From Alexander the Great to Alexander's Greatness, and back again: An ancient/modern <i>jeu d’esprit</i> of intellectual appreciation

No contemporary social-theoretical thinker has been more attuned to matters of verbal representation, literary genres, and the dramatic force of words and imagery than Jeffrey C. Alexander. Taking its lead from Villegas and Watts’ appreciation of him, this paper offers a jeu d’esprit of intellectual appreciation that traverses the ancient and modern worlds. It considers various literary genres and tropes involved in the creation of appreciative biographical writing. Riffing on terms such as Alexanderian, Alexandrian, Alexandrine and Alexanderesque, it relates Jeffrey C. Alexander, as biographical persona, to his antique namesake, Alexander the Great. The Greatness of the modern person(a) is brought into high relief through comparison with his ancient counterpart. The paper follows in the parallel footsteps of Alexander the ancient and Alexander the modern, seeking to exhibit some of their own respective forms of audacity in daring to make such a comparison.