La longue entrée d’Alexandre le Grand à Babylone Des raffinements de l’esthétique épique aux enjeux idéologiques de la recomposition de l’histoire

While history makes no mention of battles prior to the surrender of Babylon, in their “Roman d’Alexandre”, Lambert le Tort and Alexandre de Paris imagine a two-fold series of long battles between Alexander and an emir of Babylon. What motivated this reinvention of Classical history ? We analyse the aesthetic motivations as well as the ideological reasons linked to the historical context of the crusades, and their apparent, but in fact problematic, convergence.