Alan of Lille | Linda E. Marshall (essay date 1979)
Linda E. Marshall (essay date 1979)
SOURCE: Marshall, Linda E. “The Identity of the “New Man” in the Anticlaudianus of Alan of Lille.” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 10 (1979): 77-94.
[In the following essay, Marshall identifies the “new man” of Alan's Anticlaudianus as Philip Augustus of France, characterizing the poem as a prophetic allegory of the spiritual and political triumph of France over the royal English line of the Plantagenets.]
The full title of Alan of Lille's most renowned work, the Anticlaudianus de Antirufino, indicates that this epic poem was meant to reverse the topic of Claudian's Against Rufinus: while Claudian dealt with the totally vicious Rufinus, Alan writes of the virtuous antithesis of such a creature, a youth formed by the joint efforts of God and Nature, a new man who inaugurates a golden age of love and peace. Although Claudian's evil Rufinus was an historical...
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