Laud Troy Book

{{Short description|Anonymous Middle English poem dealing with the background and events of the Trojan War}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

File:Troy Book manuscript first page.jpg's ownership inscription at bottom]]

The Laud Troy Book is an anonymous Middle English poem dealing with the background and events of the Trojan War. Dating from around 1400 and consisting of 18,664 lines of rhyming tetrameter couplets, the untitled poem has been given a name reflecting the former ownership, by Archbishop William Laud, of the unique manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 595) in which it is found.{{cite book |last=Smith |first=D. M. |date=2019 |title=The "Laud Troy Book": The Forgotten Troy Romance |page=x |publisher=Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp |isbn=978-1694627957}}

Based on the prose Historia destructionis Troiae of Guido delle Colonne, the Laud Troy Book recasts the tale of the fall of Troy as a chivalric romance, with Hector as the principal heroic figure.{{cite book |last=Lumiansky |first=R. M. |editor-last=Severs |editor-first=J. Burke |title=A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500: Fascicule 1, Romances |location=New Haven |publisher=Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences |date=1967 |page=117 |chapter=Legends of Troy}} According to {{nowrap|J. A. W. Bennett}},

{{blockquote|The epic tale has been transposed into the military modes and manners of the fourteenth century. ... The appeal must have been chiefly to a knightly audience that would respond to the sharply realized scenes, so like those that Froissart was at this very time setting down in the chronicles of the Anglo-French wars ...{{cite book |last=Bennett |first=J. A. W. |date=1986 |title=Middle English Literature |url=https://archive.org/details/middleenglishlit0000benn/page/195 |series=The Oxford History of English Literature |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/middleenglishlit0000benn/page/195 195–96] |isbn=0-19-812214-4 |author-link=Jack A. W. Bennett }}}}

Bennett also notes that "the speeches are energetic and dramatic ... [t]he language is homely, the similes are unhackneyed".Bennett, p. 196. Helen Phillips attributes the energetic quality of the poem to the oral, minstrel-like style of the poet, calling it "literature very much conducted as speech, in narrative as much as in dialogue, a style which both conveys and naturalizes its ancient history for an English lay, non-scholarly audience".{{cite book |last=Phillips |first=Helen |date=2010 |editor1-last=Field |editor1-first=Rosalind |editor2-last=Hardman |editor2-first=Phillipa |editor3-last=Sweeney |editor3-first=Michelle |title=Christianity and Romance in Medieval England |publisher=D. S. Brewer |place=Cambridge, UK |page=17 |chapter=Medieval Classical Romance: The Perils of Inheritance |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7gzPUxTuhuwC&pg=PA17 |isbn=978-1-84384-219-4|access-date=6 September 2022}}

Although it has been characterized as "quite untouched by any breath of true poesy" (by R. K. Root) and "rough, often deficient in grammar" (by Dorothy Kempe),Both quoted in {{cite thesis |last=Stevenson |first=Sharon Lynn |date=1971 |title=An Introduction to the Laud Troy Book |type=PhD |publisher=University of Florida |pages=10, 12|url=https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/UF/00/09/76/91/00001/introductiontola00stevrich.pdf |access-date=January 23, 2020}} it has also been called "the most interesting of the Troy romances".Bennett, p. [https://archive.org/details/middleenglishlit0000benn/page/194 194]. {{nowrap|R. M. Lumiansky}} offers the following judicious assessment of the poem:

{{blockquote|Imagery from numerous sources is abundant and effectively used. Despite its great length, the poem is attractively presented and moves forward rapidly. One would, however, have difficulty considering it an outstanding literary accomplishment.}}