Scottish Alexanders and Stuart Empire

2019 ◽  
pp. 113-148
Author(s):  
Su Fang Ng
Keyword(s):  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Economic Basis ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
James Iv ◽  
Alexander Romance

This chapter examines how the Scottish Alexander Romance, Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour, raises issues that are important to the ambitions of James IV of Scotland: religious crusade and dynastic expansion through marriage. Composed in 1460 and attributed to Gilbert Hay, Buik features a crusading Alexander the Great fighting Muslim enemies. The novel’s representation of Alexander’s enemies as Muslims references European fears of the growing power of the Ottomans. James IV wanted both to unite England and Scotland through his marriage and to unite Christendom against the Turks. The chapter discusses Alexander’s transformation from crusader into a merchant in the East, suggesting that it points to the underlying economic basis of the revival of crusading rhetoric—Ottoman control of the spice trade. These two themes—union and crusade—were continuing preoccupations of later Stuarts, including James VI of Scotland.

Review Article: Recent Travels in Alexanderland

2014 ◽  
Vol 134 ◽  
pp. 136-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Bowden
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Alexander Romance

Abstract:This review of recent books about Alexander the Great and related topics focuses in particular on how much attention scholars have paid to the eastern aspects of the history and historiography of the period. It traces the identification of Alexander as an essentially ‘western’ figure back to the period of the Enlightenment, and shows how the work of scholars in the 18th century set the terms of the subsequent debate. It goes on to show how work on the Alexander Romance displays a far broader and inclusive range of intellectual approaches than traditional Alexander historiography, and suggests that the study of the historical Alexander would benefit from seeing Alexander as belonging in a Near Eastern context as well as a Greek or Macedonian one.

scholarly journals The Greek Phyllada and the Old Serbian Alexander Romance

2015 ◽  
pp. 257-289
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Usakiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Serbian Version ◽  
Alexander Romance

The Greek Phyllada and the Old Serbian Alexander RomanceThe texts presents chosen fragments of the Greek "Phyllada", or the story about Alexander the Great, and its Polish translation, with an introduction commenting the relation between the Greek and Serbian version of Alexader's gesta.

Alexander the Great from Britain to Southeast Asia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Su Fang Ng
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Cultural Engagement ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Age Of Exploration ◽  
Alexander Romance ◽  
Literary Networks

No figure has had a more global impact than Alexander the Great, whose legends have encircled the globe and been translated into a dizzying multitude of languages, from Indo-European and Semitic to Turkic and Austronesian. This book examines parallel traditions of the Alexander Romance in Britain and Southeast Asia, demonstrating how rival Alexanders—one Christian, the other Islamic—became central figures in their respective literatures. In the early modern age of exploration, both Britain and Southeast Asia turned to literary imitations of Alexander to imagine their own empires and international relations, defining themselves as peripheries against the Ottoman Empire’s imperial center: this shared classical inheritance became part of an intensifying cross-cultural engagement in the encounter between the two, allowing a revealing examination of their cultural convergences and imperial rivalries and a remapping of the global literary networks of the early modern world. Rather than absolute alterity or strangeness, the narrative of these parallel traditions is one of contact—familiarity and proximity, unexpected affinity and intimate strangers.

Milton, Alexander’s Pirate, and Merchant Empires in the East

2019 ◽  
pp. 277-302
Author(s):  
Su Fang Ng
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Merchant Empires ◽  
Dutch East Indies ◽  
Spice Trade

This chapter examines John Milton’s allusions to Alexander the Great in Paradise Lost, with particular emphasis on his critique of the Dutch East Indies Empire and their English imitators. It considers how Alexander figures mercantile heroism in the age of commerce by focusing on the ways in which Paradise Lost responds to the global spice trade from both sides of the Euro-Asian encounter. The chapter analyzes Milton’s dual characterization of Satan in Paradise Lost as emperor and merchant as well as his depiction of both God and Satan as monarchs. These divergent characterizations of Satan as merchant and as king may be reconciled by recognizing Milton’s allusion to Augustine’s anecdote about the pirate’s critique of Alexander as a tyrant. The chapter also explores colonialism in Paradise Lost, Asia as a significant context for intra-European relations, and Milton’s concern with issues of sovereignty in the East Indies trade.

Islamic Alexanders in Southeast Asia

2019 ◽  
pp. 75-112
Author(s):  
Su Fang Ng
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Dominant Theme ◽  
East And West ◽  
Alexander Romance

This chapter explores the ways in which Malay Alexander romances redeploy a medieval discourse of holy war to frame contemporary conflicts. The discussion focuses on the Malay Alexander Romance, Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain (Romance of Alexander the Two-Horned), which features a universal sovereign who united East and West. The chapter reads Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain in the context of the Portuguese conquest of Melaka and considers how it represents global Islam—and its dominant theme of strangers converted to kin. It also examines how a religious empire is gained by technology in the novel, along with the text’s moral critiques of empire. Finally, it analyses the chronicle of Melaka, Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals), its emphasis on the assimilability of outsiders in translatio imperii, its appropriation of Alexander the Great, and how it defines empire as translated from elsewhere by Alexandrian figures embodying “stranger sovereignty.”

A History of Alexander the Great in World Culture

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
World Culture ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The World ◽  
Gay Activism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Alexander Romance

Alexander III of Macedon (356-323 BC) has for over 2000 years been one of the best recognized names from antiquity. He set about creating his own legend in his lifetime, and subsequent writers and political actors developed it. He acquired the surname 'Great' by the Roman period, and the Alexander Romance transmitted his legendary biography to every language of medieval Europe and the Middle East. As well as an adventurer who sought the secret of immortality and discussed the purpose of life with the naked sages of India, he became a model for military achievement as well as a religious prophet bringing Christianity (in the Crusades) and Islam (in the Qur'an and beyond) to the regions he conquered. This innovative and fascinating volume explores these and many other facets of his reception in various cultures around the world, right up to the present and his role in gay activism.

Naked philosophers: the Brahmans in the Alexander historians and the Alexander Romance

1995 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 99-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Stoneman
Keyword(s):  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Future Paper ◽  
Alexander Romance ◽  
Genuine Knowledge

The encounter of Alexander the Great with the Indian Brahmans or Oxydorkai/Oxydracae forms an important episode of the Alexander Romance as well as featuring in all the extant Alexander historians. The purpose of this paper is to consider how far the various accounts reflect genuine knowledge of India in the sources in which they are based, and to what extent the episode in the Alexander Romance diverges or adds to them and to what purpose. A future paper will consider the development of the episode in later works, Geneva Papyrus inv. 271 andPalladius De gentibus Indiae et Bragmanibus, as well as theCollatio Alexandri et Dindimi.

Alexander Romance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Stoneman
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Alexander Romance ◽  
Textual Form

The Alexander Romance is a fictionalized life of Alexander III of Macedon (Alexander the Great, 356–323 bce), originating in the 3rd century BC, though the earliest evidence for its circulation in textual form is from the 3rd century ce. Originally written in Greek (in which there are five recensions), it was translated into Latin in the 4th century ce, and from the 5th century, into every language of Europe and the Middle East. It narrates Alexander’s birth to Olympias, as son of the last Pharaoh, Nectanebo II, of Egypt; his upbringing; his campaigns (in a strange order); his encounter with Queen Candace of Meroe; and particularly his adventures in India and beyond, including his encounter with the naked philosophers of Taxila; his death, and his will. Later versions (recensions L, gamma) include a meeting with the Amazons and his invention of a diving bell and a flying machine.

Oriental Motifs in the Alexander Romance

Antichthon ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 95-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Stoneman
Keyword(s):  
Direct Influence ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
Greek Tradition ◽  
Alexander Romance

Over the centuries, the fabulous adventures of Alexander the Great have become as prominent in art and literature as his historical achievements. Medieval artists in particular are frequent sources of depictions of the hero in such adventures as the search for the water of life, the flight into the air in a basket borne by eagles, the descent into the sea in a diving bell, the interview with the talking trees of India and the visit to the dwellings of the gods. Familiar as these episodes are—or were—it is easy for us to forget how completely new a thing they represent in the tradition of Greek prose writing. With the decipherments of cuneiform some one hundred years ago, a number of scholars concluded that they could not have been developed entirely within the Greek tradition, and posited direct influence from one or more Babylonian or other near eastern sources or traditions to explain the occurrence in Greek literature of these curious tales. Despite the antiquity of these arguments, they have been accepted without examination by many more recent writers on the Alexander Romance.

scholarly journals Philosophy in the Narrative Mode

2022 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 121-140
Author(s):  
Anna Ayse Akasoy
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Principles ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Islamic Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Moral Philosopher ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Classical World ◽  
Narrative Mode ◽  
Alexander Romance

Histories of Arabic and Islamic philosophy tend to focus on texts which are systematic in nature and conventionally classified as philosophy or related scholarly disciplines. Philosophical principles, however, are also defining features of texts associated with other genres. Within the larger field of philosophy, this might be especially true of ethics and within the larger body of literature this might be especially the case for stories. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that the very purpose of storytelling is to reinforce and disseminate moral conventions. Likewise, the moral philosopher can be conceptualized as a homo narrans.The aim of this contribution is to apply the approach to narratives as a mode of debating ethical or moral principles to biographies of Alexander the Great. More than any other figure of the classical world, Alexander was religiously validated in the Islamic tradition due to his quasi-prophetic status as the ‘man with the two horns’ in the Qur’an. He appears prominently in the larger orbit of Arabic and Islamic philosophy as interlocutor and disciple of Aristotle and is adduced anecdotally in philosophical literature as an example to teach larger lessons of life. As a world conqueror, he provided an attractive model for those who sought to reconcile philosophical insight with worldly ambition.Focusing on biographies of Alexander, this article explores ethical principles which are inscribed in this body of literature and thus reads the texts as a narrativized form of philosophy. The analysis is comparative in two ways. Biographies of different periods and regions of the Islamicate world will be discussed, but comparisons with pre-Islamic biographies of Alexander (notably Roman biographies and the Alexander Romance) are included as well.

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