First full-length treatment of the Trojan legend in medieval
Scottish literature, showing the various uses for, and the ways in,
which it was deployed. The Trojan legend became hot property during
the Anglo-Scots Wars of Independence. During the late thirteenth
and early fourteenth centuries, the English traced their ancestry
to Brutus and the Trojans and used this origin myth tobolster their
claims to lordship and ownership of Scotland; while in a game of
political one-upmanship, and in order to prove Scotland's
independence and sovereignty, Scottish historians instead traced
their nation's origins to aGreek prince, Gaythelos, and his
Egyptian wife, Scota. Despite the wealth of scholarship on the
Trojan legend in English and European literature, very little has
been done on Scotland's literary response to the same legend,even
though a mere glance at the canonical material of late medieval
Scotland indicates that it remained equally current north of the
Border, a gap which this book fills. Through a detailed analysis of
a range of Older Scots textsfrom c. 1375 to c. 1513, notably The
Scottish Troy Book, Henryson's Testament of Cresseid, and Douglas'
Eneados, it provides the first comprehensive assessment of the
Scottish response to the Trojan legend. It considers the way in
which Scottish texts interact with English counterparts, such as
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, Chaucer's Troilus, Lydgate's Troy
Book, and Caxton's Eneydos, and demonstrates how despite - or
perhaps because of - its use in the Anglo-Scots Wars of
Independence, the Trojan legend was for the most part neither
neglected nor pejoratively treated in Older Scots literature.
Rather, the Matter of Troy and related Matter of Greece were used
not just as an origin myth, but also as a metaphor for Anglo-Scots
political relations, guide to good governance, and locus through
which poets might explore broader issues of literary tradition,
authority, and the nature of poetic truth. Emily Wingfield is a
lecturer in English at the University of Birmingham.
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