Wladyslaw Witalisz: The Trojan Mirror: Middle English Narratives of Troy as Books of Princely Advice

• Emily Wingfield

The city on which the Trojan legend was based most probably only ever comprised one thousand or so inhabitants, but the legend itself has far outstripped these humble origins. It has proved to be one of the most enduring and universal stories of Western civilization, and has inspired writers from Homer and Virgil, Chaucer and Shakespeare, to Dryden, Pope, Byron and Joyce, as well as the makers of epic Hollywood films, such as Helen of Troy (1955), Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Troy (2004).

The legend proved particular popular in the Middle Ages when a succession of dynasties across Europe sought their origins in Troy. Tracing their ancestry to the illustrious Trojan race provided medieval dynasties with legitimacy and longevity and allowed them to enjoy the reflected glory of the founders of Rome, but the Trojan legend was also the story of a nation’s double downfall, a downfall brought about, furthermore, not only by Troy’s external enemies, but also by the vice and treachery of its own heroic but inherently flawed individuals.