Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T11:06:51.830Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The social context of narrative disruption in The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2002

Brian McFadden
Affiliation:
Texas Tech University

Extract

David Williams has recently argued that medieval representations of the monster give humans an image of divinity, but one which can never be totally understood or described. Positive theology, the via positiva, attempts to take what is known of divinity and then to derive more precise statements about the nature of God; it attempts to contain God in human thought and language. The via negativa, by contrast, forces humans to discard the idea of any positive knowledge about God, since reason and language are inadequate to the task of containing or describing a being so totally other to humans. Alexander the Great, the narrator of the Old English Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, experiences such a negation in his campaign in India; he attempts to describe the wondrous beings and races which he encounters with his army, and his narrative of conquest functions as a metaphor for containing the encountered world in thought, description and mental order. However, he is resisted at every turn by natives, monsters and classical divinities; he is forced to realize that his reason and his force are incapable of containing divine power as manifested in the natural world of India.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2001

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.)