Jehan Wauquelin, Sir Gilbert Hay, and the Medieval Alexander Tradition in the Mid-Fifteenth Century

George Cary has previously dismissed the last contributions to the medieval Alexander tradition for their lack of success and influence. This paper compares two of these last texts: Jehan Wauquelin’s Faicts et les Conquestes d’Alexandre le Grand (c.1438) and Sir Gilbert Hay’s Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour (1460s) in order to show that Wauquelin and Hay employed two very similar modes of authorship, and that it is also very likely that Hay knew Wauquelin’s text. This consequently suggests that the Scottish Alexander tradition was strongly influenced by the Burgundian author, providing further proof for the cultural exchange between Burgundy and Scotland in the mid-fifteenth century, as well as calling for a larger re-evaluation of the medieval Alexander tradition in the mid-fifteenth century.