Conceptions of Alexander: The Heroic andSatirical in Le Brun’s Alexander Series andDryden’s Alexander Feast

This paper highlights the limitations and differences between the sister arts of painting and poetry. It contrasts the five visual painting series of Alexander by Charles Le Brun and John Dryden’s poem “Alexander Feast.” These two arts are put together in this paper because they are related in a historical context, and they clarify each other better when viewed together than if either is viewed in isolation. Both art works are composed in the seventeenth-century, and though they are different artistic media, they bear a visual display and deal with the same historical subject, that is, the life and exploits of Alexander, but through different perspectives. These paintings, which appear at the end of the paper, grasp the idealistic conception of Alexander in a purified distinctive form, projecting Alexander as an ideal heroic figure of god-like stature. Because Le Brun is deeply interested in the faculty of psychology, he focuses on depicting the inner passions as manifested by the bodily gestures and facial expressions. Dryden’s poem, on the other hand, satirizes Le Brun’s idealistic depiction of Alexander, projecting the emotional flaws of Alexander. Upon studying carefully the work art of painting for Le Brun and that of poetry for Dryden the paper finds that the two arts are essentially different artistic media which achieve their effects through different means. The painter Le Brun renders only external appearances, providing visual clues between now and then to express a non-visible phenomenon, such as emotions or abstract ideas. Further, the paintings appear in at once a single frame though the different parts of the painting may take different forms of interpretations within the viewer’s mind. The poet Dryden, in contrast, can express the non-visible directly, such as the different human passions and can depict the progression of events through time. The paper concludes that despite these differences between the two media, the two arts draw from the same cultural ideas and conceptions. The conceptions and ideas in one art form can be used in the interpretation of another art form, provided that the differences between them are highlighted. In the case of Alexander, the idealism drawn in Le Brun’s paintings takes the satirical expression in Dryden’s poem. The paper concludes that both arts convey a historical reality with different amplifications.