HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

402 PETER AINSWORTHisland of ‘Bretagne’. The prologue to the Brut having evoked the fallof Troy and the principal reason for it (the abduction of Helen),Benoît’s project was thus to provide a history of the founding of thetown and to relate what became of it. The most recent editors ofthe Troie have highlighted another area of particular interest to Benoît,to which we have already made reference, namely, the opportunityto make a great show of his erudition:Benoît the clerk likes to demonstrate from time to time an encyclopedicerudition, or one which at least (ironically perhaps?) gives theappearance of the same: recollections of scholarly glosses, commentaries,quotations of biblical origin, fragments of lapidaries, bestiaries,and description of marvels—wrought by man or to be found in thenatural world. 52It would be unfair to tax Benoît with mere personal or professionalvanity, however. The writer has, after all, the duty to transmit hisknowledge to future generations, so that they can benefit from it. 53Writing in this way serves the purpose of preserving for posteritythe stories and wonders of the past:By evoking in language the objects, the splendors, the towns which nolonger exist, his descriptions confer upon them an immortality thatdestiny—Fortune or Aventure, as Benoît has it—refused them. 54That said, Benoît’s narrative still aims to please and entertain. Thedescriptions of combat reveal his enthusiasm for the epic, and evenif his conception of love differs in certain respects from that of thetroubadours and trouvères, it would never have found its voice withouttheir example. A manuscript now conserved at Nottingham bindstogether with the Roman de Troie, fabliaux, chansons de geste, and romans,a clue perhaps to the status which at least a proportion of his publicaccorded the work of Benoît. An even more eloquent indicatorin respect of the literariness of this text is the way in which Benoîtelected to interpret the temporality and chronology of his principalsources. Penny Eley has demonstrated how, in this poem of somethirty thousand lines and in spite of the strict example furnished by52Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman de Troie, ed. E. Baumgartner and F. Vielliard,in Lettres Gothiques, gen. ed. M. Zink (Paris, 1998), 9; my translation.53Cf. the Prologue to Marie de France’s Lais, ed. L. Harf-Lancner, coll. “LettresGothiques” (Paris, 1990).54Benoît, Troie, ed. Baumgartner and Vielliard, 12.