Francesco Montorsi, Memory of the Ancients. Literary traces from Antiquity to the 12th and 13th centuries

This essay addresses the question of how a past, that of the 12th and 13th centuries, represented, transmitted, used, lived another past, that of the Greek and Latin worlds. It then aims to identify and interpret the literary traces of the memory of Antiquity in a corpus of vernacular texts (ancient novels, chronicles, translations of classics).

With the help of converging explorations, bearing on different aspects of historical knowledge (from religious practices to theatre, from military conflict to funeral rites, from games to statuary art), we discover in these texts a memory of Antiquity which, for being incomplete at times, reveals itself to be both rich and moving. A memory sometimes distorted by the dreams, fears and worldly ambitions of an entire era, sometimes imbued with an astonishing detachment and a real scholarly impulse.

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Corpus and object of study

Research status

An archeology of literary memory

First chapter

HISTORY AND RHETORIC IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The words of estoire

History in teaching and theoretical reflection

The object of the story

Story functions

The writing of history

Honest adaptations

The past that legitimizes

The periodization of history

Chapter II

PAGANISM AS IDOLATRY

“One hails Tervagan, one stars and signs”

Honor the creature instead of the Creator

Gods as demons in vernacular texts

Idolatry as the worship of statues

Founding Idolatry, or the King Become Idol

The Deities of the Pagans

Space invaders, or gods as demons

The paths of scholarship: historical analysis, euhemerism and allegory

Figmenta poetarum

Chapter III

DIVINATION AND SACRIFICES Christian thought in the face of the divination of the Pagans

“The word of the deable”: condemning Apollo

“Many ways were augury”

Sacrifices: the food of the devils

human sacrifice

“The entrails and the boëles”

Chapter IV

EXQUISITE CORPS. THE TREATMENT OF THE DECEASED BODY

“Com fu to bury him / Del cors embasmer et vestir”

The embalmed body in medieval times

From reality to the letter. Back to the texts

The fate of the prince. Symbolic values ​​of embalming

The ashes of the dead

The fire that consumes. Cremations in ancient novels

Cremation in the Fet of the Romans and Ancient History

A few remarks on anachronism and distancing

Chapter V THE ARTS OF THE ANCIENTS. THE TOMBS

On the importance of the tomb for medieval culture

The pyramids of the Ancients

What is a “pyramid”?

Medieval archeology

ink stones

Back to the tomb

Chapter VI THE ARTS OF THE ANCIENTS. STATUES

Ancient statues between refusal and admiration

Men and gods. Statues in vernacular texts

The gods are only idols, or the crowd statues

Statues and dead men

Texts as traces

Monuments between the lines: the caballus Constantini and the statue of Justinian

Gold and columns: idolatrous statues

Chapter VII GAMES AND THEATERS

“Encoste the paleis a beautiful theater with”

The word and the gloss

stones and books

The theater and morality

The theater in the texts

floats and the circus

games and death

“The games were to be watched from the palaestra and the plomees”

Chapter VIII

THE WAR OF THE ANCIENTS

The invention of war

Milites and Knights

The war on horseback, the missing infantryman

Armours, sieges, duels: the present and the ideal of war

“Poi d’omes chevauchoient”: old-fashioned warfare

“By renunciation of victory”: celebrating the triumph

FINDINGS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDICES

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Francesco Montorsi, Memory of the Ancients. Literary traces from Antiquity to the 12th and 13th centuries


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