Roman d'Alexandre

The Roman d'Alexandre, from the Old French Li romans d'Alixandre (English: "Romance of Alexander"), is a 16,000-verse twelfth-century) Old French Alexander romance detailing various episodes in the life of Alexander the Great. It is considered by many scholars as the most important of the Medieval Alexander romances. Many of the manuscripts of the work are illustrated. The poem is generally divided into four branches (see below). The final form of the poem is largely credited to Alexandre de Bernay who probably placed the branches in the order we find them, reworked the first branch into alexandrines, incorporated the text of Pierre de Saint-Cloud, and added verses to join each branch.

The four branches:

Unlike other authors of the era who undertook the Alexander saga, Alexandre de Bernay did not base his work on the Pseudo-Callisthenes or on the various translations of Julius Valerius' work. As is common in medieval literature, the project stems from the desire to improve on the work of others and to offer the complete life of the hero to the public, a theme that is also very present in the cyclical turn that the chansons de geste took at the time. Thomas de Kent also penned (probably) the very same decade a version of the saga, Le roman de toute chevalerie, which is independent of Alexandre de Bernay's poem: Alexander's influence on the medieval imagination is thus shown as being as great, if not greater, than that of other pagan figures such as Hercules or Aeneas.

In part poème épique and roman, Alexandre's work explores in great detail (and ambiguity) the various facets of the character, combining both the "estoire rose" and "estoire noire". This results in a lush characterization that is absent in the previous poems. The poem also undertakes, like many medieval writings, the education of young noblemen (the "gentils chevalieres") and paints a picture of the political and social changes present at the time (the accession to power of common men and the poverty that thus strike the lower levels of nobility and the recentralization of power in 12th century France). Alexander is shown as generous, loyal and courageous: he is a protective and giving figure, the emblem of unification of the noblemen under one active and strong voice.

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