Proměnlivý obr
A fickle giant

The rise and fall of the chief protagonist in the Old Czech Alexandreida

Summary/Abstract: The chief protagonist in the fragments of the Old Czech Alexandreida is usually interpreted as a hero embodying the virtues of a sovereign. This study offers an alternative reading in a comparison with Gautier de Châtillon’s Alexandreida and Ulrich von Etzenbach’s Alexander. The passages set in Troy, Jerusalem and Libya show that the Old Bohemian Alexander rises high only to fall again. This fall is not brought about by any prideful intemperance, as in other versions, but takes the form of a betrayal of the sovereign ruler, the Lord, which mirrors the betrayal to which Alexander’s father Philip succumbed in the Old English version, and is underpinned by the fickleness of Alexander’s “giant’s heart”. Under the influence of the ambivalent advice of his teacher Aristotle, this heart eventually turns from God to the world. Hence instead of a uniquely ideal ruler. The chief protagonist comes to be a general example of a fallen man.

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