The Destruction of Troy by John Clerk of Whalley: The Gest Hystoriale

In medieval Britain, the works of Homer were practically unknown. In his absence, the half-remembered story of the Trojan War took on a distinctly Arthurian flavour, with the heroes Achilles and Hector reimagined as armoured knights on horseback, duelling with broadsword and lance.

The Destruction of Troy survives as a single, incomplete manuscript known as "MS. Hunterian V.2.8" in the Glasgow University Library. One of three extant Middle English metrical translations of Guido delle Colonne's Historia Destructionis Troiae, it is the only one to have been composed in alliterative verse. It may also be the earliest, with most estimates dating it to about 1390, amid the conjectured "Alliterative Revival" of Late Medieval England and Scotland, when this Anglo-Saxon mode appears to have re-emerged. First published in 1869, its author was unknown until 1988, when philologist Thorlac Turville-Petre discovered "Master John Clerk of Whalley" hidden in the first letter of the first word in each canto.

Volume five in this series provides a sympathetic rendering of this fascinating work in Modern English, presenting the Destruction of Troy in an easy-to-read format, whilst carefully preserving the alliterative metre. The text is extensively annotated, and includes a helpful glossary of uncommon and untranslatable words, as well as the myriad character names-both medieval and mythological-which appear throughout.