Customer Reviews

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

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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!