Survey of one of the most important surviving medieval manuscripts reveals much of its contemporary cultural, literary and social milieu. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264 is one of the most famous and most sumptuous illuminated manuscripts of the entire Middle Ages. Completed in 1344 in Tournai, in what is now Belgium, the manuscript preserves the fullest version of the interpolated Old French Roman d'Alexandre (Romance of Alexander the Great), and some of the most vivid illustrations of any medieval romance, ranking amongst the greatest achievements of the illuminator's art, its borders in particular offering a panorama of medieval society and imagination. A celebration of courtliness, a commemoration of urban chivalry, a mirror for the prince instructing in the arts of rule, and a meditation on crusade, it manifests the extraordinary richness and creativity of late medieval manuscript culture. This study examines the manuscript as a monumental expression of the beliefs and social practices of its day, placing it in its historical and artistic context; it also analyzes its later reception in England, where the addition of a Middle English Alexander poem and of Marco Polo's Voyages reflects changing concepts of language, historiography, and geography. Mark Cruse is Assistant Professor of French, School of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State University.

Alexander the Great was one of the legendary Nine Worthies in the medieval canon of ancient and modern heroes, and medieval writers exploited his legend in a wide variety of literary and didactic texts. Addressing the classical legacy to the Middle Ages as expressed in four centuries of vernacular narratives, this volume offers the first systematic collective study of Alexander the Great's thematic prominence in medieval culture. Contributors from Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States combine sensitive textual analyses with perspectives from such diverse fields as art history, codicology, anthropology, sociology, the history of mentalities, and postcolonial theory. Overall, the collection offers a provocative rethinking of the monumental medieval French tradition of Alexander the Great, as well as valuable insight into the emergence and transformations of French literature between the early twelfth century and the end of the Middle Ages.

"The core of this book on the French verse Alexander in France and Italy was written by eminent Alexander specialist David J.A. Ross, who left an incomplete typescript at his death. In its emphasis on illustration, this book offers new perspectives on the reception of one of the most popular medieval heroes. Ross's analysis of the illustrations proves that despite some convergent patterns there is no iconographic programme that coordinates the three major verse traditions as there is for the versions in prose. Nevertheless, the verse versions continued to be copied and illustrated long after the emergence of prose. The editors have expanded Ross's text, as he wished, to include a comparative analysis of the iconography and they have situated each manuscript as far as possible in its cultural context, demonstrating that the producers of the verse Alexander were also responsible for writing and illustrating a large number of other vernacular and liturgical books in Northern France, Paris, the South, and Italy. This volume is a sequel to Ross's Studies in the Alexander Romance and his Illustrated medieval Alexander-books in Germany and the Netherlands, and makes available an extensive corpus of high-quality images of this great hero."--