Alexander the Great in Manuscript Arts from the Medieval to the Early Modern Periods
- Course Code
- HARC 0701
- Course Type
- Tutorials
- Subject Credit
- Course Availability
This tutorial course is going to dwell on a single figure—Alexander the Great, or Iskandar Maqdūnī (the Macedonian) as he is known in Persian—in select manuscripts produced across Central Asia and Central Europe in the medieval (1000-1500) and early-modern (1450-1750) periods. Alexander was significant in different ways to different dynasties administering different regions and in different eras. Different versions of his biography had different appeal, and at different times. By associating themselves with the hero, different rulers emphasized different facets of Alexander in their patronage of manuscripts.
In addition to being a part of popular culture and common knowledge for millennia, Alexander’s recounted exploits have particularly resonated with royals and nobles sitting in English through Indonesian courts. The course highlights a few select illustrated texts—produced between the 13th through 16th centuries—in Greek, French, Latin, Armenian, Turkish, Arabic, Turkish, and Persian. It is essential to consider each text within its own tradition, but placing them together also allows for a broader geographic and chronological scope that can also produce interesting comparisons of cross-cultural and trans-imperial significance.
Sessions will explore the interplay of a narrative’s ancient (often imagined) past taking place in the Greek Empire (ca. 4th century BCE), with the accreted layers of time periods in which the illustrated text is produced, read, or seen. Dwelling on Alexander’s reception in various courts and dynasties professing Christian and Islamic confessions (Franco-Flemish, Italian, Byzantine, Mongol, Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, Abu’l-Khairid [Uzbek]), the course challenges the binaries of east and west, Christianity and Islam, through the universal appeal of the famous world conqueror. It will be of interest to students of literature, art history, religious history, culture and translation studies, medieval and early modern cultures, European and West/Central/South Asian history.
Sample Topics
- Alexander as interpreted in the oldest texts and contexts: Greek, Syriac, Latin language sources, Biblical and Qur’anic versions.
- New Persian and Old French—European Medieval traditions (13th-14th centuries) and early Persian literary versions (in the Shahnama, ca. 1010)
- Alexander in the Byzantine and Mongol realms (13th-14th centuries.
- Alexander in the Islamicate (Ottoman, Iranian, and Central Asian) realm (15th century), Turkish and Persian versions.
- Alexander in the Islamicate (Ottoman, Iranian, and Central Asian) realm (16th century), Turkish and Persian versions.
- Why Alexander? The appeal of superheroes.
- Trip to the Weston Library to view manuscripts ((European and Turco-Persianate copies of the Alexander Romance).
- Trip to British Library in London to view Old French Alexander manuscripts owned by Henry VIII, and Persian manuscript versions.