The paper examines the so-called «Hystoria Troianorum» - the medieval Latin story of the Trojan War that was published (1998) in «The Journal of Medieval Latin» by M.L.Colker (from the manuscripts Chantilly, Mus?e Cond?, MS Cond? 754 and London, British Library, MS Burney 186) and dated to the 16th century. Compared with fragments of Giovanni Codagnello’s chronicle published by O. Holder-Egger (1891), «Hystoria Troianorum» (or its better part) seems to have appeared much earlier than Colker proposes, - namely in the period before 1235 AD. Unlike most me- dieval writers, who described the fate of Troy, the author of the «Hystoria Troianorum» emphasizes in his narrative some features of the legendary Trojan past that hardly correlate with contemporary stereotypes of the aristocratic or clerical culture. Thus, the analysis of the short Latin text allows us to elaborate significantly the thesis about high varia- bility of identities based on the medieval «myth of Trojan origin».
|
