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
We would love to thank the author of this article for this awesome web content
Francesco Montorsi, Memory of the Ancients. Literary traces from Antiquity to the 12th and 13th centuries
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