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[BENOIT DE SAINTE-MAURE, or SAINTE-MORE]. Chaucer does not mention Benoît, fl. twelfth century A.D., but it is clear that he knew his work. Benoît was a Norman cleric who seems to have been attached to the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eric Auerbach suggests that his great poem, Le Roman de Troie (The Romance of Troy), written in 1184, is dedicated to Eleanor (riche dame de riche rei) and that lines 971-972, which mention London and Poitiers, point to the Anglo-Norman court. Benoît mentions briefly the love affair between Troilus and Breseida, which Boccaccio develops in Il Filostrato as a love affair between Troilus and Criseyde. [Boccaccio]

E. Auerbach, Literary Language and its Public in Late Latin Antiquity, trans. Ralph Mannheim, 208-209; Benoît, Roman de Troie, ed. L. Constans; R.K. Gordon, The Story of Troilus.
From CHAUCER NAME DICTIONARY
Copyright © 1988, 1996 Jacqueline de Weever
Published by Garland Publishing, Inc., New York and London.
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