The Romanian Alexander Novel in International Perspective

Abstract

Alexander has been a historical hero in many men’s mind for more than 2000 years, and the legends about his life were told and later written down in many languages and cultures.
In the Romance literatures there are two main traditions, one western, French, based on Latin versions and one Romanian, based on the Serbian one. Unfortunately, the role of the East European Alexander legends is often neglected since they are regarded as “translations” and not as a work belonging to their own literary sphere.
The Romanian name of the text is Alexandria, and it was at first a part of popular literature, but even if it was a translation and a new version this book can be regard this book as the oldest secular literary work in Romanian; references are rarely seen to it in Romanian or international surveys. The printed Romanian versions were all printed in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. That also gave the texts a function of creating a national identity, as the Balkans were then politically and culturally dominated by Turkey. In this article it is shown that Alexandria is very important as an interesting and valuable manifestation of a Romanian interpretation of the Alexander theme and as the first secular literary work in Romanian. That the language is popular makes the work linguistically all the more interesting.