Selves and Nations: The Troy Story from Sicily to England in the Middle Ages

Description: Keller traces the medieval tradition of Troy narratives from Benoît de Saint-Maure and Guido delle Colonne through various Middle English adaptations, including TC. Focuses on the literary interplay of imperial ambition--with its tendency to produce static notions of individual selfhood and forms of group identities--and a more flexible, vernacular sense of nationhood that provides a site for more complex explorations of individuality. The latter model originates in Benoît's Ovidian interpretation of the Troy story, whereas the former is encapsulated in Guido's Latin attempt to contain the destabilising effects of Benoît's account.

Chaucer Subjects: Troilus and Criseyde; Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations