ABSTRACT
The most obvious answer, which is implicit in the remarks of a recent commentator on Alexandre de Paris's poem, is simply that in the episode just considered, as in other parts of the poem, this poet, like the authors of other romances of antiquity, anachronistically modelled antiquity on “the realities” of twelfth-century “feudal society,” where, it is assumed, feudal lords rewarded their men's services with fiefs. The feudal discourse used in representing Alexander's last gifts also appears in earlier episodes. By starkly contrasting the generous lord, who scrupulously avoids such practices, with the avaricious lord, who uses them constantly, the Roman d'Alexandre misrepresents and conceals as much as possible the various forms of fief-giving and fief-taking that lords routinely used and had to use merely to maintain honor. In one image the fief looked like an honorable reward for honorable service; in the other the fief looked like a bribe.
