Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Thursday, 23 February 2023

The Alexander Romance


Linked to the British Library exhibition Alexander the Great : The Making of a Myth, which is introduced at A medieval best-seller: the Alexander Romance, and which I referenced in Medieval Alexander Romance Manuscript - the marginal imagination the BL Medieval Manuscripts blog has a further post about the Alexander Romance. The text, with its wonderfully fanciful narrative of the life of Alexander the Great, is shown as taking on a life of its own, producing additional chivalric romances on related themes. The result was a medieval equivalent of modern television and film producing ‘prequels’ and ‘spin-offs’ of popular stories.

The splendidly illustrated post, with illuminated pages from the British Library’s Royal and Addnl. MSS and Bodley MS 264, can be seen at Alexander, Porrus and the peacock


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