Fra Troia e la Tavola Rotonda: La vendetta dei discendenti di Ettore, pastiche tre-quattrocentesco

Abstract

The Vendetta dei discendenti di Ettore is an anonymous and quaint literary pastiche, still
unpublished, which blends the Trojan tradition with the Arthurian one. It was likely
written between the end of the XIV and the beginning of the XV century, possibly in
Lucca, before the Croniche by Giovanni Sercambi, who seems to have drawn inspiration
from it in some brief chapters. It stages a kind of world war that involves, more than a
thousand six hundred years after the fall of Troy, the descendants of Hector and the father
of king Arthur, Uter Pendragon, joined by other knights of the Round Table and
supported by Romans and Persians in a mission to exact revenge on Greeks and the new
Greeks (the Byzantines). The text, probably inspired by the Roman de Perceforest, and
always indebted to Wace’s Brut, singer of the translatio imperii, stages an epic clash
between culture and nature, barbarism and civilization, employing a narrative rhythm
sometimes unlikely and almost dreamlike, set in a kind of parallel universe rich in
contradictions that can be interpreted using Matte Blanco’s bi-logic. These notable
features let us forget the humble literary quality of the text.