Postdoc to study the Greek (and Armenian) Alexander Romance (original) (raw)

The Documentary Letters of the Alexander Romance (2014)

"The Alexander Romance, a historical novel composed between the late Hellenistic and High Imperial period, features over thirty letters inserted into the narrative framework. The drastic variation in length, content, and style of these letters has made it difficult to understand what role they play within the novel. Reinhold Merkelbach’s seminal study of the Alexander Romance in 1954 established a helpful distinction between the novel’s fantastical letters and those with a semblance of historical authenticity. However, neither Merkelbach nor successive scholars (Häag 1983, Rosenmeyer 2001) have established criteria for determining the historical plausibility of a given letter, or interrogated the author’s motives for embedding such letters into an explicitly fictional text. This paper remedies these methodological gaps first by determining what constitutes a historically plausible letter in the Alexander Romance, and then by explaining the purpose of historical letters within the novel at large. First, I pinpoint distinctive features of non-literary correspondence from the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, using letters preserved in papyri and inscriptions. I identify common linguistic and stylistic features, such as the profusion of koine sound changes, hiatus, and formulaic lines of greeting and farewell (Welles 1934). This analysis also highlights three important narrative features of non-literary correspondence from this period: (1) acknowledgement of the writing activity and the materiality of the epistolary medium, (2) specificity of requests, and (3) demands for return mail. Only by determining the essential qualities of non-literary correspondence is it possible to speculate on the credibility and persuasiveness of historical letters in the Alexander Romance. Second, I demonstrate how the criteria of non-literary correspondence established in the first section of my paper map onto two letters of the Alexander Romance: Darius’ letter to Alexander (2.10) and the letter of Queen Candace of Meroë to Alexander (3.10). Darius’ letter to Alexander employs narrative features of non-literary correspondence to persuade the reader of its historical credibility: Darius references his own writing activity, makes a series of specific requests, and then demands return mail from his adversary. The letter of Queen Candace of Meroë to Alexander meets all the criteria of non-literary correspondence, providing a perfect model of a historically plausibility, but Candace, the addressee, remains a semi-mythological character. By combining factual features and a fantastical addressee in the same letter, the author tests the boundaries of the reader’s credulity, entertaining him or her in a game of wits: can the reader distinguish fact from fiction? While the Alexander Romance has often been regarded as a mediocre work of Greek prose, this paper argues for its greater literary sophistication by examining the novel’s historical letters as the techniques of play in a game of wit between writer and reader."

"Armeniaca. International Journal of Armenian Studies" 3 | 2024

Armeniaca. International Journal of Armenian Studie 3 | 2024, 2024

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new online journal Armeniaca. International Journal of Armenian Studies to be published by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari. This initiative responds to the ever-growing diffusion of electronic journals in academia and the need to provide such a scholarly instrument also for Armenian studies: an open access outlet that follows a double-blind peer review procedure. Based on this shared goal representatives of four Italian universities where Armenian studies are currently present in the curriculum (Bologna, Florence, Pisa and Venice), came together to carry out this project. The journal embraces an international perspective as reflected in the composition of its scientific board whose members are Armenologists from diverse research institutions and universities in Europe and beyond. It is open to the main fields of research in Armenian studies (archaeology, art, philology, literature, linguistics, history) and accepts articles in English, Italian, French, and German.

The Creative Reception of the Alexander Romance in Iran

Foundational Texts of World Literature. ed. D. Julien. New York, 2011

hen the Greek emperor Alexander died, aged 33, in the year 323 BCE, his life and career destined him to become the ideal model for the topos of valiant hero and reckless conqueror. Considering his conquest of more or less the whole world known to the Greek culture of his day, he would even become the quintessential expression of a world ruler. In world literature, no other historical character plays a similarly significant role. No other character has been portrayed so often and in so many different ways in historical literature, in epics, romances, and legends, in songs and dramatic poetry, in works of pious edification and in prophetic revelations. 1 In terms of geography, the narrative tradition dealing with Alexander covers primarily the whole of Europe and the Near and Middle East. In terms of chronology, it has stayed alive and vibrant, albeit with changing notions, from the earliest versions up to the very present. As a matter of fact, the Alexander tradition is so overwhelmingly present in both space and time that in a historical perspective it is hard to think of any work of transnational narrative literature surpassing its popularity. Consequently, it was neither surprising nor coincidental that Alexander became the focus of scholarly attention towards the end of the second millennium CE, when his memory was celebrated in various conferences, large research projects, and numerous scholarly publications. The narrative tradition focusing on Alexander derives mostly from a work of late Greek antiquity that has erroneously been attributed to Greek historian Callisthenes (ca. 370-327 BCE). According to the present state of knowledge, it was actually compiled at the end of the third century CE by a an unlettered scribe from Alexandria. For his compilation, this scribe drew mainly on a historical treatment of Alexander dating from the Hellenistic age (second century BCE) together with the substrate of a collection of letters, some of them preserving traits of the oldest layers of the legend of Alexander. Current research divides the development and international diffusion of the Alexander Romance into three major stages. 3 After the initial W

"Armeniaca. International Journal of Armenian Studies" Vol. 1 - October 2022

Armeniaca. International Journal of Armenian Studies, 2022

Postdoc to study the Greek (and Armenian) Alexander Romance (original) (raw)

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