'MANY MAN HE SHAL DO WOO': PORTENTS AND THE END OF AN EMPIRE IN "KYNG ALISAUNDER"

Abstract

In the Middle English romance KyngAlisaunder, the birth of the young conqueror excites a curious response. While his biological father, the Egyptian sorcerer Nectanabus, accurately predicts that Alexander will expand his empire into the East and gain sovereignty over all rulers, his adoptive father Philip utters a pointed prophecy of his own: 'i>ou hast brou3th forp an yuel fode,' he tells his scheming queen Olympias, after she has given birth to their prodigious son. Mote he lybbe and penne goo, / Many man he shal do woo' (Tines 646- 8). J This prophecy (or perhaps curse) effectively outdoes that of Nectanabus, for Philip alone knows that the boy's tragic fate is to die abroad at the apex of his conquests and at a young age. Moreover, Philip alone knows the dangers represented by this 'evil child' for Macedon and its royal family: this son of a stranger will lead the Macedonians to the outermost limits of the Orient, yet he will bequeath to his people the seeds of self-destruction. As I will argue, this unsettling conception of Alexander as a conqueror who would bring woe to many men is atypical of medieval romance yet emblematic of his insular reception in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, when the earliest Alexander romances in England, the Roman de toute chevalerie and KyngAlisaunder, portrayed the conqueror and his empire as a collective example of politicai discord. This reception was influenced by the monastic transmission of Roman histories of Alexander and his subsequent Anglo-Latin reception, which defined him as a figure of luxury and violence, a king whose death initiated a global civil war, and a tyrant Svhose mighty hand knew not how to spare but preferred to lay waste to all things with fire and sword [and] stirred up the flames of war throughout nearly the entire world'.2 KyngAlisaunder, in particular, took an interest in this tyrannical devastation, and as a relic of an age in which popular and learned portrayals of Alexander did not yet stand in opposition as admiring and critical narratives, this Middle English romance confirms Philip's fear of having an 'yvel fode' for a successor.Alexander romances and bis reception in EnglandBy the time Alexander appeared in vernacular narratives in post-Conquest England, he was indeed the most discussed and enduring figure of antiquity, as his reception had rested upon the sturdy pillars of history and romance since Hs death in 323 BC.3 While the former stressed both his personal degradation and the civil wars that destroyed his empire after his death, the latter praised his exploits, lamented his death, and ignored the fate of Macedon. He could thus inspire respect and provoke anxiety more than any figure of antiquity, and this contradictory reception is apparent in the surviving codices of Kyng Alisaunder, An association between classical and national figures of history and romance is apparent, in fact, in the earliest (yet now fragmentary) copy of Kyng Alisaunder in the Auchinleck manuscript. Here, Alexander's deeds are recorded alongside Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, and the tales of royal heroes, including Of Arthour and Merlin and Richard Coer de Lyon, both of which have been attributed to the KyngAlisaunder-^^ (along with The Seven Sages of Rome). This theory about the so-called 'Kyng A/isaunder-gtoup' has met with varying opposition, but there is no question that contemporary readers saw parallels in the stories of the three figures, Alexander, Arthur, and Richard the Lionheart, and that Alexander's presence in the Auchinleck manuscript shows, as argued by Thorlac Turville-Petre, that he was meant to stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with England's national heroes.4 In the opening lines to Richard Coer de Lyon, for example, the poet surveys the historical heroes of antiquity, France, and England, now the subjects of romance, and although he refers to the ancient world in terms only of Troy and Alexander (the destruction of the one and the death of the other would, of course, resonate throughout history), he situates romances of the Macedonian alongside those of such English figures as Arthur, Gawain, and Richard himself. …