Le Roman d'Enéas is a romance

Romance (genre)

As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...

of Medieval French literature

Medieval French literature

Medieval French literature is, for the purpose of this article, literature written in Oïl languages during the period from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth century....

, dating to ca. 1160. It is written in French octosyllabic couplets totaling a little over 10,000 lines. Its subject matter is the tale of Aeneas

Aeneas

Aeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...

, based on Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

's Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

. It is one of the three important Romans d'Antiquité ("Romances of Antiquity") of this period; the other two are the Roman de Thèbes

Romance of Thebes

-French:Le Roman de Thèbes is a poem of some 10,000 lines that appears to be based, not on the Thebaid of Statius, but on an abridgment of that work...

(anonymous) and the Roman de Troie of Benoît de Sainte-Maure

Benoît de Sainte-Maure

Benoît de Sainte-Maure was a 12th century French poet, most probably from Sainte-Maure de Touraine near Tours, France. The Plantagenets' administrative center was located in Chinon - west of Tours....

.

Virgil's poem emphasizes the hero's political role as founder of Rome, marked by the famous break in his wanderings when he hopes that he can settle down with the Queen of Carthage, Dido; instead, he must continue to Italy and marry the king's daughter (a character on whom Virgil wastes no interest or sentiment) in order to found a great lineage. The French author is particularly interested in the hero's romantic relationships, both with Dido and with the princess Lavine

Lavinia

In Roman mythology, Lavinia is the daughter of Latinus and Amata and the last wife of Aeneas.Lavinia, the only child of the king and "ripe for marriage", had been courted by many men in Ausonia who hoped to become the king of Latium. Turnus, ruler of the Rutuli, was the most likely of the suitors,...

, who becomes the central character of the later part of the romance. Lavine and Enéas fall in love at first sight, and it is important to her to know that this love transcends his merely lustful relationship with Dido (and possible feelings for other men, too). For Enéas, this true love provides the strength and motive he needs to win the war against Lavine's former fiancé, Turnus. The vivid woman characters of this romance discuss with each other and with themselves the meaning of love in a light but touching way that was new in vernacular literature, and modeled on Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

 rather than on Virgil. At about this time--or a little later--other authors, such as Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Perhaps he named himself Christian of Troyes in contrast to the illustrious Rashi, also of Troyes...

 and Thomas of Britain

Thomas of Britain

Thomas of Britain was a french poet of the 12th century. He is known for his Old French poem Tristan, a version of the Tristan and Iseult legend that exists only in eight fragments, amounting to around 3,300 lines of verse, mostly from the latter part of the story...

, were also learning to pause their narratives to allow their characters to consider the nature and power of love.

The Roman d'Enéas is the basis for the Middle High German

Middle High German

Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...

 Eneas romance by Heinrich von Veldeke

Heinrich von Veldeke

Hendrik van Veldeke is the first writer in the Low Countries that we know by name who wrote in a European language other than Latin. He was born in Veldeke, a hamlet on the territory of Spalbeek, which has been a community of Hasselt, Limburg, Belgium, since 1977...

.

External links

• http://faculty.washington.edu/miceal/lgw/dido/Eneas(trans).html
• http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/Lettres/LanguesAnciennes/Textes/Virgile/eneas.htm