Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-pt5lt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-13T23:21:55.632Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - ‘Ex Libris domini duncani / Campbell de glenwrquhay/ miles’: The Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour in the household of Sir Duncan Campbell, seventh laird of Glenorchy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Emily Wingfield
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Rhiannon Purdie
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews
Michael Cichon
Affiliation:
University of Saskatchewan
Get access

Summary

The Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour (hereafter BKA) is one of two surviving Older Scots Alexander romances. In a little over nineteen thousand lines, this romance offers a full biography of Alexander's career, conquests and death. It supplements its main source, the second recension of the Latin Historia de Preliis, by drawing not only upon the Old French Roman d'Alexandre, and interpolations to it such as the Voeux du Paon and Voyage au Paradis, but also upon the pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta Secretorum and several pieces of otherwise-independent Older Scots conduct literature.

BKA is extant in British Library Additional MS 40732 (MS A) and National Archives of Scotland MS GD 112/71/9 (MS B). In both, the poem is acephalous. We thus lack its prologue and are forced to rely on the enigmatic final lines (19311–69) for information about its composition. These final lines are not composed by the poem's author, nor simply by a scribe. They are instead written by a redactor, who claims to have rewritten and in the process ‘mendit’ the ‘faltis’ of the ‘noble buike’ (line 19343). He reports that he began this task in the May of 1499 and completed it in August of that year (lines 19354–5). He also provides details of the poem's genesis, informing us that it was ‘translaittit’ ‘out of the Frensche leid’ ‘At þe instance off Lord Erskein, be Schir Gilbert þe Hay’ (lines 19319–20, 19334).

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×