The Roman de toute chevalerie: Reading Alexander Romance in Late Medieval England
© 2019
The medieval reception of Alexander the Great inspired a complicated literary corpus not simply because it involved so many source-texts and languages, but because it incorporated such diverse perspectives on the conqueror. Beginning with a discussion of the evolution of this corpus, this book examines the manuscripts, readership, and historical contexts of the earliest surviving Alexander romance in England, Thomas de Kent’s Anglo-Norman Roman de toute chevalerie.
To shed light on the origins and treatment of this romance, Charles Russell Stone reads each manuscript within the contexts of its production, scribal interpolations, and patronage and readership in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. While Thomas recalls a range of attitudes towards his protagonist in the late twelfth century, when the recovery of classical histories and composition of vernacular romance informed conflicting attitudes towards Alexander’s legacy, scribes and readers of his poem appropriated it as a continuing commentary on power, politics, and the relevance of the Alexander legend in their own time. Each of the three major manuscripts of Thomas’s poem thus offers a unique text informed by unique literary and political contexts, which this book situates within the ongoing debate over Alexander’s reception as a paradigm of imperial authority or failure in late medieval England.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 272 pages
- Illustrations: 5
- Dimensions: 6.2in x 1.2in x 9.2in
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Reviews
"In its thorough account of medieval England’s reception of the Alexander legend, Stone’s The Roman de toute chevalerie traces the tale across a great variety of adaptations, commentaries, interpolations, and translations from the twelfth century onward, in Latin, French, and English."
Laura Ashe, Faculty of English, University of Oxford -
Author Information
Charles Russell Stone is an assistant Vice Provost at the University of Nevada. -
Table of contents
List of Illustrations
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Reading and Reconstructing the Anglo-Norman Alexander
1 Alexander Romance in Twelfth-Century Europe
2 Alexander in Anglo-Norman England: The Latin Texts
3 The Roman de toute chevalerie: Sources, Influences, and Innovations
4 The Two Deaths of Alexander in Cambridge, Trinity College MS O. 9. 34
5 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS 24364: Alexander, Chivalry, nd the Wars of Edward I
6 Moralizing Alexander in Durham Cathedral Library MS C.IV.27B
7 From Anglo-Norman to Middle English Alexander RomanceAfterword: The Advent of the Continental Alexander
Notes
Works Cited
Index
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Subjects and Courses
