A one-day conference at the British Library.

This event takes place at the British Library.

To coincide with the British Library’s Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth exhibition, the Library and its academic partner, Durham University, are holding a one-day international academic conference with papers by leading and early-career scholars in the fields of history, literature and art history.

The papers focus on the transmission of the legends about the fantastic people, unimaginable beasts and mythical monsters Alexander faces in his legendary life, the Alexander Romance. 

Translated and adapted into almost all languages of the medieval world, Alexander’s fantastic adventures with the miraculous and the monstrous went through incredible transformations across cultures and continents. The papers will place these fantastic stories in geographical, cultural and political contexts shedding new light on their transmission and adaptation.

The conference comprises three keynote lectures, one by Richard Stoneman on the monsters of the Greek Alexander Romance, a second paper by Barbara Brend on the afterlife of the monsters in the Persian literary and visual tradition and a third by Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas on the reception of Alexander’s monsters in the European Middle Ages. Each keynote paper is followed by presentations given by early-career scholars addressing the same topic in a dialogue with the keynote and one another.

The lectures are followed by a private view of the exhibition (16.00 – 18.00) and an evening lecture Alexander: Between Fantasy and History by Robin Lane Fox (19:00 -20:30).

Lunch is provided and is included in the ticket price, as is the private view and evening lecture.

Image Alexander and the Blemmyae, Paris, France, Royal MS 20 B XX, f. 80r.

This event will not be live-streamed.

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