Illuminating the Roman D'alexandre

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, the manuscript preserves the fullest version of the interpolated Old French Roman d'Alexandre (Romance of Alexander the Great), and one of the largest repertories of marginalia extant. 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 Vouages reflect changing concepts of language, historiography, and geography.