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THE ALEXANDREIS A Twelfth-Century Epic Walter of Châtillon a verse translation by David Townsend broadview editions © 2007 David Townsend All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5—is an infringement of the copyright law. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Gautier, de Châtillon, fl. 1170–1180. The Alexandreis / Walter of Châtillon ; a verse translation by David Townsend. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 13: 978-1-55111-676-1 ISBN 10: 1-55111-676-6 1. Alexander, the Great, 356–323 B.C.—Romances. 2. Epic poetry, Latin (Medieval and modern)—Translations into English. I. Townsend, David, 1955– II. Title. PA8310.G3A713 2006 873′.03 C2006-903840-6 Broadview Editions The Broadview Editions series represents the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable lesser-known works. Advisory editor for this volume: Jennie Rubio Broadview Press is an independent, international publishing house, incorporated in 1985. Broadview believes in shared ownership, both with its employees and with the general public; since the year 2000 Broadview shares have traded publicly on the Toronto Venture Exchange under the symbol BDP. We welcome comments and suggestions regarding any aspect of our publications—please feel free to contact us at the addresses below or at UK, Ireland, and continental Europe NBN International, Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY UK Tel: 44 (0) 1752 202300 Fax: 44 (0) 1752 202330 email: Contents Acknowledgements Introduction A Note on the Text The Alexandreis Prologue The Headings of the First Book Book One The Headings of the Second Book Book Two The Headings of the Third Book Book Three The Headings of the Fourth Book Book Four The Headings of the Fifth Book Book Five The Headings of the Sixth Book Book Six The Headings of the Seventh Book Book Seven The Headings of the Eighth Book Book Eight The Headings of the Ninth Book Book Nine The Headings of the Tenth Book Book Ten Appendix A: Other Works by Walter of Châtillon 1. Satirical and Moral Poems 2. A Treatise Against the Jews (Tractatus contra Judaeos) 3. The Rhythmical Life of Thomas Becket Appendix B: Latin Epic of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 1. Bernard Silvestris, Cosmographia 2. Alan of Lille, The Plaint of Nature (De planctu Naturae) 3. John of Hauville, The Arch-Lamenter (Architrenius) 4. Joseph of Exeter, The Ylias of Dares Phrygius 5. Henry of Avranches, The Metrical Life of St. Francis (Vita sancti Francisci) Appendix C: The Medieval Alexander Tradition 1. Quintus Curtius Rufus, The History of Alexander the Great (Historiae Alexandri Magni) 2. The History of Alexander’s Battles (Historia de preliis) 3. The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle 4. Anecdotes of Alexander from John of Salisbury’s Policraticus Appendix D: Twelfth-Century Images of the Foreign, Strange, and Exotic 1. William of Tyre, A History of Things Done in the Territories across the Sea (Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum) 2. Gerald of Wales, The Description of Wales (Descriptio Cambriae) 3. From Wonders of the East (De rebus in Oriente mirabilibus) Select Bibliography For Talestris, Queen of the Amazons; for the Scythian messenger; para los Zapatistas: the heroes at the margins Acknowledgements My debts of gratitude are many and various: to A.G. Rigg, most congenial of colleagues, for sustained enthusiasm and support; to Claire Fanger, an accomplished translator and a keen critic; to Lois Kuznets, for ideas exchanged over the years, mostly in the kitchen; to Catherine Conybeare, Carla deSantis, Rob Moody, Carin Ruff, and Sylvia Parsons, medieval Latinists with whom I shared readings of Walter that significantly shaped my understanding of his work; to Maura Lafferty, who made suggestions for the notes; and to Marvin Colker, whose review of the first edition offered helpful and specific criticisms. The University of Toronto Office of Research Services in 1990 supported my work with manuscripts of the Alexandreis now held in British libraries, facilitating insights into medieval receptions of the poem that otherwise would have come, if at all, only later and less vividly. My partner Rob Norquay offered support and patience at times when the project encroached on what was then our common life. Finally, I owe my most profound gratitude to Scott Westrem, whose erudition is matched only by his generosity, and whose meticulous comments made the translation both more accurate and more graceful than it would otherwise have been, although many flaws remain despite his good offices. Introduction The Poem and Its Author Walter of Châtillon’s ten-book epic on the life of Alexander the Great is one of the high achievements of twelfth-century literature. It ranks among the finest Latin works in the century that also produced Bernard Silvestris, Nigel of Canterbury, the Ysengrimus poet, Alan of Lille, Walter Map, and Joseph of Exeter. In artistry and intelligence it loses nothing by comparison to the first flowerings of the European vernaculars. Yet Walter’s work, while today better known and more widely read than it was before the appearance of Marvin Colker’s critical edition in 1978, remains largely an object of specialist scrutiny. Most undergraduate students and committed amateurs of medieval literature have never read it. Scholars of vernacular literature, with some notable exceptions, refer to it more or less cursorily as a work of ancillary interest. But in Walter’s own generation and for several centuries following, the Alexandreis enjoyed undisputed pre-eminence. Over two hundred manuscripts survive, most of them dating from the thirteenth century, but significant numbers representing the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as well.1 The poem was printed in 1487 (Rouen), and again in 1513 (Strasbourg), 1541 (Ingolstadt), and 1558 (Lyons). Few works of medieval literature survive in such a copious transmission: the Roman de la Rose and Dante’s Divine Comedy come down to us in roughly comparable numbers of manuscripts, while Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is extant in fewer than one hundred. Literary quality and influence cannot of course be so easily measured as this; but Walter’s poem certainly loomed as large in the literary milieux of Jean de Meun, Boccaccio, Dante, Chaucer, and Gower as do works by Chaucer, Milton, and even Shakespeare in ours. Its disappearance from the canon after a sustained popularity might suggest instead an analogy to Orlando Furioso. Nor was Walter’s poem simply copied and read widely: it was studied intensively as a standard text of the literary curriculum, as copious glosses in many surviving manuscripts attest.2 If the poem were of only historical interest—if it were simply a curious monument to the otherness of tastes that modern readers cannot share—its neglect today might be allowed to continue without intervention. But shifts in literary expectation have not rendered the signal qualities of the Alexandreis inaccessible. Readers today can still find in the poem an extraordinary subtlety, a keen intelligence, a beauty in turns lyrical and outlandish—and at times even an uncanny postmodernity. It rewards the reader as richly as do many of the better- known texts we consider the essential core of medieval European literature. It deserves to be read alongside the medieval authors we receive as canonical, and to be read, by those without access to the original Latin, in a translation that allows the reader an experience of the work as poetry. We know less than we might wish of Walter’s life and the circumstances of the poem’s composition. Walter was probably born around 1135. Various biographical notices survive in the accessus (introductions) included among the glosses of some manuscripts,3 but the details they record are mutually contradictory. Walter seems to have been born in Lille. After studies in Paris and Reims, and after directing the school of Laon, he headed a school at one of the several towns of Châtillon in northeastern France—Châtillon-sur-Marne is the prime candidate. It is by his association with Châtillon that he is usually known. At Châtillon he composed quedam ludicra, “light verses,” which presumably included love lyrics and moral satires in rhyming accentual meters, a form in which he also excelled.4 Subsequent to a realization that the liberal arts don’t pay, he may have gone on to study law in Bologna. Thereafter he entered the service of Guillaume des Blanches Mains (William of the White Hands), brother-in-law of Louis VII of France, uncle of Philip Augustus, archbishop of Sens and subsequently of Reims.5 The Alexandreis is dedicated to William, as the opening of Book One and the close of Books Five and Ten attest. The initial letters of the poem’s ten books spell out GUILLERMUS, his patron’s Latin name. One thirteenth-century biographical gloss from Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS lat. 8358, fol. 91v suggests that Walter composed the poem to regain William’s favor. According to the anecdote, Walter was jealous of William’s sexual liaison with a cleric named Berterus, himself a poet of some reputation;6 he took his revenge by contriving the recitation of a

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