ARTICLE
Kaleidoscope:
The Interdisciplinary
Postgraduate Journal
of Durham University’s
Institute of Advanced
Study
ISSN 1756–8137
October 2008
A “fressh and lusty qwene”
Remodelling Helen of Troy in the Middle Ages
Katherine Heavey
In this paper, I explore some of the representations of Helen of Troy that were most
popular from the first century AD to the fifteenth century. Specifically, I aim to
trace the influence that classical, late antique and early medieval sources had on
thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth century representations of Helen by authors
including Guido de Columnis, Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate. The early accounts
of Ovid, Virgil and Dares the Phrygian provide representations of Helen, and these
models were adopted enthusiastically by later authors. However, even when they
translate closely, medieval authors do not use their classical and late antique
models uncritically. Rather, I aim to show that each author dealt with in this paper
refines the model(s) he inherits, adding, eliding and altering, and in so doing renders
Helen anew, in keeping with medieval expectations and literary taste, and authorial
preference.
As a key figure in the mythical Trojan War, an event which exercised such a powerful sway over
the imagination of English and continental writers throughout the Middle Ages and beyond,
Helen of Troy features, often prominently, in literary accounts of the war produced during
this period. Medieval writers such as Robert Mannyng, Gower, Chaucer and Lydgate used the
Latin classics (particularly the Aeneid of Virgil and Ovid’s Heroides) in their accounts of the
Trojan prince Paris’ abduction of Helen, of her husband Menelaus’ anger, and of the resultant
war between Greece and Troy. These classical accounts also inevitably influenced medieval
depictions of major Greek and Trojan figures, including Helen. However, medieval writers also
used other, late antique and early medieval sources for their Troy stories, thus encountering other versions of Helen on which to build. Using their classical models and these later
re-modellings, medieval English authors rewrote and recreated Helen in accordance with
their own visions, and also with medieval societal preference. Here, I aim to show how and
why Helen was so frequently reconsidered and recreated in the period, and to highlight the
tensions that could and did spring up between history and literature, and classical text and
medieval re-rendering.
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Heavey – Remodelling Helen of Troy
Latin Helen: the Influence of the Aeneid and the Heroides.
The lack of knowledge of ancient Greek in the Middle Ages meant that many important early
renderings of Helen were relatively unknown in England until the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Despite authors such as Chaucer and Lydgate referring to Homer by name, they
were not familiar with the sympathetic Helen of the Iliad, who attacks Paris scornfully, tells
Aphrodite “I am not going to him. It would be too shameful. / I will not serve his bed, since
the Trojan women hereafter / would laugh at me, all, and my heart even now is confused with
sorrows,”1 and bitterly regrets her tryst with Paris, blaming the gods for her actions and their
terrible consequences. Two other notable losses were the mysterious drug-concocting Helen
of the Odyssey, who, though back in Greece with Menelaus, admits trying to trick the men inside the Trojan horse into giving themselves away. Apparently the perfect hostess and symbol
of domestic bliss, Mihoko Suzuki calls her “an inassimilable and sinister presence in her own
house.”2 Thirdly, though Servius’ fouth century commentary on the Aeneid refers to the story,
the Middle Ages missed out on Euripides’ fifth century BC drama Helen, in which she never
reached Troy, but was stranded blamelessly in Egypt, at the mercy of Pharaoh Theoclymenos,
while the Greeks and Trojans fought and died for a “breathing phantom,”3 constructed by the
gods in Helen’s image to stir up discord and prolong the war.
Instead of these fascinating, but problematically contradictory representations of Helen,
writers in the Middle Ages could look to Virgil and Ovid as classical sources, and in the works
of these two writers would have found a far more cohesive picture of Helen. In the Aeneid,
though she appears only very briefly and does not speak, Helen is characterised negatively. To
Aeneas, who comes across her cowering in the ruins of Troy, just after his emotive account of
Priam’s slaughter, she is “a common Fury,”4 destructive to both Greeks and Trojans, despite
her apparent passivity in this version of the story. Her presence in Troy rouses fury in Aeneas,
who recalls: “Now fires blazed up in my mind - / Anger came upon me to avenge my fatherland / And punish Helen’s wickedness.”5 Though Venus’ intervention saves Helen at this
point, in Book Six Aeneas’ anger appears to have been justified, as during his journey through
the Underworld he meets the shade of Deiphobus, his brother and Helen’s third husband,
who recounts how she stole his sword and let Menelaus into their house to kill him. Virgil’s
Helen is a threat all the more sinister because of her silence, a woman whose reappearance in
the crumbling city significantly follows the horrifying slaughter of Priam (symbol of the city’s
rebirth, and Helen’s staunchest ally in the Iliad). She is figured as destructive not just to the
city, not just to Paris, not just to Deiphobus, but to all men – Aeneas believes her death can
avenge the deaths of many (the logical extension of the Iliadic complaint that her life is not
worth the lives of so many). Ironically, though, here she is a threat to Aeneas and his family
too, despite the Trojan’s apparent control over the situation, and Venus must appear to warn
him that Helen is fatally delaying him on his journey, as Dido is to do later.
Helen is mentioned briefly in the Metamorphoses in Ovid’s account of the Trojan War, and
she is pictured in Book Fifteen mourning the loss of her looks. In the Heroides, though, Helen
1 Homer, The Iliad, 3.410–412.
2 Suzuki, Metamorphoses of Helen, 55.
3 Euripides. Medea: Hippolytus, Electra, Helen, 34.
4 “communis Erinys.” Virgil, Aeneid, 2.573. Translations from the Aeneid are my own.
5 “exarsere ignes animo; subit ira cadentem / ulcisci patriam et sceleratas sumere poenas.”
Ibid., 2.575–6.
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Kaleidoscope 2(1) – 2008
is a key figure. In her reply to Paris’ amorous letter suggesting an elopement, she is given
her own voice, and accordingly appears a more sympathetic character than her Virgilian
predecessor. While Paris comes across as merely lustful and impulsive in his letter, insisting
that Venus has promised him Helen as his right, Helen struggles with the implications of
their strong mutual attraction, begging Paris “while it is new, let us rather fight against the
love we have begun to feel!”6 and worrying about the consequences of an elopement. However, her desire for Paris, her scorn for her husband’s naivety, and the clear willingness to go
with him that is indicated by pronouncements such as “what you basely urge on me, would
that you could in honour compel me to! You should have cast out by force the scruples of
my rustic heart”7 show her to be a troubling and uncontrollable woman. Accordingly, to the
medieval reader, the Ovidian and Virgilian Helens readily complemented one another. Both
classical texts showcase a Helen who is to some degree threatening, specifically because of
her disregard for the strictures of legitimate marriage, and the devastating effect she has on
men. Accordingly, though the Heroides is more sympathetic, both classical models of Helen
paved the way for medieval portrayals of a transgressively lust-filled and disobedient woman,
and linked this behaviour with its terrible consequences.
“the Phrygian master”: Dictys, Dares and the (Re)growth of
Misogynist Attacks on Helen
In Texts and Transmission, L. D. Reynolds lists Ovid’s Heroides and Virgil’s works as circulating in the ninth century, and notes that by the thirteenth, “manuscripts of Ovid are so
common as to be almost a feature of the period.”8 Meanwhile commentaries on the Aeneid
by writers such as Servius and Bernard Silvestris, redactions of the story such as Dracontius’
fifth century De Raptu Helenae, or the anonymous Excidium Troiae, and references to her
in works such as Hyginus’ Fabulae or the writings of the so-called “Vatican Mythographers,”
meant that between late antiquity and the Middle Ages, Helen’s story continued to circulate.
Indeed, even the Iliadic story was known in some form by the Middle Ages, due to redactions
such as the Ilias Latina of Baebius Italicus. (Although, as George A. Kennedy notes, this
version elides some of Helen’s most important appearances in the Iliad. She only appears
in Book Three, condemning Paris for his part in the war, but even here her anger is muted
and she appears significantly more passive. Accordingly, it is far from an entirely faithful
rendering of Homer’s poem.)9
6 “dum novus est, potius coepto pugnemus amori!” Ovid, Heroides and Amores, 17.189.
7 “quod male persuades, utinam bene cogere posses! / vi mea rusticitas excutienda fuit.” Ibid.,
17.185–6.
8 Reynolds, Texts and Transmission, xxxvii.
9 See The Latin Iliad, ed. and trans. Kennedy. Kennedy notes “Helen’s rebuke of Paris in Iliad
3.428–36 is sarcastic and unsympathetic; Italicus gives her speech a more pathetic tone.”
Ibid., 51n40. In fact, Italicus alters far more than this would suggest, and Helen’s speech
stands in direct contrast to that of her Iliadic forebear. Homer’s Helen exclaims “Oh how I
wish you had died there / beaten down by a stronger man, who was once my husband.” Ibid.,
3.428–429. Italicus’ confesses “Alas for me, I feared lest the Doric sword / would end our
kisses; my mind was overcome, / all color fled my cheeks, and the blood had left my limbs”
[Nostraque –me miseram!—timui ne Doricus ensis / oscula discuteret; totus mihi, mente
revincta, / fugerat ore color sanguisque reliquerat artus. Ibid., 324–6].
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Heavey – Remodelling Helen of Troy
By far the most important and influential renderings of Helen’s story in late antiquity,
however, were the works of Dictys of Crete and particularly Dares the Phrygian.10 Indeed,
though A. K. Bate points to texts such as the Heroides and the Aeneid, and authors such as
Statius and the Vatican Mythographers, all of which contributed to medieval knowledge of
the Troy story, he argues that “while these authors were used for individual details or events
they never provided the whole story or influenced the main stream of Trojan legend” and
points instead to the pre-eminence of the “Dares-Dictys tradition.”11 Generally dated to the
fourth and sixth centuries AD respectively,12 these works purport to be eyewitness accounts
of the war, which had been translated into Latin from Greek originals.13 Dictys’ Ephemeridos
Belli Troiani Libri tells the story of the war from the Greek point of view, while Dares’ De
Excidio Troiae Historia takes the side of the Trojans. Both accounts, though, are scathingly
critical of Helen, and it is clearly apparent firstly that both elaborate extensively on the story
that they found in Homer and other classical sources, and secondly that both (particularly
Dares) were key influences on later versions of the story. Dictys, for example, picks up on
the Iliadic Helen’s admission that she left with Paris willingly (as Heroides XVII also inescapably implies). Dictys’ Helen “had not sailed, she said, unwillingly, for her marriage to
Menelaus did not suit her.”14 There is no mention, however, of the divine intervention that in
the Iliad is so often blamed for the war and for Troy’s fate, and accordingly both Helen and
Paris appear more culpable. Indeed, Dictys includes unfavourable authorial interjections of
a kind absent from the Iliad, but much loved by later medieval authors such as Boccaccio or
Guido de Columnis. He notes that Helen begs the Trojans not to abandon her, before observing “it was by no means clear why she preferred to look after her interests in this way. Was
it because of her immodest love for Alexander,15 or because of her fear of the punishment
her husband would exact for desertion?”16 For his part, Dares also criticises Helen for her
10 McKay Sundwall notes that during the Middle Ages “except for Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s use
of the Latin Dictys as source for the concluding section of his Roman de Troie – the return
of the Greek heroes to their homes – the details of the Ephemeris [Dictys’ work] were not
generally known in Western Europe.” Sundwall, “Deiphobus and Helen: A Tantalizing Hint,”
154. Despite this, the account is mentioned here due to Dictys’ influence on Benoît, and
thus in turn on Guido de Columnis (or delle Colonne), one of the most important medieval
chroniclers of the Trojan War. Moreover, the critical accounts of Helen included in Dares and
Dictys are broadly similar, despite their opposing viewpoints of the war.
11 Joseph of Exeter, Trojan War I–III, 14.
12 See, for example, Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. However,
though the version of Dictys that survives dates from the fourth century, Bate (below) notes
the existence of an earlier Greek original.
13 Bate notes that “Dictys’ text exists in a Latin version which a 4th c. Lucius Septimus said he
had translated from the Greek, faithfully as regards the first five books but greatly abridged as
regards the last four. Despite much dismissal of Lucius’ claims in the past, it is now obvious
that he was telling the truth, for we possess fragments of the original Greek text […] which
corroborate his words.” He goes on to suggest “Dictys’ account of the war, translated into
Latin, probably inspired some enterprising author to forge a Trojan view of the events, and
sometime between the 4th c. and the 7th c. came into existence the Historia de Excidio Troiae
of Dares Phrygius.” Joseph of Exeter, The Trojan War, ed. and trans. Bate, 14–16.
14 “ferunt dixisse neque se invitam navigasse, neque sibi / cum Menelai matrimonio convenire”
Dictys of Crete, Ephemeridos Belli Troiani Libri, 1.10.4–5. Translations of Dictys and Dares
are taken from Dictys of Crete and Dares the Phrygian, Ephemeridos Belli Troiani Libri and
De Excidio Troiae Historia, trans. and ed. R. M. Frazer.
15 An alternative name for Paris.
16 “utrum inmodico amore / Alexandri, an poenarum metu, quas ob desertam / domum a coniuge
metuebat, ita sibi consulere maluerit, parum constabat,” Dictys, Ephemeridos Belli Troani
Libri, 1.9.11–14. In Heroides XVII.227–8, Helen fears she will not enjoy the support of the
Trojans if she goes with Paris. Meanwhile in the Aeneid, Aeneas reflects with disgust that
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Kaleidoscope 2(1) – 2008
transgression, and portrays the powerful and destructive attraction between the pair – Paris
arrives in Greece, and “they spent some time just staring, struck by each other’s beauty.”17
This strongly Ovidian desire (played down by the regretful Helen of the Iliad) survives into
medieval accounts, where it is often given an even more negative, and specifically a misogynist slant – Helen is criticised for seeking out Paris, having heard of his beauty, and for
adorning herself before meeting him.
Important too are the numerous debates over Helen’s worth (and specifically the wisdom
of keeping her) in both the Ephemeridos Belli Troiani Libri and De Excidio Troiae Historia.
Of course, much of the Iliad is taken up with discussion of the war, but Helen herself is
infrequently referenced. Here, due in part to the much shorter lengths of the texts, the unsympathetic attitudes of Dictys and Dares are obvious, as is the extent to which their disgust
comes to focus on Helen. Dares, for example, builds on the complaint Achilles makes to
the embassy of Greeks in the Iliad, having him focus the blame more obviously on Helen:
“Achilles complained, to any and everyone, that for the sake of one woman, that is, Helen,
all Europe and Greece were in arms, and now, for a very long time, thousands of men had
been dying.”18 Indeed, here Achilles retreats from battle not in a fit of anger over the loss of
his concubine, but through frustration that Agamemnon will not consider making peace, and
accordingly Helen, the woman for whom Agamemnon insists they must continue to fight,
is figured as even more divisive to male community than she is in classical accounts, and
actively obstructive to male peace.
The passionate, conniving and blameworthy Helen they found in Dares and Dictys would
have appealed to medieval writers, according as it did with the portrayals of Ovid and Virgil.
The apparent historicity of the texts, and accordingly their portrayals of Helen, meant that
Dictys and particularly Dares were hugely influential in the Middle Ages (though they were
often known only through adaptations),19 and indeed were often favoured over the abridged
and redacted versions of Homer that were known at the time. In fact, in the introduction to
his twelfth-century Iliad (not a translation of Homer, but rather his own version of the Troy
story), Joseph of Exeter explicitly rejects the versions of the earlier classical authors in favour
of Dares, his principal source:20
Should I admire Homer, that old man of Maeonia, or Roman Vergil – or the
Phrygian master, Dares, who was there and to whom his eyes, a more certain
guide, revealed the war which fable did not know? When the towering hope of
my heart has eagerly drunk from this source, what Gods need I invoke? 21
James Simpson has suggested that the later popularity of Dictys and Dares can be traced to
the texts’ claims to be true, their elision of the supernatural and the classical gods, and the
Helen is hiding from the righteous indignation of Menelaus.
17 “se utrique respexissent, ambo forma sua incensi tempus / dederunt, ut gratiam referent.”
Dares the Phrygian, De Excidio Troiae Historia, 10.19–20.
18 “Achilles queritur in vulgus, unius / mulieris Helenae causa totam Graeciam et Europam /
convocatam esse, tanto tempore tot milia hominum perisse” (27.4–7), ibid.
19 In “The Sege of Troy,” Nathaniel E. Griffin notes: “Although English authors down to the time
of Lydgate constantly cite Dares, it is clear that, with the exception of Joseph of Exeter who
wrote in Latin, no one of them ever possessed a first hand acquaintance with that author but
that each of them derived his knowledge of the earlier history only through the medium of
Benoît and Guido.” Griffin, “The Sege of Troy,” 168n4.
20 The full title of Joseph’s work is sometimes given as The Iliad of Dares Phrygius, and otherwise
as De Bello Troiano, or The Trojan War. Gildas Roberts notes: “Joseph of Exeter drew almost
all his material from Dares, and used Dictys only fleetingly for his brief and hurried account
of the homecoming of the Greeks (on which topic Dares is silent).” Joseph of Exeter, The Iliad
of Dares Phrygius, trans. Gildas Roberts, ix.
21 Ibid., 3.
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Heavey – Remodelling Helen of Troy
sense instead that men make the decisions that affect their lives.22 Paul Strohm concurs,
finding that “the Troy legend was introduced into mediaeval Europe by works representing
themselves as faithful, historical accounts, and this pretension of historicity undoubtedly had
much to do with their success.”23 Dictys’ and Dares’ fraudulent claims to have witnessed the
events they described would have proved comforting to medieval writers as well as to historians, and ensured the continued transmission of their works. Both accounts may also have
proved popular because of their decision to recount far more of the story of Troy than earlier
authors such as Ovid and Virgil – one of the striking features of the medieval Troy narratives is
the desire to include the war in its entirety, as well as its build-up and (often) its aftermath.
Whatever the reasons for it, this reliance on Dictys and particularly Dares meant medieval
renderings of Helen’s story are often far more condemnatory than genuine classical accounts.
Perhaps most significantly, they deviate from many classical accounts in their desire to highlight Helen’s blame and the threat she poses to a harmonious masculine community. Moreover, medieval accounts that draw on and extend the accounts of the pair found in Dares or the
classical tradition often highlight Helen’s transgressive crimes to link them specifically, and
anachronistically, to her deviation from the accepted norms of medieval feminine behaviour.
Romance, Misogyny and Remodelling Helen in the Twelfth
and Thirteenth Centuries
The importance of Dictys and Dares to the literature of the Middle Ages, as witnessed by
repeated references to them by authors such as Chaucer and Lydgate (who may never have
encountered the originals) was due to the use of the Latin texts by two twelfth-century writers, Joseph of Exeter and Benoît de Sainte-Maure, French author of the Roman de Troie. Both
authors, writing apparently independently of one another in the mid- to late-twelfth century,24
reworked the late antique material they had inherited, and in so doing radically re-imagined
Helen.
Joseph’s piece is often ferociously critical of Helen, far more so than Dictys and Dares, portraying her as avaricious, sexually insatiable and devious. In a typical authorial aside, of the
kind common in Dictys’ and Dares’ work (though here apparently even more squarely aimed
against Helen), he reassures a doubting Paris “O illustrious thief, do not be impatient. Your
hand is golden and will win her for you. Your wealth has more power than your tongue; there
is no need for Cicero’s support when riches are making their plea.” In a clear reference to
the Heroides, he remarks that Helen “was willing to be forced” when she went with Paris, and
once she had arrived in Troy, he contrasts the Trojans’ initial happiness to have her with his
own damning assessment, which invests her with much of the blame.25 He observes:
The palace, adorned at the king’s command, was gay with festive trappings, and
adulterous Hymen lifted high the shameful torches. It would have been better
if a great pall of darkness had enshrouded this filthy piece of work. What good
does it do to trick about abomination with a holy name? Dry rot, working within,
22 Simpson, “The Other Book of Troy,” 397–423.
23 Strohm, “Storie, Spelle, Geste, Romaunce, Tragedie,” 348.
24 Benoît’s work is generally dated to the 1160s, and Joseph’s to the 1180s. Bate notes that “it
would be tempting to think that Joseph was influenced by Benoît in view of their links with the
court of Henry II,” but cautions “it would probably be a mistake.” Joseph of Exeter, The Trojan
War, ed. Bate, 21.
25 Ibid., 34.
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Kaleidoscope 2(1) – 2008
covers itself with gold leaf, the wolf covers itself with the fleece of the lamb,
the running sore covers itself with fine linen; but no amount of deception can
hide infamy: a woman cannot be the wife of two husbands, for as long as the
first marriage stands, she is not the wife of the second, but merely bedroom
spoils.26
These grotesque images of decay and rot superficially covered with either finery (gold leaf
and linen), or the appearance of innocence (a lamb’s fleece), recall the Virgilian image of
Helen as an insidious threat, a prefiguring of the Trojan horse, attractive without but fatally
threatening within. Joseph augments this idea by adapting the more sustained attacks on
Helen to be found in Dictys and Dares, but typically extends their criticisms graphically.
For example, he appears to find Helen’s sexuality deeply alarming – picking up on the hints
contained in their flirtatious exchange of letters in the Heroides, and Dictys’ and Dares’ accounts of their voyage back to Troy, he includes a description of the couple’s first encounter
onboard Paris’ ship. In its account of Helen’s avarice and her wanton desire and control over
Paris, this episode seems to epitomise her negative characterisation in the piece. Joseph
notes of Paris:
He heaped on her the ivory of India, the incense of Arabia, gold from the rivers
of Midas, bolts of silk from China, and the riches of Asia: all the mirth of the
sky, all the brightness of the ocean, all the ripeness of the land. These things
bought him a compliant bed, tamed her rebellious embraces, and fixed her
loyalty. No longer did she hold back from kissing him first, or deny him kisses
in return; but flinging her whole body on him, she unlocked her loins, attacked
him with her mouth, and stole his hidden organ. Then when Venus expired, the
conspiring purple covers bore witness to the secret dew. O wickedness! Were
you able, you worst of women, to delay such passionate desires? Was pleasure
waiting for a buyer? O amazing power of the tender sex! A woman can make
violent lust wait on gain, and does not deign to give way to joy unless her
laughter has been paid for!27
Joseph is very obviously picking up firstly on the negative light the Aeneid and Heroides cast
on Helen’s character, and secondly on the explicitly critical accounts of Dictys and Dares.
At the same time, he reworks even these critical accounts, making them more negative, and
arguably reflective of his own anxiety about supposedly “typical” feminine traits (avarice
and lasciviousness), and how devastatingly these traits were to impact on the male communities of Greece and particularly Troy.28
The other significant twelfth-century account, Benoît’s Roman, reworks the model provided by Dares in an intriguingly different way. Strohm notes that despite its title, the text:
[ … ] presents itself as a roman only in regard to its vernacular language, and
otherwise as an estoire. Benoît poses as a simple translator, putting the story
into the vernacular for those who cannot read Latin [ … ] Benoît remains silent
about his own substantial additions to the story, evidently feeling that the
pretence and outward appearance of historicity were vital to his success.29
Benoît, then, like Dictys, Dares and the later authors who so self-consciously use these
names as authorities, attempts to legitimise what is actually a new and innovative render26 Ibid., 37.
27 Joseph of Exeter, The Trojan War, ed. Bate, 36.
28 Indeed, George A. Kennedy argues that in their first sexual encounter here, “it is Helen who
rapes Paris,” a role-reversal that in many ways utterly epitomises what would have been, to
the medieval male reader, a deeply disturbing example of female sexual power. Kennedy,
“Helen’s Husbands and Lovers,” 152.
29 Strohm, “Storie, Spelle, Geste,” 349.
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Heavey – Remodelling Helen of Troy
ing by representing it merely as a translation of an eyewitness account into the vernacular
French. In fact, though, he adds and alters far more than he translates, and despite Strohm’s
observation that the author himself seems keen to avoid the characterisation of his story as a
romance, possibly to avoid compromising its veracity, additions such as lengthy descriptions
of nature, digressions on his characters’ private feelings and reflections, and some stock
romantic imagery mean that the story is frequently characterised as such. Indeed, Margaret
J. Ehrhart notes that “Benoît set the fashion for the Trojan War as vernacular romance, and
henceforth no classiciser would be able to undo what he had done.”30
Predictably, his interest in romanticising the story means that Benoît draws on the Heroides
as well as Dares in his lengthy account of Paris and Helen’s first meeting. He may also have
drawn on Dracontius, whose De Raptu Helenae, itself inspired by Ovid, seems far more interested in the tropes and conventions of romance – long sea voyages, descriptions of the lovers
and their desires, accounts of Helen’s beauty – than do the critical, determinedly “historical”
accounts of Dictys and Dares. Indeed, Benoît includes a Dracontian innovation, that the pair
meet in “a marvellous rich temple, very ancient and ornate.”31 Meanwhile, echoes of Dracontius, Ovid and Dares are found in Benoît’s observation that the pair are quickly infatuated:
“They see each other and speak, which they do only briefly, but Love is born between he
and she, because of which they will depart.”32 Ovidian too is Benoît’s observation that Helen
“expressed her consent well.”33 What does not seem Ovidian, however, is his suggestion that
Helen “cried loudly and showed her pain, / And softly complained / She missed her lord
often.”34 Dares notes very briefly that Helen was sad when she left Troy, and Paris attempted
to raise her spirits. However, here, and later when Paris comforts her, Benoît is embellishing
his earlier models, heightening the emotional impact of the narrative and writing Helen in
accordance with romance ideals.
As this would suggest, Benoît’s Helen is often more passive than her classical predecessors. When Paris attempts to comfort her, himself adopting the role of chivalric hero and
assuring her “my lady, your wishes will be done and accomplished,”35 Helen wilfully rejects
power (particularly the power she enjoyed on the Dracontian voyage, where she reassured
Paris). Instead she occupies her generically appropriate role as romance heroine and conquered woman, telling Paris that her only power, now, lies in acceding to his wishes. Later too,
she stands on the city’s walls watching the battle, but appears even less powerful than her
Iliadic counterpart, who watches the Greeks arrive and names them for Priam. In the Roman,
conversely, Helen is permitted neither speech, nor any agency beyond her own silent regret.
30 Ehrhart, The Judgement of the Trojan Prince Paris in Medieval Literature, 44.
31 ��
“Un riche temple merveillos, / Mout anciën e precios,” Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman
de Troie, ed. Leopold Constans, 1.4261–2. Translations of the Roman are my own. In his
commentary on Dracontius’ work, Etienne notes that “the choice of a temple as the place
of the first meeting between Paris and Helen is the innovation of Dracontius.” [Le choix
d’un temple comme lieu de première rencontre entre Pâris et Hélène est une innovation de
Dracontius.] Dracontius, Oeuvres, ed. and trans. Etienne Wolff, 163. Translations of Wolff’s
notes are my own.
32 “El veeir e el parlement / Que il firent assez briefment, / Navra Amors e lui e li, / Ainz qu’il se
fussent departi.” Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman de Troie, 1.4355–8.
33 ���������������������������������������������������
“Bien fist semblant del consentir,” ibid., 1.4506.
34 ��
“fortment plorot et duel faiseit, / E doucement se complaigneit. / Son seignor regretot sovent.”
Ibid. 1.4621–3. Ovid’s Helen tells Paris she is happy with the choice of husband she has
made: however, she also tells him she had to contain her laughter when Menelaus charged her
with taking care of Paris.
35 �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
“Dame […] vostre voleir / Sera si fait e acompli,” Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman de Troie,
1.4730–1.
11
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However, despite his emphasis on Helen’s sensitivity, ironically, Benoît’s account provides the model for one of the most concerted attacks on her character in the Middle Ages.
This is because the most important aspect of Benoît’s Roman, as far as later representations
of Helen are concerned, is its influence on Guido de Columnis’ deeply misogynist Historia
Destructionis Troiae, completed in 1287. The Historia is a Latin translation of Benoit’s work
(though it does not advertise itself as such, claiming instead to draw directly on Dares). It
is a translation with significant additions and alterations, however, and once again a new
Helen emerges with a new text. Specifically, though he follows the basic outline of the story
that he inherits from Benoît, Guido makes critical and often virulently misogynist additions
to Benoît’s observations. For example, Judy Kem notes the subtlety of Guido’s attack on
Helen’s looks:
Like Benoît, Guido describes Helen’s beauty but in greater detail. However,
Guido’s misogynistic attitudes surface in his surprisingly negative description.
In Book Seven, he praises Helen by negation, as though she were beautiful
only because she was not ugly [ … ] in Book 23 Guido describes the innocent
Polyxena at greater length and in much more complimentary terms than he
does Helen.36
Moreover, Kem notes the different treatments Benoît and Guido give to the pair’s first meeting – in Guido’s Historia, even the romance elements he feels he must include provide fertile
ground for an attack on Helen and women in general:
Benoît and Guido amplify the sketchy details offered by Dares, but Guido’s
Historia is [ … ] much more misogynistic and moralistic than Benoît’s romance.
For example, Benoît describes a feast in celebration of Venus on the island of
Cythera, and Helen and Paris’ love is an inevitable mutual attraction between
an exceptionally handsome man and the most beautiful woman. Guido, though,
censures Helen by beginning the love story with a long diatribe against attending
dances and festive celebrations like the one on Cythera.37
Guido, in fact, deviates from his description of their meeting to deliver an extensive polemic
on women’s place, not only condemning their propensity to transgress physical and moral
boundaries, but also, in Book Seven, comparing the ideal woman to a ship, an inanimate
object of course controlled by men:
O how women ought to be grateful for the boundaries of their homes and
with integrity stick to their bounds and limits! For a ship would never suffer
shipwreck if it were to stand in port, not sailing to foreign parts.38
As these examples suggest, Guido, like Joseph, finds Helen’s transgressive desire for Paris,
and her refusal to be bound by the ties of her marriage to Menelaus, to be deeply troubling
and worthy of criticism. Thus, his reworking of the model Benoît’s story provides reflects this
anxiety. It is worth noting that, following Benoît, Guido also recounts other love stories that
occur within and around the Trojan War, including the affairs of Jason and Medea and Troilus
and Briseis, and that the other women whose tales he tells also provide the opportunity for
misogynist diatribe – Briseis, for example, is made to represent all women who “cry from
36 ������
Kem, Jean Lemaire de Belges’s “Les Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye,” 34–5.
37 �����������
Ibid., 37.
38 ��
“O quam grati feminis esse debent earum domorum termini et honestatis earum fines et
limites conservare! Nunquam enim navis sentiret dissuta navfragium si continuo suo staret in
portu, in partes non navigans alienas.” Guido de Columnis, Historia Destructionis Troiae, 71.
Translations of Guido’s Historia are my own.
12
Heavey – Remodelling Helen of Troy
one eye, and laugh with the other.”39 Here, then, though the attacks on Helen may seem intensely personal, in fact they are not so – rather Guido is taking a notorious classical woman,
and a medieval text that purports to represent true events, and, using an existing framework,
is rewriting these two models for his own didactic ends.
Guido’s account was hugely popular and influential in the Middle Ages – as with Dares’
and Benoît’s texts, its claims to historical accuracy legitimised it, while the romance touches
that survived from Benoît’s version, the vein of misogynist criticism, and the importance of
themes such as male honour and warfare meant that it accorded with medieval literary taste.
It influenced European authors such as Boccaccio who, as Glenda McLeod observes, uses
Helen and her sexual desire to exemplify “the ill effects of unchastity to the state.”40 Accordingly Boccaccio extends Guido’s criticism of Helen’s beauty (and specifically her preparations for seeing Paris) and plays up her flagrant sexuality even further, observing dismissively
in De Claris Mulieribus that “all Greece was aroused by Helen’s wantonness.”41 Guido’s text
also provided a model for English representations of the Troy story, and of Helen, into the
fifteenth century, either directly or through intermediary writers who used Guido’s text, such
as Boccaccio or the anonymous fourteenth-century author of the Ovide Moralisé.
“the fairest of feturs formyt in erthe”: Models of Helen in the
English Middle Ages
By the mid-fourteenth century, the existence of the accounts of Joseph of Exeter, Benoît de
Sainte-Maure, and Guido de Columnis, as well as the increased circulation of manuscripts
of the Aeneid and Heroides, and the medieval taste for commentaries on classical texts,
meant that authors had multiple subtly different manifestations of Helen to draw upon
(although the broad similarities between the Helens, particularly with regard to their negative characteristics, are of course apparent). In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some
writers, including John Lydgate and John Clerk, aimed at refining and rewriting these earlier
accounts (particularly that of Guido) – as always, though, subtle differences between source
text and new creation betray the desire to rework and remodel Helen’s representation, along
with the story as a whole. Concurrent to this, in the fourteenth century authors including
Gower, Chaucer and the anonymous English author of The Seege or Batayle of Troye do not
aim simply to re-render Guido’s, Benoît’s or Dares’s stories. Rather they take the themes
these earlier stories have suggested, the framework they have provided and the historical
accuracy they promise, and rework both story and character in innovative ways.
The Seege or Batayle of Troye is dated by Mary Elizabeth Barnicle to “the first quarter of
the fourteenth century.”42 Barnicle notes the Seege’s debt to Dares, arguing that:
From the similarities between the Seege and Dares and from the instances
in which the Seege appears to follow Dares more closely the Benoît, it seems
certain that the English poet did know and use Dares. The plan of the Seege is
the plan of Dares and consistent use of the text of Dares is made throughout
the poem. 43
39 ��
“unus oculus lacrimatur, ridet alius.” Ibid., 164.
40 Glenda McLeod, Virtue and Venom, 69.
41 ���������������������
Giovanni Boccaccio, On Famous Women, 75.
42 The Seege or Batayle of Troye, ed. Barnicle, xxx.
43 Ibid, lvii – lviii.
13
Kaleidoscope 2(1) – 2008
Equally, Bate suggests an additional source text, and argues that “The Excidium Troiae, or a
text very similar to it [ … ] lies behind the fourteenth-century English Seege of Troy.”44 Elmer
Bagby Atwood and Virgil K. Whitaker, the modern editors of the anonymous Latin Excidium
Troiae, disagree with Barnicle’s suggestion that the author of the Seege used an extended,
now lost version of Le Roman de Troie to supply episodes not contained in Dares, noting:
[ … ] the episodes are essentially classical in nature, and are clearly remnants
of a tradition not only widely different from Dares and Benoit, but entirely
contradictory to those accounts – a tradition in which divine caprice [ … ] was
the original cause of the Trojan War.45
At the same time, they refute the suggestion that the author went directly to Latin texts
to find elements of the story not present in Dares. They point out that a medieval author
would have had to have read Ovid, Statius, Hyginus and Apollodorus to have found all the
disparate elements in the stories, and argue that “the supposition that these writers drew
their information from the Latin classics would place upon them a burden of scholarship
which the author of the Seege, at least, is unable to bear.”46 They suggest some form of the
Excidium Troiae and/or the medieval Compendium Historia Troianae-Romanae as a source
for the Seege,47 and also for other thirteenth- and fourteenth-century vernacular Troy stories,
although, as they note, “the later followers of Guido usually followed him faithfully, and
no doubt regarded major alterations and interpolations as presumptuous and somewhat
impious.”48
If, as Atwood and Whitaker argue, the author of the Seege does draw on the Excidium
Troiae as a text that conveniently drew together details he was unlikely to have found separately elsewhere, he has done so judiciously in his representation of Helen. For example, in
the Excidium Troiae, Helen is, typically, captivated by Paris. Here, though, in contrast to
other medieval accounts, Venus is responsible for her desire, and accordingly, like the Iliadic
Helen, the Helen of the Excidium Troiae may initially seem similarly helpless. However, she
goes on to take a far more active role in her own abduction, and indeed the theft of Menelaus’ treasure. She tells Paris forthrightly “if you desire it also, I wish you to take me as your
wife,”49 explains how he may “abduct” her, and tells him that her servants will help them
load the ship with Menelaus’ treasure. Paris tells her: “And if this pleases you, queen, it will
be done along with your other desires.”50 In Guido, Paris makes a similar pronouncement,
assuring Helen “most noble queen, whatever you were to order, will be carried out without
fail.”51 In the Excidium Troiae, however, Helen is far more obviously in control, and Paris’
assurance has a very different emphasis, underlining his complicity rather than his control
over the situation.
44 Ibid, 19.
45 Excidium Troiae, ed. Atwood and Whitaker, xxv. Of the surviving version of the Excidium
Troiae, the editors note “[it] is clearly a redaction and not an original medieval work.” Ibid.,
xxxi. That is, it is evidence of an earlier classical narrative which included all the details that
feature in the Seege and other medieval Troy-narratives, but are not in Dares or Benoît.
46 Ibid., xxvi.
47 They note, for example, that “one manuscript of the Seege […] mentions Paris’ ruse of
pretending to be a merchant when questioned as to his identity.” Ibid., xxxiii. This detail is
found in the Excidium Troiae and the Compendium.
48 ����������
Ibid, li.
49 ��
“Vellem, si etiam et tu vis, me hinc duceres uxorem.” Ibid., 8. Quotations from the Excidium
Troiae are from Atwood and Whitaker’s edition of the poem. Translations of the Excidium
Troiae are my own.
50 “Et si hoc placet regine, compleatur desiderium utrorumque.” Ibid., 8.
51 “Nobilissima domina, quecunque mandaveris, infallibiliter implebuntur.” Ibid., 77.
14
Heavey – Remodelling Helen of Troy
Though he preserves the involvement of the classical gods, in contrast to Dares and to later
authors who follow Guido and Benoît more closely, the author of the Seege does not follow
the model of the Excidium Troiae unquestioningly. He rejects this text’s controlling and selfassured Helen in favour of the more passive Helen of Dares, Guido or Benoît, who goes with
Paris willingly, but does not exhibit quite such a worrying degree of control over the situation.
A similar impulse can be seen in the account of the abduction given by Robert Mannyng in
his mid-fourteenth-century Story of England. F. J. Furnivall notes that “there is but little in
Robert of Brunne’s English which is not a translation of Wace’s French chronicle.”52 However,
he identifies the abduction episode as an addition, and Atwood and Whitaker point to Paris’
disguising himself as a merchant to argue that Mannyng too may have drawn on the Excidium
Troiae. Like the author of the Seege, however, if he does draw on the Excidium Troiae, Mannyng reshapes the unsatisfactory Helen he finds there. Mannyng’s Helen is utterly powerless
– none of her words are recorded by the poet, and when Venus suggests to Paris that he might
lure Helen onto his ship (and sail away before she realises) by promising to show her his treasure, she must beg for Menelaus’ permission to make the visit: “Night and day she went to
great pains / To have win permission from the king / To see that same wealth.” 53 To Paris she
is a possession, a prize deservedly won, and unlike many of his medieval counterparts the author pointedly refuses to comment on her own feelings at the success of Paris’ underhanded
trick, noting merely: “I can say nothing of that lady / Whether she was glad or sorry.”54
As these sometimes clumsy attempts to stifle the alarming Helens they came across in
their reading may suggest, fourteenth-century authors continue to echo Guido in their willingness to create as well as to suppress. The author of the Seege is willing to build on his
sources, and typically, in doing so can often portray Helen negatively. For example, his Helen
weeps affectingly for Paris at his death, and yet her words, in clear contradiction of the facts
of her abduction, undermine her grief and seem aimed at excusing her from blame:
alisaunder, welaway,
Why fattest þou me fro grece away
Wiþ streynþe hider to beo þy wyf?
Þere-fore hastow lost þy lyf.55
[Alas, Alexander,
Why did you take me from Greece
With force here to be your wife?
For this you have lost your life?]56
While Helen’s distress is initially affecting, especially in the context of an account that gives
her so little voice, in fact the author manipulates an apparently positive portrayal of Helen.
The poet’s audience is aware that while Paris did take Helen “Wiþ streynþe”57 (“With force”),
and she did grieve for her actions after the fact, this does not correspond to a lack of desire
on her part. This curious departure from the facts as they have already been presented by the
author may well be intended to make Helen appear worse, more deceptive and manipulative.
At the same time, however, it may be the result of the author’s confusing attempts to combine
his sources to create a cohesive and recognisable Helen, palatable to a romance audience.
52 Robert Mannyng, The Story of England, xxi.
53 “Nyght & day sche dide hire peyne, / Of þe kynge to have grauntyse / To se þat ylke
marchaundyse.” Quotations from The Story of England are from Furnivall’s edition of the
poem. Mannyng, The Story of England, 674–6. Translations are my own.
54 “y kan nought sey of þat leuedy / Wheþer scheo was glad or sory.” Ibid., 699–700.
55 The Seege, ed. Barnicle, L1816–1819.
56 Translations of The Seege are my own.
57 Ibid., L1818.
15
Kaleidoscope 2(1) – 2008
The problems of how to fit Helen into a romance narrative, and how to respond to the
canonical texts that were widely circulated by this point, are addressed by Chaucer in Troilus
and Criseyde. When the poem is compared to other renderings of the Troy story between the
twelfth and fifteenth centuries, the differences are immediately apparent. Most obviously,
Chaucer does not take as his subject the abduction of Helen, or even the story of the war itself – his subject is the doomed love of Troilus and Criseyde, and the greater matter of the war
features only peripherally. As this would suggest, Helen’s role in the poem is not large, but
it is significant, and crucially charged with the weight of her previous literary incarnations.
Sundwall notes that Chaucer greatly extends the representation of Helen he found in his
source, Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato, observing that “although Helen appears briefly in Il Filostrato, she speaks no words.”58 There, Helen was merely incidental, a woman whose continued
presence in Troy was unavoidable due to the Trojan refusal to give her up. In Chaucer’s poem,
she is a powerfully paradoxical figure – a warning to Criseyde about the devastating effects of
unchecked passion, and yet seemingly an example of how a woman may adapt happily and
successfully to apparently unfavourable circumstances imposed on her by men. Helen moves
silently through the city for much of the poem, but in choosing her to help broker the match
between Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer is making a calculated choice. As Christopher Baswell
and Paul Beekman Taylor note, by the time he came to write Troilus and Criseyde in the midfourteenth century, “Chaucer was in a position to exploit Helen’s multiplicity and variety of
associations,” since “his audience was certainly aware of the current image of Helen, both
popular and learned, both secular as history and religious as myth and allegory.”59
It is perhaps unsurprising, given how far representations of Helen often dwelt on her femininity and her negative feminine characteristics, that her most important role in the poem
sees her brought into contact with Criseyde, Chaucer’s female protagonist. When the two
meet at Deiphobus’ house,60 Baswell and Taylor note Helen’s personal involvement in Troilus
and Criseyde’s relationship, and in the couple’s dilemma over their impending separation:
It is Helen who leads and others who follow in praise of both Troilus and Criseyde,
Helen who offers practical advice (“tell Hector and Troilus”) to remedy Criseyde’s
plight, Helen whose wit and “goodly softe wyse” are meant to relieve Troilus’s
discomfort.61
However, they point to the inescapably negative connotations of Helen’s involvement in the
love affair, and argue that:
Through literal association in the plot, through overt comparisons, and through
subtler parallels with moments in Helen’s own history, Criseyde is endowed with
aspects of the Trojan queen’s beauty but also burdened with implications of her
infidelity and historical disastrousness.62
As a woman often in control of her own ravishment to a disturbing degree (or at the very least
often complicit with it), here Helen encourages another woman to take similar control of her
romantic destiny – Baswell and Taylor call her:
58 Sundwall, “Deiphobus and Helen,” 152.
59 Baswell and Taylor, “The Faire Queene Eleyne,” 294.
60 An episode which both McKay and Baswell and Taylor note as being Chaucer’s addition to
Boccaccio.
61 Baswell and Taylor, “The Faire Queene Eleyne,” 304.
62 Ibid., 302.
16
Heavey – Remodelling Helen of Troy
[ … ] first of all a reassuring if also enviable example for Criseyde of a woman at
peace and secure with immediate love, unconcerned with past attachments or
the present conflicts issuing from them.63
However, by this stage she has become such a weighted character, so burdened with her
previous literary representations, that any use of her to encourage love is obviously (and
intentionally) compromised. Chaucer spends little time dwelling on the war that is ultimately
to tear Troilus and Criseyde apart, but Helen’s existence in the city is a constant reminder of
it, and Troilus and Criseyde itself is an example of how medieval writers could take knowledge
of Helen’s story as assumed, and accordingly manipulate her as a literary device.64
This tendency is also seen in Helen’s frequent occurrence in literary catalogues in the Middle Ages. Of course, as she has from antiquity onwards, she appears in misogynist diatribes
such as Boccaccio’s De Claris Mulieribus, where she is used to condemn excessive lust, and
sometimes in defences of women, such as Christine de Pisan’s answer to Boccaccio, The
Book of the City of Ladies (in which she appears as an example of a woman who has suffered
for her beauty). Frequently, too, she and/or Paris are included in medieval texts among lists of
famous lovers – examples include Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Prologue and Book of the Duchess,
and Lydgate’s Temple of Glass, in which the dreamer sees a depiction of “feyre Eleyne, the
fresshe lusty qwene.” (“fair Helen, the young and beautiful queen”) 65 However, even if the
speaker in a medieval poem may represent them as simply examples of lovers, the extent to
which their story was known by the Middle Ages means that they have often been chosen by
the author to evoke specific associations in the medieval reader’s mind. This use of Paris and
Helen as a short-hand for the unhappy consequences of unwise or immoral love also appears
towards the conclusion of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, another poem which, like Troilus
and Criseyde and the poems which refer to the pair only fleetingly, relies on the existence
of previous models of Helen, and the resultant knowledge of her story. In contrast to these
works, though, Gower’s didactic message is explicitly clear, and while he does retell a story
of abduction and war that has become familiar, his authorial agenda once again affects his
portrayal of Helen.
Paris and Helen appear in Book Five of Confessio Amantis. The aim of the episode is to
condemn the sin of avarice (frequently connected with Helen in the Middle Ages). Specifically, Amans is told, Paris’ worst sin was his theft of Helen from a temple, a crime which he
63 Ibid., 305.
64 Indeed, Sundwall suggests that Chaucer’s reference to Helen and Deiphobus retiring into the
garden together in Book Two may constitute an arch reference to their future marriage, or even
to an affair that has already begun. He notes that in Dares’ account, “Deiphobus supports Paris
and defends Helen, but he dies in battle when Paris still lives,” and thus concludes “it is from
Vergil, if from nowhere else, that Chaucer undoubtedly learned of Deiphobus’s amorous link
with Helen.” Of course, as Sundwall notes, we only hear of this marriage in the Aeneid once
Deiphobus has already perished as a direct result of it, and thus to a medieval reader any link
between Helen and Deiphobus would only foreshadow his death, and underline the threat she
poses to man after man in the course of the war. Sundwall, “Deiphobus and Helen,” 152–154.
Baswell and Taylor also notice this detail, though they note some critical opposition to McKay’s
argument, observing that Mark Lambert “finds the suggestion to be ‘unattractive as well as
unnecessary’.” Baswell and Taylor, “The Faire Queene Eleyne,” 307n34.
65 Quotations from Lydgate’s Temple of Glass are from Julia Boffey’s edition of the poem. Boffey,
Fifteenth-Century English Dream Visions, 92–3. Translations are my own. It should perhaps
be noted that the Middle English Dictionary gives many different meanings for both “fresshe”
and “lusty”, some of which seem to hint at the misogynist criticism so often directed at
Helen. “Lusty”, for example, can also mean “tempting” “desirous” or “pleasure-seeking”, as
well as “lustful”. Lydgate’s use of the word thus seems deliberately ambiguous. Meanwhile,
of course, “qwene” could, in Lydgate’s day as in Shakespeare’s, mean “whore” as well as
“noblewoman”.
17
Kaleidoscope 2(1) – 2008
augmented with the violent acquisition of Menelaus’ wealth. Accordingly, while Gower drew
on Guido’s account of the Trojan War and of the story’s protagonists, his interest in criticising
Paris means that Helen is not attacked as virulently as she is in some other versions of the
story, and is not made the epitome of female wickedness that she is in Joseph and Guido in
particular. Accordingly, Gower includes the now traditional depictions of her beauty and her
desire for Paris, observing that:
Of his wordes such pleasaunce
She toke, that all her aqueintaunce
Als ferforth as the herte lay
He stale her er that he went away.66
[At his words she felt such pleasure
And her heart was moved in such a way
That before he left
He had already stolen her from all her loved ones]67
Helen clearly consents to her relationship with Paris, and yet connected to this is none of
the misogynist disgust evident in accounts that model themselves more closely in Guido’s
account. Here, for example, is the observation of John Clerk of Whalley, author of the alliterative Destruction of Troy, which George A. Panton and David Donaldson call “in all probability,
the very first or earliest version of Benoît and Guido in our language.”68 Helen hears of Paris
and longs to see him: “As women are always inclined in their wantonness, / With a lascivious
desire to fall in love.”69 The poet laments women’s lust, and, like Guido before him, opines
that they should stay in the home. He viciously attacks Helen for going to the temple to
pursue a man, and asks:
But þou Elan, þat haldyn was hede of all ladys,
And the fairest of feturs formyt in erthe,
What wrixlit þi wit and þi wille chaunget,
In absens of þi soverayne, for saghes of pepull,
To pas of þi palays & þi prise chamber,
To loke on any lede of a londe straunger?70
[But you Helen, that was looked on as most splendid of all ladies,
And the fairest of features formed on earth,
What altered your mind and changed your will,
66 Gower, Confessio Amantis, 308.
67 Translations are my own.
68 The “Gest Hystoriale” of the Destruction of Troy, ed. Panton and Donaldson, ix.The editors
ascribe the work to “Huchown”, and the author has frequently been described as anonymous.
However, James Simpson points to a 1988 Speculum article by Thorlac Turville-Petre, which
identifies the author of the poem as John Clerk of Whalley. This theory was based on “the
initial letters of the first twenty-two chapter headings (forming an acrostic of the author’s title,
name and place).” Simpson, “The Other Book of Troy,” 405. For a discussion of the date of
the alliterative poem, see Sundwall, “The Destruction of Troy,” 313–7. He presents textual
evidence from the alliterative poem and Troilus and Criseyde that suggests Clerk’s poem was
composed after Chaucer’s, and indeed may even have been written after Lydgate’s Troy Book,
which was famously completed in 1420. However, in reference to the Destruction of Troy and
Lydgate’s Troy Book he acknowledges that “the mere presence of allusion and detail in both
poems falls far short of proof that one is directly linked to the other.” For an argument that
the text should not be referred to as The “Geste Hystoriale” of the Destruction of Troye (the
title Panton and Donaldson published it under), since this title is generically misleading, see
Strohm, “Storie, Spelle, Geste,” 351. He suggests Þe Destruction of Troy or The Story of the
Destruction of Troy.
69 “As wemen are wount in Wantonhede yet, / With a liking full light in love for to falle.” The “Gest
Hystoriale,” eds. Panton and Donaldson, 7.2911–2912. Translations are my own.
70 Ibid., 7.2951–2956.
18
Heavey – Remodelling Helen of Troy
In absence of your lord, and because of people’s words
To leave his palace and his excellent chamber,
To look on any kingdom of a landed stranger?]
Conversely, in Confessio Amantis Paris is characterised ironically and critically, with Gower
assuring his readers “he was not armed however, / But appeared as if he was in the kingdom
peacefully”71 – but of course Paris does not need to be armed to wreak havoc in Greece. Later,
too, male violence, rather than female wickedness, is clearly described as Paris and his men
burst into the temple to claim Helen:
And all at ones set askry
Into hem which in the Temple were,
For tho was mochel people there,
But of defence was no bote,
So suffren they that suffre mote.72
[And all at once they raised an attack
Against those who were in the Temple,
For though there were many people there,
There was no hope of defence,
And so those there suffered as they had to.]
These lines may have their source, ultimately, in the Heroides, in which Paris exclaims on his
desire for a military conflict by which he may win Helen legitimately. While the Ovidian Helen
neatly punctures Paris’ boast, telling him “be the waging of wars for the valiant; for you, Paris,
ever to love! Bid Hector, whom you praise, go warring in your stead; ‘tis other campaigning
befits your prowess,”73 Gower does allow his Paris an armed conflict, but one that subtly and
devastatingly undermines him, re-allying him with the foolish and impetuous young man of
Ovid’s rendering. Gower’s interest in the male perspective (reiterated in Book Eight, as Helen
appears accompanying Paris, who is present to exemplify men who have suffered for their love
affairs) means that Helen is not of central importance, as she is not is the far longer accounts
of the story that are found in Benoît and Guido. However, once again it is apparent that in the
Middle Ages an author may respect his classical and medieval sources, but may rework these
models for his own ends.
In the sixteenth century, this impulse to reshape manifested itself in English translations of the classics, for example George Turberville’s English rendering of the Heroides, or
Richard Stanyhurst’s translation of the Aeneid. In the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
meanwhile, examples of subtle reshapings of previous models of the Troy story included the
alliterative History of the Destruction of Troy, and Lydgate’s Troy Book. Though these two are
often held up as particularly close renderings of Guido’s text, they too are willing to alter.
Sundwall observes that “it is the alliterative poet’s tendency to reduce his source rather than
add to it,”74 while Ehrhart notes Lydgate’s willingness to depart from his source, arguing that
the poem is “heavily indebted to Guido but reflects as well changes in literary taste.”75 For
example, Lydgate truncates Guido’s graphic description of Ajax’s killing of Paris, instead opting to emphasise the Greek’s damning condemnation of the Trojan, with specific reference to
Helen. Ajax tells Paris:
71 “he was nought armed netheles, / But as it were in lond of pees.” Gower, Confessio Amantis,
ed. Morley, 308. Translations my own.
72 Ibid.
73 “bella gerentes fortes, tu, Pari, semper ama! / Hectora, quem laudas, pro te pugnare iubeto; /
militia est operis altera digna tuis,” Gower, Confessio Amantis, 17.254–6.
74 Sundwall, “The Destruction of Troy,” 316.
75 Ehrhart, The Judgement, 53.
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in al haste I shal make a dyvos
Atwixte þe and þe queen Eleyne,
And twynne assonder eke þe false cheyne
Whiche lynked was by colour of wedlock,
And hath so longe be shet under loke
Only by fraude & false engyn also.76
[I shall quickly make a divorce
Between you and the queen Helen,
And break asunder the false bond
Which was fastened under the pretext of marriage
And has only been locked tightly for so long
By fraud and false tricks also]77
This curiously self-righteous speech, with its condemnation of an illicit relationship masquerading under the “colour of wedlock”78 points to a growing medieval interest in the nature and
obligations of marriage and human morality, as well as in romance as a genre. At the same
time, Guido’s attacks on Helen (and all the women he criticises) are often silently expanded
by Lydgate, despite his protestations that he disagrees with Guido’s misogyny, and instead
believes of women that “against one bad there are a hundred good.”79
Despite their respect for Guido’s Historia, Lydgate and the author of the alliterative History
are, like so many before them, willing to remodel their sources. Helen, specifically, as such
an evocative and well-known character, often stands as an example of these remodellings in
the literature of the Middle Ages. The negative elements of her character and story that medieval authors found in Ovid, Virgil, Dares and various mythographers were often emphasised,
to reflect misogynist anxiety or caution against the effects of intemperate lust. Alternatively,
authors could pick up on the poignant sense of reflection that is obvious and appealing in
the Heroides, and tie this to the medieval taste for long romance narrative to soften Helen’s
character. Either way, the constant reinventions are remarkable, and seem to argue that while
medieval authors found the framework of a well-known story, and a network of impressivesounding sources, to be comforting, at the same each writer in turn took up the challenge of
reinventing Helen, subtly reshaping their models rather than straightforwardly translating or
repeating.
Bibliography
Primary Texts
Excidium Troiae. Edited by E. Bagby Atwood and Virgil K. Whitaker. Cambridge, Mass:
Mediaeval Academy of America, 1944.
The “Gest Historiale” of the Destruction of Troy: An Alliterative Romance Translated from
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The Latin Iliad. Edited and translated by George A. Kennedy. Fort Collins, CO: G. A. Kennedy,
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The Seege or Batayle of Troye. Edited by Mary Elizabeth Barnicle. Oxford: Oxford University
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Benoît de Sainte-Maure. Le Roman de Troie. Edited by Leopold Constans. Vols 1–4. Paris:
Librairie de Firmin-Didot, 1908.
76 Lydgate, Troy Book, ed. Bergen, 4.3550–3555.
77 Translation my own.
78 Ibid., 4.3553.
79 “ageyn oon bade ben an hundrid gode.” Ibid., 3.4362.
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Heavey – Remodelling Helen of Troy
Boccaccio, Giovanni. On Famous Women. Translated by Guido A. Guarino. London: George
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Katherine Heavey
Department of English Studies, University of Durham
Katherine Heavey is completing the third year of her PhD in the English department of Durham University, writing on
English representations of Helen of Troy and Medea c.1160–1650. Her wider research interests include representation of
gender and power, and of mythology, in the period.
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