Humour in the Roman d'Eneas

From a study of the extensive marginalia, gloss, and commentary tradition surrounding Virgil's Aeneid during the Middle Ages, it has been deduced that, in a number of cases, the twelfth century author of the Roman d'Eneas incorporated on numerous occasions such scholia in his adaptation of the Latin epic into Old French. That is, he adapted not only Virgil's Latin epic but also parts of the surrounding mediaeval Latin commentary as well. This argument will be demonstrated more fully in a number of studies to appear, research which is the result of a fruitful Fulbright year in Western European libraries (Holland, Switzerland, and France; and more recently, in Great Britain and Italy). In these various European libraries, over one hundred Aeneid manuscripts have been consulted and their wealth of ninth to twelfth century annotations scrutinized.