This work asks and analyzes how the tradition and promotion of Trojan ancestry and the Aeneid book VI parade of heroes evolved into the Middle Ages to become a legitimizing tool for rulership through the close adaption of the tradition to the ideological and social interests by medieval elites. I delve and explore the development of the Trojan ancestry tradition by comparing three notable case studies of the tradition's development: the Servian/late-antique context, Carolingian historical writing, and court-sanctioned literary works, and the beginning and prophecies sections of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. These case studies highlight how the tradition continued from glosses to actual history, and how this tradition was adapted to fit a particular legal/political agenda. This thesis looks at the primary source documents, including historical writing and commentaries, as well as relevant secondary sources to answer the question by looking at the three different historical case studies. The thesis will examine the manifestation of the promotion and adherence to Trojan ancestry tradition of Aeneid VI in the three different cases, and assess how they adapted to fit their respective places and times. My work engages with current medieval literature and history scholarship including publications by Kiviclim Yavuz, Francis Ingledew, Sinead O'Sullivan, and others who will be used to establish the broader historical, political, and literary contexts and sources of the authors' promotion of Trojan ancestry tradition. While these scholars provide an in-depth and compelling analysis, their scholarship has largely avoided analyzing the development of the chronological changes of Trojan ancestry, avoiding the framing of it as a tradition altogether. Through building off of these secondary and primary sources, I will effectively demonstrate how and why the Trojan ancestry tradition of Aeneid VI adapted and continued through the High Middle Ages.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Intellectual history","Medieval history and literature","Classical reception"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 23998