|
HOME | GREEK LANGUAGE | LIBRARIES | BLOG | HELP | SEARCH | FREEWARE | BOOKSTORE |
|
|
Education, learning, literature, and art
|
Page 9
The judgment of scholars on this anonymous romance gives an indication, of their general opinion of the Byzantine romance of the epoch of the crusades. One group of scholars thinks that a French romance of chivalry, still unknown or lost, served as a basis for the romance Belthandros and Chrysantza; in the Castle of Love, the Greek Erotocastron, they see the Chateau d'amour of Provencal poetry; in the proper names of Rodophilos and Belthandros they recognize the popular Hellenized western names of Rodolph and Bertrand; it has even been thought that the whole romance of Belthandros and Chrysantza is nothing but a Greek version of the French tale of a well-known French knight of the fourteenth century, Bertrand du Guesclin, who lived during The Hundred Years War. Krumbacher, who was inclined to refer to western European sources all that is found in medieval Greek popular poetry on the Castle of Love, Eros, and so on, wrote that the romance of Belthandros and Chrysantza was certainly written by a Greek, but in a land which had been familiar for a long time with Frankish culture; but the chief problem, whether the kernel of the plot is of Frankish or of Greco-Eastern origin, will remain unsolved till the real prototype of this romance is found.
Finally, Bury said that the romance of Belthandros and Chrysantza is Greek from the beginning to the end in its construction, descriptions, and ideas; it has nothing that ought to be referred to western influence. A parallel literary development existed in both Frankish and Greek lands. Just as the French romances of the twelfth century were preceded by a great deal of epic poetry, so the Greek romances of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had also as their background an epic basis. In both cases the working out of romantic motives was affected by the influences flowing directly or indirectly from the Hellenistic world: in France, through Latin literature, particularly Ovid; in Greece by means of the literary tradition which was never dead there. The Greeks already possessed, owing to their own experiences, all the ideas, material, and setting for the romances of chivalry, when the western knights were establishing themselves in the East. Therefore the French literature of the twelfth century could exercise no such strong influence on Byzantium as it exercised, for example, on Germany. The romantic literature of the West did not appear as a new revelation to people who in their own literature had motives, ideals, and elements of phantasy similar to those of the West. Of course, some influence from French literature in the epoch of the crusades, through the contact and intermingling of the two cultures in the Christian West, is not to be denied. But, generally speaking, French and Byzantine romances have one common Hellenistic basis, and they developed along parallel lines, independent of each other. As Diehl said, the background of the romance of Belthandros and Chrysantza remains purely Byzantine, and Greek civilization seems to have given the Frankish barons who came as conquerors much more than it received from them. Another love story composed in political verses, the story of Callimachos and Chrysorroe, may also be referred to the thirteenth century.
A History of the Byzantine Empire - Table of Contents
|
|
Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/literature-education-learning-art-7.asp?pg=9
