The "Alexandreis" of Walter of Chatilon: A Twelfth-Century Epic (The Middle Ages Series) [Hardcover]

David Townsend (Translator)

Book Description

Series: The Middle Ages Series | Publication Date: December 1, 1996

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

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

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Latin

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (December 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812233476
• ISBN-13: 978-0812233476
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,216,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you'd like to go to the source..., July 21, 2003

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Cinna the Poet (Zeeusche Uytkyk, Svalbard) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The "Alexandreis" of Walter of Chatilon: A Twelfth-Century Epic (The Middle Ages Series) (Hardcover)

This is a verse translation of Walter's most important work and the only English transl. that's easy to get one's hands on. If you'd like to get the Latin text, the most recent (& supposedly best) edition (there are only two, the other long out of print) is by Marvin L. Colker, who uses the Italian form of Walter's name: Galteri de Castellione. The ISBN is: 88-8455-147-1. (I had to order mine from Rome.)

The translation here by Townsend is very nicely bound and will make a reasonably good pony/crib for a verse translation; Colker's Latin edition on the other hand, even though it's not that old, has raggedy oldschool binding with rough edges on the pages and you have to cut each page at the top (they should reprint it in nice new hardback), but whatcha gonna do? The lines are numbered and there's a complete ap. crit. at the bottom.

Though nobody reads this anymore, the work is part of a very cool tradition of Alexander romances, is the immediate source for the Old Norse /Alexanderssaga/ (not translated into English but available in German if you don't read Icelandic), and is quoted by Chaucer on the assumption that any literate person will of course catch the reference. I hope you enjoy the work & I hope this helps; b[u]ona fortuna!