The Judgment of the Trojan Prince Paris in Medieval Literature by Margaret J. Ehrhart (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER tions-for a study that purportS to focus on the MiddleAges-are plucked from sources of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Rather oddly, this study lacks any comprehensive critical survey of the views of other scholars, aside from a prefatory positioning of the subject matter within a context that depends on Burrow's pronouncements in Ricardian Poetry and a citation from another British critic, Philippa Tris­ tram; too, the bibliography consists of only a page and a half of European and insular sources "which have particular bearing on the argument of this book." Unfortunately, Dove omits relevant articles by Adler, d'Alverny, Archambault, Axelson, Bowers, Burrow, Colmant, Duby, de Ghellinck, T. D. Hill, Hofmeister, Kaske, Kohler, Nardi, C. and D. Singer, and Standen and relevant books by Aries, Back, Dal and Skarup, de Freville, von der Gabelentz, Gnilka, Helfenstein, Hohn, Hopper, Lamirande, Levinson, Neraudau, Pirkhofer, Schoner, Varagnac, and Tuve. For these reasons Dove undercuts the credibility of her argument. This is a shame-these flaws could have been corrected with more astute editing, further research, another draft; the book has interesting material to offer. Better to have focused on the four poems after a survey of the different perspectives on the ages, with examples brought into the discussion of the four at appropriate-and appropriately foregrounded-moments. JANE CHANCE Institute for Advanced Study-Princeton MARGARET]. EHRHART. Thejudgment ofthe Trojan Prince Paris in Medi­ evalLiterature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. Pp. xv, 290. $32.95, £31.30. Whatever the historical events of the Trojan War may have been, they have generated a vast tradition in all the arts of Western civilization. The extent of that tradition in music, for example, is brought into focus when Arthur M. Young, in his book Troy and Her Legend, mentions that more than ninety musical works have been based on events relating to the Trojan War. The literary tradition, beginning with Homer's Iliad and continuing through such recent treatments as Cassandra, by Christa Wolf, and Fire­ brand, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, is longer and more complex by far. 212 REVIEWS Indeed, the quantity of literary works in the tradition of the Trojan War rivals, if it does not exceed, that ofthe Arthurian tradition. Among the many elements which comprise the Trojan War legend, several have become veritable icons of the story, stimulating the develop­ ment of independent traditions in the arts: Helen's beauty, the Trojan Horse, and Priam's death. Concerning these particular elements, it is interesting to note that the last two are not mentioned in the Iliad, which closes before the war is concluded. The first, Helen's beauty, is alluded to only occasionally, in passing. To theJudgment ofParis, the icon which is the subject of Margaret Ehrhart's book, Homer alludes only once, in book 24. In the popularimagination, however, these icons come to mind as primary images whenever the Trojan War is mentioned. One of the important functions of such studies as Margaret Ehrhart's should be to explore how such a minor element in the world's greatest epic could achieve such inflated value in the Middle Ages. Ehrhart's study is an analysis of the critical and imaginative literary reception of theJudgment of Paris between the end ofantiquity and the beginning of the Renaissance. Her units of analysis are three reception traditions, which she defines as the classical, the rationalizing, and the allegorical. In antiquity the legends of Troy had a religious dimension. The gods portrayed in the Iliad were the gods of the Greek religion, and their interactions with mortals were held to be true events. According to Ehrhart's view ofclassical reception, theJudgment ofParis understood as a true event is a central fact ofthat tradition. In the Middle Ages, however, a literal, classical understanding of the judgment was unacceptable to the Christian audience. The classicaltradition was, therefore, modified in two ways: either by rationalizing or by allegorizing the event. The bases ofboth types ofmodification were laid in late antiquity, and the early development of the two traditions is the subject of Ehrhart's chapter 1. Chapter 2 discusses the rationalizing tradition, which, for the reception of the...