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Unlike other authors of the era who undertook the
Alexander saga, Alexander of Paris did not base his work on the Pseudo-Callisthenes or on the various translations of Julius Valerius' work. As is common in medieval literature, the project stems from the desire to improve on the work of others and to
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The poem, by not giving a definitive answer to this question, stresses the importance of respect of religious and father figures (whether real father figures, or authority figures in the feudal system), while reminding the young nobles who are the public of the tale to associate themselves only with
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that is absent in the previous poems. The poem also undertakes, like many medieval writings, the education of young noblemen (the "gentils chevalieres") and paints a picture of the political and social changes present at the time (the accession to power of common men and the poverty that thus strike
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also is an important theme of the work, one that was surely impressive to the medieval public (akin to important scientific breakthroughs nowadays, for example). Not only brave and generous, our hero is also cunning and curious, wanting to understand the various phenomena that he will encounter on
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his path. The desire to conquer land and castles is thus reactivated by the desire to conquer the realm of knowledge (the voyage in the sky and underwater), but also the realm of immortality, as is shown by the will of the hero to equal mythic characters such as
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the lower levels of nobility and the recentralization of power in 12th century France). Alexander is shown as generous, loyal and courageous: he is a protective and giving figure, the emblem of unification of the noblemen under one active and strong voice.
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who became demi-gods after defeating their mortal conditions by various feat of strength and wisdom. Alexander will not realize this goal: poisoned by his own men (the "sers felons" Antipater and
Divinuspater), as was another key figure of the work,
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tradition, and who also presided over his birth (Alexander kills him in a spite of rage)? Or was he killed because he gave his trust to men of inferior condition?
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to come with many continuations depicting mainly the vengeance of the "douze pairs" or shedding a different light on the life of the conqueror.
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offer the complete life of the hero to the public, a theme that is also very present in the cyclical turn that the
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in composition and esthetic, Alexander of Paris's version of the poem is the basis of
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who used 12-syllable verses (which are called "alexandrines" because of their appearance in this work).
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took at the time. Thomas de Kent also penned (probably) the very same decade a version of the saga,
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who probably placed the branches in the order we find them, reworked the first branch into
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Abbreviated translation into
English: Favager, D.J. The Romance of Alexander Kindle (2021)
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A History of Old French
Literature from the Origins to 1300
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The fourth branch (derived in part from the so-called
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490:Alexander the Great: The Medieval French Tradition
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477:Dictionnaire des lettres françaises: Le Moyen Age
237:: his death and burial) is attributed in part to
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199:: telling of the taking of Tyre, the entry into
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21:For the thirteenth-century prose romance, see
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160:The first branch (derived from the so-called
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220:and his underwater adventure) derives from
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475:Geneviève Hasenohr and Michel Zink, eds.
141:detailing various episodes in the life of
308:Learn how and when to remove this message
50:in a diving bell: a scene from the text.
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492:The Medieval Alexander Project at the
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136:Old French
123:Old French
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382:Nectanabo
269:does not
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