The ‘Roman de Thèbes’ and the ‘Roman d’Eneas’. Trans. with an Introduction by Glyn S. Burgess and Douglas Kelly (Exeter Studies in Medieval Europe). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021.

• Helen Cooper

Glyn Burgess and Douglas Kelly’s translations of the Roman de Thèbes and the Roman d’Eneas complete the trilogy of the twelfth-century French romans d’antiquité, begun with their 2017 translation of the Roman de Troie of Benoît de Saint-Maure (published by D. S. Brewer). The three works raise many of the same questions, and the 23-page Introduction to this volume is designed to cover many of the more discursive issues relating to all of them: their likely dates and contexts, the order in which they were written, their place in the rise of romance as a distinct genre, their handling of Classical material (in particular Fortune and the gods), concerns with ‘honour’ in the senses of both reputation and landholding, poetics, including their uses of natural vs. artificial order, and topics of invention.