ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the Old English Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, whose account of Alexander’s conquests and adventures in India is coloured by descriptions of his emotions of wonder and admiration. In the letter, the emotion of admiration is central not only to the characterisation of Alexander but also to the text’s immediate cultural context, namely, the time of the unification of England and the Viking raids at the turn of the first millennium. The chapter argues that the text’s focus on the operations of Alexander’s mind, as well as his expressions of emotions, reveals that wondering is a performative act that affects the boundaries between the agent of wondering—Alexander—and the observed other—marvels of India. The chapter further argues that being exposed to wonder, and thereby facing liminality, is a process that, firstly, pushes Alexander to self-reflection and, secondly, poses a threat to the integrity of his self, which is reflected in the uneasy tension between personal ambition and national identity.
