SOURCE: Marshall, Linda E. “The Identity of the “New Man” in the Anticlaudianus of Alan of Lille.” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 10 (1979): 77-94.

In the following essay, Marshall identifies the “new man” of Alan's Anticlaudianus as Philip Augustus of France, characterizing the poem as a prophetic allegory of the spiritual and political triumph of France over the royal English line of the Plantagenets.

The full title of Alan of Lille's most renowned work, the Anticlaudianus de Antirufino, indicates that this epic poem was meant to reverse the topic of Claudian's Against Rufinus: while Claudian dealt with the totally vicious Rufinus, Alan writes of the virtuous antithesis of such a creature, a youth formed by the joint efforts of God and Nature, a new man who inaugurates a golden age of love and peace. Although Claudian's evil Rufinus was an historical personage, Alan's hero has been viewed as an...