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THEBES, ROMANCE OF

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Originally appearing in Volume V26, Page 742 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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THEBES, See also:ROMANCE OF . The See also:French See also:Roman de Thebes is a poem of some To,000 lines which appears to be based, not on the Thebaid of See also:Statius, but on an abridgment of that See also:work. This view is supported by the omission of incidents and details which, in spite of the altered conditions under which the poem was composed, would naturally have been preserved in any See also:imitation of the Thebaid, while again certain modifications of the Statian version can hardly be due to the author's invention but point to an See also:ancient origin. As in other poems of the same See also:kind, the marvellous disappears; the Greeks adopt the French methods of warfare and the French See also:code of chivalric love. The Roman See also:dates from. the 12th See also:century (c. 1150-55), and is written, not in the tirades of the chansons de geste, but in octosyllabic rhymed couplets. It was once attributed to See also:Benoit de Sainte-More; but all that can be said is that the Thebes is See also:prior to the Roman de Troie, of which Benoit was undoubtedly the author. The Thebes is preserved also in several French See also:prose redactions, the first of which, printed in the 16th century under the name of Edipus, belongs to the See also:early years of the 13th century, and originally formed See also:part of a compilation of ancient See also:history, Histoire ancienne jusqu'd Cesar. The first See also:volume of See also:Les histoires de See also:Paul Crose traduites en See also:francais contains a See also:free and amplified version of the Thebes, The Romance of Thebes, written about 1420 by See also:John See also:Lydgate as a supplementary See also:Canterbury See also:Tale, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde about 1500. From the Roman de Thebes also were possibly derived the Ipomedon and its sequel Prothesilaus, two See also:romans d'aventures written about the end of the 12th century by See also:Hue de Rotelande, an Anglo-See also:Norman See also:trouvere who lived in Credenhill, near Here-See also:ford. The author asserts that he translated from a Latin See also:book See also:lent him by See also:Gilbert Fitz-Baderon, 4th See also:lord of See also:Monmouth, but in reality he has written romances of See also:chivalry on the usual lines, the names of the characters alone being derived from antiquity. See L.

See also:

Constans, La Legende d'Oedipe etudiee daps l'antiquite au moyen See also:age et clans les temps modernes (See also:Paris, 1881), and in the See also:section ' L'Epopee See also:antique " in De Julleville's Hist. de la langue et de la lift. franeaise; Le Roman de Thebes, ed. L. Constans (See also:Soc. See also:des anciens textes francais (Paris, 189o) ; G. See also:Ellis, Specimens of Early See also:English Metrical Romances, iii. (1805).

End of Article: THEBES, ROMANCE OF

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