The "Alexandreis" of Walter of Châtilon: A Twelfth-Century Epic

by David Townsend

Overview

Written sometime in the 1170s, Walter of Chatillon's Latin epic on the life of Alexander the Great loomed as large on literary horizons as the works on Jean de Meun, Dante, or Boccaccio. Within a few decades of its composition, the poem had become a standard text of the literary curriculum. Virtually all authors of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries knew the poem. And an extraordinary two hundred surviving manuscripts, elaborately annotated, attest both to the popularity of the Alexandreis and to the care with which it was read by its medieval audience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812233476
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	12/29/1996
Series:	The Middle Ages Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.84(d)
Lexile:	1320L (what's this?)

About the Author

David Townsend is Professor of Medieval Studies and English at the University of Toronto.

Table of Contents

Ackowledgments
Introduction
Select Bibliography

The Alexandreis
Prologue
Book One
Book Two
Book Three
Book Four
Book Five
Book Six
Book Seven
Book Eight
Book Nine
Book Ten

Notes
Index of Proper Names

Editorial Reviews

"While the Alexandreis did much to shape the medieval attitude to history, this translation helps to define it."

Times Literary Supplement

"While the Alexandreis did much to shape the medieval attitude to history, this translation helps to define it."—Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher