romances that the same author parodies in The Canterbury Tales.