INTRODUCTION
The story of Troilus and Cressida is one of the great stories of love, separation and loss that has come down to us across the centuries.
Drawing upon the first millennium CE Latin accounts of the Trojan War by Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius, rather than on Homer’s Iliad, Benoît de Sainte-Maure composed his own very long (over 30,000 verse lines) Roman de Troie, in what we now call Old French, around 1165 CE.
The Roman de Troie has been translated into English prose by Glyn S Burgess and Douglas Kelly, and published (in 2017) by D S Brewer (Woodbridge, Suffolk). The translation has 475 pages. It contains an introduction, a glossary of technical terms, appendices, indexes, and a bibliography. It is comprehensive and illuminating. It is invaluable to a student of the literature of the period, as the original Old French is opaque (quite different from modern French in many ways).
WAR AND LOVE
Benoît attributes the causes of the war to the legacy of earlier conflicts, and also a succession of abductions of women by rapacious men. But he breaks up his account of the causes, the progress of the war, and its sequelae, with love stories (arguably, the most interesting parts), namely those of: (i) Jason and Medea, (ii) Paris and Helen, (iii) Achilles and Polyxena, and (iv) Troilus, Briseida and Diomedes.
The indirect influence of Homer’s Iliad can be detected in the Roman de Troie. But there are also significant changes. See for example the third love story mentioned above. Here, Achilles does not suspend his participation in the war because of any argument with Agamemnon (cf Iliad Book I); (nor does he return in haste because of his hatred of Hector over the death of his friend Patroclus, who dies early on in Benoît’s account); he does so because of his love for the Trojan princess Polyxena, and his consequent desire for a peace settlement, in order to win her. (In the event, he is lured into an ambush and killed.)
The fourth love story takes up about a thousand lines of the whole story (interspersed between lines 13065 and 20340). The action can be summarised as follows. Calchas (aka Calcas), a prophet, and the father of Briseida, defects from Troy to the Greek camp, under the influence of an oracle. But he leaves his daughter Briseida behind in Troy. She is in love with Troilus. Calchas requests that Briseida be sent to him: King Priam accedes to this request. The wishes of Briseida and Troilus in the matter are not consulted. The Greek warrior Diomedes (aka Diomède) then woos Briseida persistently and at first unsuccessfully. Diomedes seizes Troilus’s horse in battle and gives it to Briseida. She gives him her (detachable) sleeve, which he can wear in battle. Furious with Briseida, Troilus wounds Diomedes heavily, and he scornfully warns him that Briseida may not be faithful to him, either. Briseida feels sorry for Diomedes; she confesses her love for him, despite her affection for Troilus. Then she disappears from the narrative. Much later, Troilus is killed by Achilles in battle (cf Virgil, Aeneid I, lines 474-8); Diomedes survives the war and goes home to his wife.
THE EMOTIONAL FACTORS
1 Troilus and Briseida are both distressed and angry at their involuntary separation. They promise to be constant to each other.
2 When Briseida arrives in the Greek camp, she deals with Diomedes’ immediate overtures to her firmly but tactfully, pointing out that she will be “alone, without other ladies” [Burgess & Kelly, page 209], and that she must have regard to her reputation.
3 Briseida proceeds to upbraid her father over his disloyalty to his home city. He replies by saying that he is only obeying the “will of the gods”; and he claims that he is saving her from the forthcoming conquest and destruction of Troy.
4 Briseida soon begins to settle down in the Greek camp:
“Before she had reached the fourth evening, she would not have felt like returning to the city, or have any wish to do so.” [Burgess & Kelly, page 211]
5 Diomedes becomes obsessed with Briseida; he is said to be in her “snare”; he doubts whether he will ever “possess” her. He confesses his love to her; she thinks that she has some power over him; she gives him “the sleeve from her right arm…for him to use as a banner” [B & K, page 228]; he is “filled with joy”. But as for Troilus, his love for Briseida is “quashed”.
6 When Diomedes is so gravely wounded in battle that he is at risk of dying, Briseida realises that she loves him and lets this be known publicly. However she accuses herself of acting “wrongly and ignominiously”, saying:
“I have betrayed my beloved Troilus….My heart should have been so attached to Troilus and so secure in him that I would have heeded no other man.” [B & K, page 289]
She adds that she will be the subject of gossip in Troy and that she “shall suffer scorn for ever”.
In conclusion, then, Briseida faces up to grim reality. She still feels rather alone: “here among the Greeks I had no counsel, no friend or confidant.” [B & K, page 290] She makes her choice, constrained as she is by circumstances:
“And what good does it do me to repent what I have done? In this affair no recovery is possible. I shall therefore be faithful to this Greek, who is indeed a fine and worthy vassal. I have already given so much of my heart to Diomedes; because of him I have acted as I did. This would not have happened in this way if I were still in Troy.” [B & K, pages 289f]
One can argue that Briseida is not entirely blameworthy for her predicament; she has regrets and misgivings; she has insight; her choice can be regarded as rational.
Tatyana Moran praises Benoît’s characterisation of Briseida:
“Benoît’s Briseida is in her complexity one of the most astonishing characters of mediaeval literature. Though created in order to embody the unreliableness, the faithfulness and the heartlessness of women, she is both more and less than all that; she is no mere personification of vice but a human being, full of contradiction, driven by her instincts yet conscious of her failings, disconcerting and rather charming.” [Moran T, page 20*]
MISOGYNY
1 Benoît praises Briseida’s physical beauty but condemns her personality. His judgement is reflected in that of his male characters: Troilus, Diomedes and King Priam. Moreover, Benoît is pretty damning about women in general (see below).
2 Priam regards Briseida as tainted by association with her treacherous father:
“If it were not the case that the maiden was worthy and noble, sensible and beautiful, she would be burned and dismembered because of her father. Let her be off on her way.” [Burgess & Kelly, page 202]
3 Just as Briseida is setting out for Troy, Benoît predicts that she will be easily and quickly distracted by the prospect of a new relationship:
“A woman will never be perplexed for too long. Provided she can find an alternative, her sighs will be short-lived. Woman’s grief is of short duration. If one eye sheds tears, the other is smiling. Their hearts change very quickly. The wisest woman is quite foolish.” [Burgess & Kelly, page 207]
4 Benoît reports that Briseida takes advantage of the sight of Diomedes’ love-sickness:
“Thanks to his sighs, she perceived clearly that he was totally smitten with her, and that was why she was three times harsher with him. This is a constant feature in a woman’s character. If she recognizes that you love her and are distraught on her account, she will always treat you with arrogance.” [B & K, page 226]
5 As Troilus wounds Diomedes in battle, he takes the opportunity to accuse Briseida of “short-lived fidelity”, “treachery”, “injustice” and “betrayal” [B & K, page 287]. Without any justification, he suggests that Diomedes will have to be “extremely vigilant”, lest Briseida (having learnt to enjoy sex) should entertain in her bed not only Diomedes himself but also “transient guests” – for payment.
The translators add a note [no 132]:
“Troilus seems to believe that Briseida is prostituting herself, and the “transient guests” would be her clients. Robert Henryson will follow up on this surmise in his late-medieval Scottish poem The Testament of Cresseid, in which Cresseid ends her life as a prostitute.” [Page 287]
In conclusion, Briseida is treated very badly by men, in word and in deed. Diomedes provides her with a safe haven, in a way; but the text implies strongly that he is out for what he can get (sexually) with Briseida.
BENOÎT’S INFLUENCE ON LATER WRITERS
Benoît’s fourth love storygave rise to numerous adaptations and elaborations. Its influence (direct or indirect) can be traced in various later works, notably: (i) Giovanni Boccaccio’s Filostrato (circa 1335), (ii) Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (circa 1385), (iii) Robert Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid (late 15th century), and (iv) and William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (circa 1602).
Benoît does not cover Troilus’s wooing of Briseida: he begins with the separation of the lovers, moves on to her meeting with Diomedes, and finishes with the lady’s eventual switch of allegiance (rather to Benoît’s disgust). Boccaccio introduces the account of the earlier wooing, and treats it, indeed, at length. He also creates the character of Pandarus (aka Pandaro), who brings the lovers together. Chaucer treats the affair at even greater length and brings in new perspectives (for example, from the philosophy of The Consolation of Philosophy of Boëthius). Shakespeare spends about two-thirds of his play on the war: the scope available for the coverage of the love triangle is therefore limited.
The expression of misogyny is less strident in Filostrato and in Troilus and Criseyde. (But see the assessment of Burgess and Kelly, below.) However, Henryson is wholly negative about Cresseid in his Testament. Misogyny is prominent in the attitude of many male characters in Troilus and Cressida: see, for example, the welcome that the Greek leaders give to Cressida when she is handed over to them in Act 4, Scene 5 – they all want to kiss her, at first meeting.
In the later writers’ works, Troilus is saddened rather than enraged:
“Faced with his lady’s betrayal, Boccaccio’s Troilo [sic] persists in defending her virtue; Chaucer’s Troylus [sic] tries to find oblivion in feats of arms; Shakespeare’s hero feels the world crumbling under his feet; while Benoît’s gallant, whose pride is more wounded than his heart, revenges himself not only by fighting Diomède but by poisoning his mind against Briseida, who, he is certain, will betray her new lover just as she had betrayed his predecessor.'” [Moran T, page 19*]
In the Introduction to their translation, Burgess and Kelly have a section on ‘Women in War’ [pages 26-28]. Firstly they remind the reader that:
“The common lot of non-combatant women [all, other than Penthesilea] is rape and slaughter, or, for the ‘privileged few’ who are of high birth, abduction and life as a concubine.” [Page 26]
Then they comment on Briseida as follows:
“Briseida…adapts to her fate [as concubine], albeit less willingly and more slowly and thoughtfully than does Helen [with Paris]…. [Moreover, Briseida’s] case is special because it does not fit the misogynist version of her love for Diomedes that both Boccaccio and Chaucer relate, claiming, like Benoît, that she would find a new love only a few days after leaving Troilus….She finally accepts Diomede’s love after almost two years….” [Pages 27f]
CONCLUSION
Benoît’s stated purpose in writing Le Roman de Troie was to tell the story of the Trojan War to readers and listeners who did not know the pre-existing accounts in Latin. (Note that the Ancient Greek Iliad only became available in Western Europe much later.) Benoît succeeded in his purpose.
Obviously, Le Roman de Troie is very long. The translators count 23 battles in all in the course of the main war. The casualties are innumerable. Unsurprisingly, there is much repetition in the descriptions of the combats and killings. The account is varied by the inclusion of truces, negotiations and love affairs. Material was created that proved useful to later, greater writers (see above).
The Roman, then, is of interest to specialists rather than to the general public.
*Reference
Moran, T (1968), ‘The Growth of the Troilus and Cressida Legend and Benoît de Sainte-Maure’, in Litera: Journal of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, Volume 0, Issue 9, 9 – 24.
Retrieved via https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/iulitera/issue/1243/14593 10.04.23
D.R.H.
10 April 2023
davidronaldharries 