Description
Book SynopsisA wide-ranging collection on one of the most interesting features of medieval romance. Medieval romance frequently, and perhaps characteristically, capitalises on the dramatic and suggestive possibilities implicit in boundaries - not only the geographical, political and cultural frontiers that medieval romances imagine and imply, but also more metaphorical demarcations. It is these boundaries, as they appear in insular romances circulating in English and French, which the essays in this volume address. They include the boundary between reality and fictionality; boundaries between different literary traditions, modes and cultures; and boundaries between different kinds of experience or perception, especially the "altered states" associated with sickness, magic, the supernatural, or the divine. CONTRIBUTORS: HELEN COOPER, ROSALIND FIELD, MARIANNE AILES, PHILLIPA HARDMAN, ELIZABETH BERLINGS, SIMON MEECHAM-JONES, ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, ARLYN DIAMOND, ROBERT ROUSE, LAURA ASHE, JUDITH WEISS, IVANA DJORDJEVIC, CORINNE SAUNDERS
Trade Review[This] compelling volume will be of lasting value both to existing experts and to those newer to the medieval romance genre: it is a strong, well-balanced, well-edited, and fluently written selection, and should become a mainstay work of reference for future scholarship. * ENGLISH *
The contributions [...] represent solid and provocative readings of both frequently studied and much neglected romances. [...] This volume represents an important contribution to medieval romance studies. As a successful collection of essays should do, it presents a lively, exciting conversation among some of the foremost scholars in the discipline. * JOURNAL OF ENGLISH & GERMANIC PHILOLOGY *
There is enough substantial work here, investigating a wide range of subtypes of romance, to make a significant contribution to the study of Insular, non-Arthurian romance. * THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW, *
Table of ContentsIntroduction When Romance Comes True - Helen Cooper The Curious History of the Matter of England - Rosalind Field How English are the English Charlemagne Romances? - Phillipa Hardman and Marianne Ailes The Sege of Melayne; or, How the French Screwed Up and 'Oure Brettons Rescued Them - Elizabeth Berlings Romance Society and its Discontents: Romance Motifs and Romance Consequence s in The Song of Dermot and the Normans in Ireland - Simon Meecham-Jones England, Ireland and Iberia in Olyuer of Castylle: The View from Burgundy - Elizabeth Williams The Alliterative Siege of Jerusalem: The Poetics of Destruction - Arlyn Diamond The Peace of the Roads: Authority and auctoritas in Medieval Romance - Robert Rouse The Hero and his Realm in Medieval English Romance - Laura Ashe The Courteous Warrior: Epic, Romance and Comedy in Boeve de Haumtone - Judith Weiss Rewriting Divine Favour - Ivana Djordjevic Bodily Narratives: Illness, Medicine and Healing in Middle English Romance - Corinne Saunders
