TEXTUAL NETWORKS · Transtextual Networks in the European Middle Ages: A Digital Corpus of the Trojan Narrative in Latin Manuscripts

Transtextual Networks in the European Middle Ages: A Digital Corpus of the Trojan Narrative in Latin Manuscripts

Undertaken by Dr N. Kıvılcım Yavuz under the supervision of Professor Matthew James Driscoll at the Arnamagnæan Institute at the University of Copenhagen, the project investigated manuscripts that contain three late antique accounts of the Trojan War: the _De excidio Troiae historia_ [‘The History of the Destruction of Troy’] attributed to Dares of Phrygia, the _Ephemeridos belli Troiani_ [‘The Diary of the Trojan War’] attributed to Dictys of Crete and the anonymous _Excidium Troie_ [‘The Destruction of Troy’]. These works were exceptionally influential throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Despite this, they have received almost no favourable attention—if any at all—from scholars over the last several centuries. The _De excidio Troiae historia_ and the _Ephemeridos belli Troiani_, both of which claim to be eyewitness accounts of the Trojan War, were considered genuine historical accounts for over a millennium following their composition. After being declared late antique forgeries in the eighteenth century, they lost their authoritative status and historical standing. On the other hand, even though it is now clear that the medieval authors and readers knew and used the work, the _Excidium Troie_ was completely forgotten in modern times, only to be rediscovered in the 1930s. Modern editions of the works have very little critical discussion on the surviving manuscripts and are based on a very limited selection. Not all the manuscript witnesses of these works had been known and their textual traditions had never been fully explored. Not only there were no complete lists of witnesses for the three late antique accounts of the Trojan War but also there had been very little research into the composition and the materiality of the manuscripts in which these works are found. Thus, taking a concept developed by Gérard Genette, transtextuality, the main aim of the project was to look at manuscripts as a whole in order to discover different ways of interaction among texts and how these interactions influence the reception of a text. The overall objective of the project, therefore, was to identify the manuscripts that contain one or more of the late antique accounts of the Trojan War through a comprehensive assessment of existing literature and individual manuscript catalogues, and to create a database with detailed descriptions of the manuscripts based on first-hand observations. The most essential aspect of the project was to catalogue every text in these manuscripts. Looking at the entire contents of the manuscripts allowed the researcher not only to reveal the entire transmission history of each work in question and to identify the hitherto unstudied links among these three works with regard to their manuscript dissemination but also to determine which other texts are associated with these works and to consider the broader implications of the phenomenon of texts that travel together during the Middle Ages in terms of cultures of production, reading and dissemination as well as textual transmission.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union