It is a pleasure to introduce to the CRSN Professor Gaullier-Bougassas. Catherine wrote to us a while back hoping that we might be able to put her in touch with Classical Reception scholars working in similar or related fields to hers. Now, this is exactly the kind of thing the CRSN is designed to do, so we invited Catherine to provide us with an introduction to her work. We were delighted to receive the following from Catherine about her route to Classical Reception Studies and about the rich medieval reception of Alexander the Great. We are especially pleased with the images of Alexander’s journey under the sea (in some kind of submarine) and his Battle with the extraordinary blemmyae!
I am a professor of French Medieval Language and Literature at the University of Lille. After being a student at the École normale supérieure (Paris, rue d’Ulm), I hold my PhD at the University of Paris III-La Sorbonne nouvelle (1995). My PhD focused on two accounts of the life of Alexander the Great written in the twelfth century, the Roman d’Alexandre d’Alexandre de Paris, written in France, and the Roman d’Alexandre ou Roman de Toute Chevalerie by Thomas de Kent, written in Great Britain. I began my academic career at the University of Paris X, then at the University of Paris III, and I have been a professor at the University of Lille since 2004.
My first subject of interest in medieval literature was not the reception of classical material, but the representations and imaginary of the East, above all Byzantine and Arabic, in French literature of the twelfth century. By studying the birth of Orientalism in French, the figure of Alexander the Great nevertheless imposed itself very quickly. The literary invention of the authors on Alexander’s travels in the East is a fascinating subject.
It is therefore research on the novels of Alexander written in the 12th century that led me to classical reception studies. I am amazed by the richness of the ways in which medieval authors appropriated the figure of Alexander the Great, as a traveler and explorer, as well as conqueror and sovereign, and also as the supposed son of the Egyptian enchanter Nectanebo and as a pupil of Aristotle. What interests me are the multiple links that the authors weave between the ancient figure and their own universe, the interactions between the past and the present, between the other and the same, that the metamorphoses of classical matter show. The diversity of the medieval works dedicated to Alexander the Great is quite extraordinary, as are the illustrations of their manuscripts, with all the wonders of the East, extraordinary adventures such as those of the underwater voyage or the celestial ascent with griffins, with also the enchanter and magician Nectanabus invented as Alexander’s father ever since the Alexander romance of the Greek Pseudo-Callisthenes.
After my PhD, my research was thus devoted to many other texts written about Alexander the Great from the 12th century to the beginning of the 16th century, as well as to literary representations of the East, from the Crusades to the Christian era, in chivalric novels: the two subjects maintain close links, since Alexander was metamorphosed into a precursor of the medieval Crusaders and the imaginary relationship between the West and the East is at the heart of his various receptions over the centuries.
I wished to compare the different European literatures to study the processes through which the myth of Alexander the Great was received and transmitted across an extraordinary range of linguistic and cultural boundaries between the eleventh century and the first half of the sixteenth century in Western and Eastern Europe. These processes involved the production of numerous texts that not only perpetuated but also reinvented the myth. Addressing a vast European corpus, I asked myself why and how the memory of Alexander the Great inspired such a large number and variety of works, many of which were highly innovative since they inaugurated new forms of literary discourse.
From 2009 to 2014 I led a research programme focussed on the literary creation of a myth of Alexander the Great in European literatures (10th-early 16th) and funded by the French National Research Agency. I gathered an interdisciplinary and international team of 17 scholars, specializing in Byzantine, Armenian, Slavic (Servian and Russian in particular), Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, English, Dutch and Scandinavian literatures.
I created the editorial series “Alexander redivivus” at Brepols publishers. The works of the project were published there, including La Fascination pour Alexandre le Grand dans les littératures européennes (Xe-XVIe siècle). Réinventions d’un mythe, Brepols, 2014, 4, vols..
Several major medieval works on Alexander the Great remained and remain unpublished. My research also consists of critical editing, which is essential to make these works known and to advance research. I thus edited the account on Macedonia in the first universal history written in French language (L’histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Brepols, 2012), and I edited the book on Alexander the Great which is contained in the Bouquechardière of Jean de Courcy, a broad chronicle carried out in Normandy in the 15th century (La Bouquechardière, critical edition and commentary of Book 5, Philip II and Alexander, Brepols, in press). My research also continues on the reception of the figure of Alexander the Great, with the publication of collective volumes that address his reception from late Antiquity to the modern era : L’entrée d’Alexandre le Grand sur la scène européenne. Théâtre et opéra (XVe-XIXe s), Brepols, 2017 (with C. Dumas), Postérités européennes de Quinte-Curce. De l’humanisme aux Lumières (XIVe-XVIIIe s), Brepols, 2018 ; Alexandre tourné en dérision, de l’Antiquité au XXe s, Brepols, in press (with H. Tropé).
La Bouquechardière contains six books, which trace the history of ancient Greece from its mythical origins to Alexander the Great and his successors. I edited the book I : La Bouquechardière de Jean de Courcy, tome 1, Introduction générale. Des origines de la Grèce jusqu’à Hercule, édition critique et commentaire, Brepols, 2020. This edition has allowed me to broaden my research to the reception of ancient Greece before Alexander in medieval literature. I have thus created a new editorial series with Brepols, “Recherches sur les Réceptions de l’Antiquité” of which I am the general editor (http://www.brepols.net/pages/browsebyseries.aspx?TreeSeries=RRA).
I am currently working on medieval mythographic writings, and on the geography and history of Ancient Greece as the authors imagine it.
Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas
catherine.bougassas@univ-lille.fr
https://mythalexandre.meshs.fr/
Selected publications
–Les Romans d’Alexandre. Aux frontières de l’épique et du romanesque, Paris, Champion, 1998
–La Tentation de l’Orient dans le roman médiéval (Sur l’imaginaire médiéval de l’Autre), Paris, Champion, 2003
–Le Roman du Châtelain de Coucy et de la Dame de Fayel de Jakemés, édition critique, traduction, présentation et notes, Paris, Champion, 2009
–L’Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César ou Histoires pour Roger, châtelain de Lille, de Wauchier de Denain, l’histoire de la Macédoine et d’Alexandre le Grand, édition critique du texte de Wauchier de Denain; édition critique du remaniement franco-italien du codex 2576 de Vienne; Le Premier Volume d’Orose, Antoine Vérard, 1491, texte ; 474 pages, Turnhout, Brepols, 2012
–Alexandre d’Antoine Vérard, édition :http://alexandrelegrand.net/
–La Bouquechardière de Jean de Courcy, Introduction générale, Des origines de la Grèce jusqu’à Hercule, édition critique et commentaire du livre I (ch. 1-27), t. 1, Brepols, 2020
–La Bouquechardière de Jean de Courcy, Philippe II et Alexandre le Grand, édition critique et commentaire du livre V, t. 6, Brepols (in press)
–L’historiographie médiévale d’Alexandre le Grand (ed.),Turnhout, Brepols, 2011
–Les voyages d’Alexandre au paradis : Orient et Occident, regards croisés (ed. with M. Bridges), Turnhout, Brepols, 2013
–La fascination pour Alexandre le Grand dans les littératures européennes (Xe-début du XVIe siècle). Réinventions d’un mythe, dir., Turnhout, Brepols, 2014, 4 vols.
–Trajectoires européennes du Secretum secretorum du Pseudo-Aristote (XIIIe-XVIe siècle), ed. with M. Bridges and J.-Y. Tilliette, Turnhout, Brepols, 2015
–Alexandre le Grand à la lumière des manuscrits et des premiers imprimés, matérialité des textes, contextes et paratextes, ed. Turnhout, Brepols, 2015
–L’entrée d’Alexandre le Grand sur la scène européenne (fin XVe-XIXe siècle). Théâtre et opéra, ed. with C. Dumas, Turnhout, Brepols, 2017
–Postérités européennes de Quinte-Curce : de l’humanisme aux Lumières (xive-xviiie siècle), ed., Turnhout, Brepols, 2018
–Figures de la Grèce ancienne dans les littératures italienne et française des XIVe et XVe siècle, ed., Turnhout, Brepols, 2020
Alexander’s journey under the sea
British Library, Royal 20 B XX fol 77v
Battle with blemmyae
British Library, Royal 20 B XX, fol 80