The Way of the Superbious Man: Alexander to Aristotle and the Riddle of the Letter

This essay focuses on the Old English translation of the Latin Epistola Alexandri Ad Aristotelem (The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle) as it appears in the Nowell Codex. It explores the text's capacities as a prescriptive guide for the work's eleventh-century consumers. A blend of hagiographic and heroic literature devoid of a stated audience, the Nowell Codex defies classification according to content or target audience. By focusing on Alexander's Letter, I test whether the fictional epistle prescribes a particular judgement on its protagonist's conduct for audiences to embrace or shun. Specifically, I examine the letter's possible valuations of sexual conduct as social practice, and examine, albeit secondarily and briefly, resonances among its neighbouring texts: Saint Christopher; Wonders of the East; Beowulf and Judith. Entertaining the collection as an exhortation to chastity, doubling as a call to arms against earthly and spiritual enemies, may reconcile the texts' apparent thematic disparity.