Nagy Sándor és a trójaiak a burgundi irodalomban
Alexander the Great and the Trojans in Burgundian literature

Summary/Abstract: It is a long known fact that fifteenth-century Burgundian literature was highly ideologized. The collection of the Burgundian library as well as the subjects of the works recommended for the dukes were determined by dynastic policy. Alexander of Macedonia was the protagonist of several contemporary works mostly as the embodiment the virtues of audacity, heroism, and generosity. Like so many other ancient and mediaeval personifications of chivalric virtues, he was probably a model for Philip the Good and Charles the Bold. The paper analyses in detail the outstanding role of Alexander the Great in Burgundian ideology, and inquires how the dukes of Burgundy, who came from the House of Valois, and were, therefore, descendants of the Trojans, could select Alexander the Great of Macedonia as their role model. The justification of the question is to be found in Georges Chastelain’s poem, Complainte d’Hector. A detailed analysis establishes what role the Trojan legends and/or Alexander the Great played for a century in indigenous Burgundian literature, and the paper collects a number of motives that demonstrate Charles the Bold’s personal attraction to Alexander the Great, establish the probability of the former’s admiration towards the latter, and indicate that Charles’s actions were to some extent determined by his identification with Alexander. His death in the battle near Nancy was also the result of a heroic recklessness in imitation of ancient models. Alexander was only one of these models, but the most important one, even if sometimes, as in the Lucianian dialogue popularized by Jean Mielot, he was second to some other hero. The paper, as a contrast to Burgundian literature, introduces a “novel” from fifteenth-century France, with both Alexander the Great and Hector as protagonists; the author, Sebastien Mamerot, in accordance with French royal ideology, presents them in a light quite different from that employed by his Burgundian contemporaries.

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