The ‘Alexandreis’ of Walter of Châtillon: A Twelfth-Century Epic (review)

· 178 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 sheds light on a significant moment in the development of art history, and its attention to broader trends in intellectual history renders it useful to students of other fields in the humanities as well. (JILL CASKEY) David Townsend, translator. The 'AlexandreisI ofWalter ofChatilIon: A Twelfth-Century Epic University of Pennsylvania Press. XXXI 214. $58.25 Largely through the work of David Townsend, Toronto has recently become the centre of a renewal of interest in Walter of Chatillon and his epic of Alexander. This brilliant poem in its day enjoyed the status of a modern classic; itsurvives in over two hundred manuscripts, manyof them extensivelyglossed- as Townsend notes, the poem is fraught with learning and was clearly intended to be studied - as well as several early printed editions. But unlike the allegories of Walter's fellow I classics' Bernardus Silvestris and Alan of Lille, the Alexandreis is not an exercise in the representation of philosophico-religious truth. In the poem's final book a Nature who isrecognizably the creator-goddess ofBernardus and Alan, the vicaria Dei, makes a bizarre appearance, imploring 'Leviathan' to bring down Alexander, whose power threatens to subdue the whole world and menaces even Hell and Chaos; but this is hardly a contribution to the history of ideas, and the Alexandreis has generally been viewed as no more than a straightforward attempt, inevitably cumbersome and pedantic, to emulate Roman epic. As such it had received little or no modern critical attention before Marvin Colker's fine critical edition (1978) and the recent· work of Townsend and others at Toronto gave it a new lease on life. Townsend argues persuasively that Walter is far from a mere antiquarian , and that his purpose in the Alexandreis is complex and tmexpectedly modem. His densely allusive styleis based on I splicings' oflanguage which evoke the full spectrum of Latin poetry, and often create effects of calculated incongruity, violating the norms ofepic rhetoric and complicating the poem's heroic ethos. In juxtaposing' the great intelligence and heroism of Alexander with reminders of the greed and brutality of conquest, Walter can be seen reflecting on the political hopes of his own day, the mingling of inspired vision and disastrous circumstance in the early Crusades, and the dream of a Christian world empire. For Townsend the Alexandreis is a poem which offers 'no Final Say,' the movement of its plot centrifugal and its moral and political meaning unresolved. His brief introduction provides little scope for developing his approach to the poem's complexities (one wishes that he had at least found room for a brief synopsis of its plot), but he has clearly got closer to the heart of the matter than the one extended reading of the poem known to me, that of Dennis HUMANITIES 179 Kratz, whose Mocking Epic (1980) treats the Alexandreis almost entirely as a study in the contradiction of epic and Christian values. Townsend's blank-verse translation nicely complements his reading of Walter's highlyintertextualliterary purpose. Itis castin a flexible, basically iambic pentameter which deliberately recalls not only Milton and Shakespeare but several stages in the development of English verse, 'sometimes reminiscent of Renaissance or Baroque practice, sometimes more akin to second-string Victorians like Swinburne, sometimes bearing the conversational and rhythmically freer stamp of twentieth-century poetry.' At every point where I have checked it, it is based on a clear tmderstanding of Walter's Latin, though it is often quite free, and Townsend frankly acknowledges that the reader in want of a trot may be better served byPritchard's prose version of1986. Itis a pleasure to read throughout , and its twenty-odd pages of notes are compiled with an intelligent eye to the non-specialist reader. Walter is unlikely to challenge Chretien de Troyes,buthe will certainly be read more widelyand appreciativelythanks to the appearance of this excellent book. (WINTHROP WETHERBEE) Records ofEarly English Drama: Somerset. 2 Volumes. Volume 1: The Records; Volume 2: Editorial Apparatus. Edited by James Stokes; Bath edited by Robert J. Alexander University of Toronto Press. xii, 1142. $175.00 The editorial procedure for these volumes is explicitly displayed in 2:594, where the editor declares, 'This collection...