No figure has had a more global impact than Alexander the Great, whose legends have encircled the globe and been translated into a dizzying multitude of languages, from Indo-European and Semitic to Turkic and Austronesian.Alexander the Great from Britain to Southeast Asiaexamines parallel traditions of theAlexander Romancein Britain and Southeast Asia, demonstrating how rival Alexanders - one Christian, the other Islamic - became central figures in their respective literatures. In the early modern age of exploration, both Britain and Southeast Asia turned to literary imitations of Alexander to imagine their own empires and international relations, defining themselves as peripheries against the Ottoman Empire's imperial center: this shared classical inheritance became part of an intensifying cross-cultural engagement in the encounter between the two, allowing a revealing examination of their cultural convergences and imperial rivalries and a remapping of the global literary networks of the early modern world. Rather than absolute alterity or strangeness, the narrative of these parallel traditions is one of contact - familiarity and proximity, unexpected affinity and intimate strangers.
Author(s): Su Fang Ng
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 432
Acknowledgments
Nota Bene
Contents
List of Maps and Figures
Introduction: Intimate Strangers—Peripheries in Global Literary Networks
Traffic in Books
Alexander’s Literary Empire
Trading Networks
Connected Literary Histories
Chapter Overview
PART I: Conjunctions
1: Heirs to Rome
Periphery–Center Alignments
Ottoman Imitatio Alexandri
Imitatio Alexandri in Global Politics
2: Islamic Alexanders in Southeast Asia
Familiar Strangers in the Peripheries
Marvelous Technology
Pirate and Emperor
Alexandrian Translatio imperii in the Malay Annals
Alexander in Melaka’s Fall
Conclusion
3: Scottish Alexanders and Stuart Empire
Inheriting Empire in the Scottish Buik of King Alexander
Crusade and Trade
Jacobean England’s Alexanders
Conclusion
4: Greco-Arabic Mirrors for Barbarian Princes
Alexander and Eastern Wisdom
Alexander in the Transnational Malay Mirror
Between Local and Cosmopolitan
Mirrors in the Contact Zone
5: Hamlet and Arabic Literary: Networks
Hamlet Through the Looking Glass
Alexander’s Skull
Transversal Circulations
PART II: Invocations
6: From Source to Allusion: Alexander in Intercultural Encounters
7: English Alexanders and Empire from the Periphery
Marlowe’s Alexandrian Tamburlaine
Alexander’s Balls: Genealogy of Empire in Shakespeare’s Henry V
Conclusion
8: Millennial Alexander in the Making of Aceh
Corresponding Monarchs
Hikayat Aceh and Timurid-Alexandrian Kingship
Mimetic Rivalries
Embassies and Fame
Conclusion
9: Milton, Alexander’s Pirate, and Merchant Empires in the East
Emperor and Pirate
Milton and the Dutch East Indies
Piratical Satan
Satan in the East
10: Demotic Alexander in Indian Ocean Trading Worlds
Demotic Alexander
Stranger Sovereignty
Kinship Diplomacy
Eschatological Iskandar
Oxhide Purchase
Conclusion
Epilogue
Timeline of Texts and Events
Bibliography
Manuscripts
Printed Works
Index
