The Futility of Prophecy: Prophecy and Poetry in English Narratives of Troy

Abstract

This dissertation explores prophets and prophecy in late medieval and early modern English retellings of Trojan War narratives, in particular within the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and William Shakespeare. In medieval and early modern England, the Trojan War formed the basis of cultural and political legitimacy: the English people claimed direct descent from the Trojans. English writers used the Trojan War both to celebrate war and to criticize it, and both celebration and criticism are evident in these narrative’s prophecies of triumph and destruction. Throughout these narratives, prophets advise the Trojans to make peace with the Greeks, but the prophets go unheeded and Troy falls. Nonetheless, these poets draw connections between these prophecies and their own poetry, and so prophecy’s failure engenders doubt concerning the utility of poetry itself. Through the similarities between poetry and prophecy, I look at the ways literature has questioned its own usefulness. I argue that prophecy both reveals the limitations on poets in adapting literary traditions for their own time and also makes space for memory and imagination. Through their representation of prophecy, these poets call into question the efficacy of poetry and of knowledge, but they do so in ways that ultimately reaffirm the power and limits of both knowledge and literature. Moreover, my study of prophecy illuminates the nature of adaptation more broadly: prophecy, and retellings in general, stretch the limits of narrative. Namely, although retellings of old stories do place limits on the agency of both poet and audience—in much the same way a prophets’ agency is limited—retellings and prophecies also open up new possibilities for the larger narrative tradition, providing new perspectives and imaginative opportunities in both space and time. As a narrative tool—particularly in oft-retold tales such as that of the Trojan War—prophecy allows writers to raise questions, to explore and enforce the limits of narrative, and to examine the limitations on and uses of literature itself.