The Alexandreis of Walter of Chatillon: A Twelfth-Century Epic

Walter;Townsend, David;Walter, of Chatillon

ISBN 10: 0812233476 / ISBN 13: 9780812233476

Published by Univ of Pennsylvania Pr, Philadelphia, 1996

About this Item

1996, HB, VG/VG, DJ has slight edgewear, 214 p. Seller Inventory # 62812

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Alexandreis of Walter of Chatillon: A ...

Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr, Philadelphia

Publication Date: 1996

Binding: Hardcover

Book Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

Book Type: Book

About this title

Synopsis:

Written sometime in the 1170s, Walter of Chatillon's Latin epic on the life of Alexander the Great loomed as large on literary horizons as the works on Jean de Meun, Dante, or Boccaccio. Within a few decades of its composition, the poem had become a standard text of the literary curriculum. Virtually all authors of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries knew the poem. And an extraordinary two hundred surviving manuscripts, elaborately annotated, attest both to the popularity of the Alexandreis and to the care with which it was read by its medieval audience.

From the Back Cover:

David Townsend's translation - the first ever into English verse - affords modern readers a vivid sense of the aesthetic appeal and sophisticated artistry of Walter's poem. A concise introduction sets out the poem's background and significance in literary history, while also suggesting how Walter's text resonates with the literary sensibilities of our own times. Townsend's explanatory notes, adapted in large part from glosses in the surviving manuscripts, allow modern audiences a remarkable glimpse into the ways in which medieval readers of the Alexandreis must have understood the poem.