A rant or a raunt

Something I often find surprising is how otherwise well-informed people, when called on to read Middle English – as well-informed people so often are – will fall into a cultural cringe when faced with a word of French origin such as 'gentil' and come out with something like [jontil], or, worse still, [ʒontil] (excuse my phonetics – they're the symbols I find convenient, and pretty transparent, I would have thought).
A quick breeze through any of the Canterbury Tales would make it clear that Chaucer doesn't rhyme French e+nasal+consonant with French a+nasal+consonant: e.g. 'apparence' wouldn't rhyme with 'da(u)nce)' – but on the other hand French e+nasal+consonant does rhyme with OE-derived e+nasal+consonant: thus 'rente' with 'wente'.
The fact is, of course, that the vowels e and a before a nasal didn't merge in northern and western French as they did from about C11 in central French – and the English French vocabulary owes more in this respect to the provincial pronunciation.
Now it's true that we do have loans from central French that show the merger: e.g. 'ensaumple', but in such cases the resulting vowel is spelt a(u) in English. There's also the complicating factor that in Anglo-Norman many verbs were transferred to the -er conjugation – hence 'defendant' rather than 'defendent'. In the case of 'jaunty' from central French 'gentil' the lack of the final consonant  in the English word is enough to mark it as a late borrowing.

In mainstream English, however, French e+N+C (you understand the symbolism) gives English e+N+C (and I'd guess that for semi-learned forms like 'sentence' the current rponunciation of Latin would have played a role. French a+N+C, on the other hand, gives a+N+C, or when stressed au+N+C. Hence French 'lande' > Modern English 'lawn'.

One might reflect that French i+N+C also gives English i+N+C, e.g. 'prince'.

So, Middle English 'gentil' should for preference be sounded as [jentil] – though it's always possible that a 14th century English person wanting to show off their 'French of Paris' might introduce the foreign sound.

See, on this subject, Pope: From Latin to Modern French.

The Aeneid

I have just been rereading the Aeneid: it seems to me that it consists of two narrative series, each of the form S₂ : a : $ : S₁. The first occupies Books I-V, the second Books VI-XII. Aeneas seems to me a rather different character in the two parts – in the first the intervention of Venus is more frequent and more direct, Aeneas more frail and more human. In the second Aeneas is more the Man of Destiny.

Perhaps I am slow to catch on, but it occurs to me as a later thought that Books I-V are Vergil’s answer to the Odyssey, and VI-XII to the Iliad: the first phase a romance, the second a typological narrative (V has interesting parallels with Odyssey XXIV, the funeral games recalling the contests among the suitors, the defection of the women the fate meted out to Penelope’s serving girls).

An interesting thing about the second phase of the poem is that Aeneas only appears in the even-numbered books. These can be considered as successive stages in the narrative, in all of which Aeneas plays the role of Hero, while the odd-numbered books can be considered transitional between the stages.

In Book VI the psychopomp role is played by the Sybil, obviously, while the shade of Anchises is King.

Book VII should have at its centre a test or ordeal – war is forced on Trojans and Latins alike as a result of the intervention of Allecto.

Book VIII (a) has the transport of Aeneas away from war to a place of serenity, and intimations of future glory, both by way of the visit to the site of Rome and the prophetic scenes on Aeneas’s shield. As Ascanius (Iulus) is to Aeneas, Pallas is to Evander: the valued possession in whom his hopes for the future are invested – his value, in other words – which he entrusts to Aeneas. That is to say, Pallas is Princess, which serves to make his death at the hands of Turnus in X that much more heinous. Note that Evander collapses when Pallas leaves (much as Mezentius will when he hears of the death of Lausus).

Book IX is largely concerned with a troublesome journey – the doomed mission of Nisus and Euryalus to seek help from Aeneas, the events that provoke it and those that follow.

In Book X Jove throws the result open to Fate – thus, we are in the wilderness ($), where all things come by chance. Aeneas receives comfort from Cymodoce, leader of the Nymphs which the ships of his fleet have become – the character of the Donor is typically manifested by a comforter in a narrative of this shape – and he is revalorized by association, i.e. being reunited, with Iulus, his value, described as a beautiful object (132-8). The contrast between Aeneas and Turnus here is that Turnus is unwilling to accept the gifts of fortune, in the shape of the opportunity to kill Pallas, with humility (502). Mezentius, ironically, shows himself more pius in defeat than Turnus in victory.

In Book XI the prosecution of the Trojans’ advantage involves the neutralization of a counter-gendered character (Camilla).

Book XII reasserts social values. A compact of single combat is solemnized (though ignored by the Latins), and the Hero is finally able to do battle with the Villain.

One notices at the conclusion of the poem that the ambition to found Troy anew, voiced for example by Venus in the debate that opens Book X, has not been fulfilled: the Trojan name is to be extinguished. On the other hand, not only Aeneas’s enemies but also his allies have been destroyed. The dynasty of Evander is cut off, thus vacating the site for the future Rome, and Latinus has lost his wife to suicide, while one can’t feel too happy for Lavinia. The reader can hardly help asking whether it has all been worth it. There are resonances here of Augustus’s claims to have refounded the republic, and also, in the repeated equation of heirs with value (Aeneas, Evander, Mezentius), of Augustus’s own problems with succession. Together with the curious exit of Aeneas from the Underworld through the gates of ivory (VI 893-899), leave one with the feeling that a pervasive irony underlies this second half of the poem.