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Global Renaissance: Alexander the Great and Early Modern Classicism from the British Isles to the Malay Archipelago

Global Renaissance: Alexander the Great and Early Modern Classicism from the British Isles to the... Southeast Asia in Global History While Alexander the Great’s famous conquest brought Hellenistic influences as far as northern India, his legend spread over even vaster territories, stretching from Britain to Southeast Asia. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, various Malay courts in the Southeast Asian archipelago appropriated the legends of Alexander for their own histories and traced their royal genealogies back to him. A recovery of this little-known history of Alexander in an Austronesian language of peoples who adopted Greek stories, even though they did not have contact with Alexander’s armies, should lead us to rethink nationalist histories, our definition of Europe, and our assumptions about Europe’s relation to the rest of the world. The current division of the world into North and South (or East and West) that derived from the notion of three worlds—wherein the South is now largely what used to be the Third World—is not simply an economic characterization. As Eric Wolf puts it, “We have been taught, inside the classroom and outside of it, that there exists an entity called the West, and that one can think of this West as a society and civilization independent of and in opposition to other societies http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

Global Renaissance: Alexander the Great and Early Modern Classicism from the British Isles to the Malay Archipelago

Comparative Literature , Volume 58 (4) – Jan 1, 2006

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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2006 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/-58-4-293
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Southeast Asia in Global History While Alexander the Great’s famous conquest brought Hellenistic influences as far as northern India, his legend spread over even vaster territories, stretching from Britain to Southeast Asia. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, various Malay courts in the Southeast Asian archipelago appropriated the legends of Alexander for their own histories and traced their royal genealogies back to him. A recovery of this little-known history of Alexander in an Austronesian language of peoples who adopted Greek stories, even though they did not have contact with Alexander’s armies, should lead us to rethink nationalist histories, our definition of Europe, and our assumptions about Europe’s relation to the rest of the world. The current division of the world into North and South (or East and West) that derived from the notion of three worlds—wherein the South is now largely what used to be the Third World—is not simply an economic characterization. As Eric Wolf puts it, “We have been taught, inside the classroom and outside of it, that there exists an entity called the West, and that one can think of this West as a society and civilization independent of and in opposition to other societies

Journal

Comparative LiteratureDuke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2006

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