Author: Markus Stock
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442644664
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
In the Middle Ages, the life story of Alexander the Great was a well-traveled tale. Known in numerous versions, many of them derived from the ancient Greek Alexander Romance, it was told and re-told throughout Europe, India, the Middle East, and Central Asia. The essays collected in Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages examine these remarkable legends not merely as stories of conquest and discovery, but also as representations of otherness, migration, translation, cosmopolitanism, and diaspora. Alongside studies of the Alexander legend in medieval and early modern Latin, English, French, German, and Persian, Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages breaks new ground by examining rarer topics such as Hebrew Alexander romances, Coptic and Arabic Alexander materials, and early modern Malay versions of the Alexander legend. Brought together in this wide-ranging collection, these essays testify to the enduring fascination and transcultural adaptability of medieval stories about the extraordinary Macedonian leader.
Author: Richard Stoneman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316733394
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 471
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Book Description
Alexander III of Macedon (356-323 BC) has for over 2000 years been one of the best recognized names from antiquity. He set about creating his own legend in his lifetime, and subsequent writers and political actors developed it. He acquired the surname 'Great' by the Roman period, and the Alexander Romance transmitted his legendary biography to every language of medieval Europe and the Middle East. As well as an adventurer who sought the secret of immortality and discussed the purpose of life with the naked sages of India, he became a model for military achievement as well as a religious prophet bringing Christianity (in the Crusades) and Islam (in the Qur'an and beyond) to the regions he conquered. This innovative and fascinating volume explores these and many other facets of his reception in various cultures around the world, right up to the present and his role in gay activism.
Author: Donald Maddox
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791488322
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
Alexander the Great was one of the legendary Nine Worthies in the medieval canon of ancient and modern heroes, and medieval writers exploited his legend in a wide variety of literary and didactic texts. Addressing the classical legacy to the Middle Ages as expressed in four centuries of vernacular narratives, this volume offers the first systematic collective study of Alexander the Great's thematic prominence in medieval culture. Contributors from Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States combine sensitive textual analyses with perspectives from such diverse fields as art history, codicology, anthropology, sociology, the history of mentalities, and postcolonial theory. Overall, the collection offers a provocative rethinking of the monumental medieval French tradition of Alexander the Great, as well as valuable insight into the emergence and transformations of French literature between the early twelfth century and the end of the Middle Ages.
Author: George Cary
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521108775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Many books were written in the Middle Ages about Alexander the Great and still more books have been written about those books in the last hundred years. In this classic study of the medieval Alexander, first published in 1956, George Cary approached the problem from an altogether different angle, using material which none of his predecessors had exploited. He asked himself the simple question: What did people really think about Alexander in the Middle Ages? The resultant answers proved various and unexpected, changing from age to age and from group to group. Published posthumously, Cary's study was edited by D. J. A. Ross, who corrected certain details, added some footnotes and included an additional section on the Histoire ancienne jusqu'a Cesar. To this were also added a number of illustrative plates and an appendix on the origins of the Greek Alexander Romance.
Author: Michael Alexander
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300229550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 327
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Book Description
Now reissued in an updated paperback edition, this groundbreaking account of the Medieval Revival movement examines the ways in which the style of the medieval period was re-established in post-Enlightenment England—from Walpole and Scott, Pugin, Ruskin, and Tennyson to Pound, Tolkien, and Rowling. “Medievalism . . . takes a panoramic view of the ‘recovery’ of the Medieval in English literature, visual arts and culture. . . . Ambitious, sweeping, sometimes idiosyncratic, but always interesting.”—Rosemary Ashton, Times Literary Supplement “Deeply researched and stylishly written, Medievalism is an unalloyed delight that will instruct and amuse a wide readership.”—Edward Short, Books & Culture
Author: David Zuwiyya
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004183450
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 421
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Book Description
Drawing on decades of research on Alexander literature from all over the world, this book is bound to become a medievalist's best companion. It studies Alexander romances from the East and the West in literary form and content.
Author: Richard Stoneman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300112033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) precipitated immense historical change in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. But the resonance his legend achieved over the next two millennia stretched even farther across foreign cultures, religious traditions, and distant nations. This engaging and handsomely illustrated book for the first time gathers together hundreds of the colorful Alexander legends that have been told and retold around the globe. Richard Stoneman, a foremost expert on the Alexander myths, introduces us first to the historical Alexander and then to the Alexander of legend, an unparalleled mythic icon who came to represent the heroic ideal in cultures from Egypt to Iceland, from Britain to Malaya. Alexander came to embody the concerns of Hellenistic man; he fueled Roman ideas on tyranny and kingship; he was a talisman for fourth-century pagans and a hero of chivalry in the early Middle Ages. He appears in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic writings, frequently as a prophet of God. Whether battling winged foxes or meeting with the Amazons, descending to the underworld or inventing the world s first diving bell, Alexander inspired as a hero, even a god. Stoneman traces Alexander s influence in ancient literature and folklore and in later literatures of east and west. His book provides the definitive account of the legends of Alexander the Great a powerful leader in life and an even more powerful figure in the history of literature and ideas."
Author: Walter Chatillon
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 1460402839
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
Walter of Châtillon’s Latin epic on the life of Alexander the Great was a twelfth- and thirteenth-century “best-seller:” scribes produced over two hundred manuscripts. The poem follows Alexander from his first successes in Asia Minor, through his conquest of Persia and India, to his progressive moral degeneration and his poisoning by a disaffected lieutenant. The Alexandreis exemplifies twelfth-century discourses of world domination and the exoticism of the East. But at the same time it calls such dreams of mastery into question, repeatedly undercutting as it does Alexander’s claims to heroism and virtue and by extension, similar claims by the great men of Walter’s own generation. This extraordinarily layered and subtle poem stands as a high-water mark of the medieval tradition of Latin narrative literature. Along with David Townsend’s revised translation, this edition provides a rich selection of historical documents, including other writings by Walter of Châtillon, excerpts from other medieval Latin epics, and contemporary accounts of the foreign and “exotic.”
Author: John Boardman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691217440
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 172
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Book Description
Alexander's defeat of the Persian Empire in 331 BC captured the popular imagination, inspiring an endless series of stories and representations that emerged shortly after his death and continues today. An art historian and archaeologist, Boardman draws on his deep knowledge of Alexander and the ancient world to reflect on the most interesting and emblematic depictions of this towering historical figure.0Some of the stories in this book relate to historical events associated with Alexander's military career and some to the fantasy that has been woven around him, and Boardman relates each with his customary verve and erudition. From Alexander's biographers in ancient Greece to the illustrated Alexander "Romances" of the Middle Ages to operas, films, and even modern cartoons, this generously illustrated volume takes readers on a fascinating cultural journey as it delivers a perfect pairing of subject and author.
Author: Venetia Bridges
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845024
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
An investigation into the depiction and reception of the figure of Alexander in the literatures of medieval Europe.
