The Libro de Alexandre is an epic poem about the life of Alexander the Great, written by an anonymous Spanish cleric in the thirteenth century. It is the most substantial poem (and almost certainly the first) composed in the learned cuaderna vía verse form and provides a unique insight into the intellectual world from which it sprang.
The Libro de Alexandre is an epic poem about the life of Alexander the Great, written by an anonymous Spanish cleric in the thirteenth century. It is the most substantial poem (and almost certainly the first) composed in the learned cuaderna via verse form and provides a unique insight into the intellectual world from which it sprang. The poem conveys the grim message of Alexander's life, the sense of hubris and the horror of his fall from greatness and world domination to the bleak obscurity of the grave. As well as relaying the story of a great ancient figure, the poet also comments on the society and political situation of early thirteenth-century Spain. The combination of eras makes this poem strikingly representative of its time. Peter Such and Richard Rathbone's edition in the Hispanic Classics series illuminates this substantial and important text, with a wide-ranging introduction, Spanish text with facing-page English translation and notes.
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.
Specialists in other languages offer perspectives on the widespread use of French in a range of contexts, from German courtly narratives to biblical exegesis in Hebrew. French came into contact with many other languages in the Middle Ages: not just English, Italian and Latin, but also Arabic, Dutch, German, Greek, Hebrew, Irish, Occitan, Sicilian, Spanish and Welsh. Its movement was impelled by trade, pilgrimage, crusade, migration, colonisation and conquest, and its contact zones included Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities, among others. Writers in these contact zones often expressed themselves and their worlds in French; but other languages and cultural settings could also challenge, reframe or even ignore French-users' prestige and self-understanding. The essays collected here offer cross-disciplinary perspectives on the use of French in the medieval world, moving away from canonical texts, well-known controversies and conventional framings. Whether considering theories of the vernacular in Outremer, Marco Polo and the global Middle Ages, or the literary patronage of aristocrats and urban patricians, their interlocutions throw new light on connected and contested literary cultures in Europe and beyond.
Ecocriticism as a theoretical model has primarily been used in the study of Romantic, post-Romantic, and contemporary literary texts. Applications of the concepts to medieval literature, however, are a fairly recent phenomenon. This book examines key, canonical works from medieval Spain, showing how descriptions of the natural world in these texts are informed by both the authors’ perceptions of the environment and established literary models.
Between the medieval conception of Christendom and the political visions of modernity, ideas of Europe underwent a transformative and catalytic period that saw a cultural process of renewed self-definition or self-Europeanization. The contributors to this volume address this process, analyzing how Europe was imagined between 1450 and 1750. By whom, in which contexts, and for what purposes was Europe made into a subject of discourse? Which forms did early modern ‘Europes’ take, and what functions did they serve? Essays examine the role of factors such as religion, history, space and geography, ethnicity and alterity, patronage and dynasty, migration and education, language, translation, and narration for the ways in which Europe turned into an ‘imagined community.’ The thematic range of the volume comprises early modern texts in Arabic, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, and Spanish, including plays, poems, and narrative fiction, as well as cartography, historiography, iconography, travelogues, periodicals, and political polemics. Literary negotiations in particular foreground the creative potential, versatility, and agency that inhere in the process of Europeanization, as well as a specifically early modern attitude towards the past and tradition emblematized in the poetics of the period. There is a clear continuity between the collection’s approach to European identities and the focus of cultural and postcolonial studies on the constructed nature of collective identities at large: the chapters build on the insights produced by these fields over the past decades and apply them, from various angles, to a subject that has so far largely eluded critical attention. This volume examines what existing and well-established work on identity and alterity, hybridity and margins has to contribute to an understanding of the largely un-examined and under-theorized ‘pre-formative’ period of European identity.
This biography portrays Alexander as both a complex personality and a single-minded general, a man capable of such diverse expediencies as patricide or the massacre of civilians. Writing for the general reader, the author provides gritty details on Alexander's darker side while providing a gripping tale of Alexander's career.
In this English translation of the 1993 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize winner Dulcinea encantada (1992) by Mexican author Angelina Muñiz-Huberman, Dulcinea travels in a car writing novels in her mind about several Dulcineas: a medieval princess on a quest, a nineteenth-century lady-in-waiting in Mexico, and a twentieth-century young woman who was sent to Russia as a girl to escape the Spanish Civil War and later journeys to Mexico to reunite with her parents. Unsure of her identity, Dulcinea remembers, debates, and records memories of her exile. As she circles Mexico City, she examines the role of memory, speech, and writing through her fragmented narrative voice. Dulcinea explores her place in the world through storytelling, blurring the line between reality and imagination. This novel pairs a lyrical and contemplative style with experimental writing to present common themes of identity formation and exile in a unique form. Dulcinea’s quest is also one of spiritual connection with apocalyptic and mystical overtones. With allusions to both Christian and Jewish mystical traditions, this novel reveals a crypto-Jewish presence typical of Muñiz-Huberman’s writing, forming part of a Sephardic literary tradition. This edition includes an introduction and annotations by the translator, Rebecca Marquis.
This is an analysis of the diverse facets of Alexander the Great’s image from the Renaissance era through the Baroque into the nineteenth century. Perceived as the first sovereign ruler of the world, for centuries Alexander became an exemplar for the most ambitious kings and emperors. This cultural phenomenon flourished above all in the Renaissance while extending into the nineteenth century. Early modern monarchs’ identification with Alexander associated them with ideas of kingly wisdom. Yet this admiration waned on occasions. Napoleon was Alexander of Macedonia’s most ardent critic. During the nineteenth century, the Macedonian hero was viewed as an individual who won control of the Achaemenid empire, but also underwent a progressive moral decline that converted him into a tyrant. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history and iconography.
