Description
Book SynopsisImportant and wide-ranging studies of the ideological exploitations performed by and upon the medieval romance. As one of the most important, influential and capacious genres of the middle ages, the romance was exploited for a variety of social and cultural reasons: to celebrate and justify war and conflict, chivalric ideologies, and national, local and regional identities; to rationalize contemporary power structures, and identify the present with the legendary past; to align individual desires and aspirations with social virtues. But the romance in turn exploitedavailable figures of value, appropriating the tropes and strategies of religious and historical writing, and cannibalizing and recreating its own materials for heightened ideological effect. The essays in this volume consider individual romances, groups of writings and the genre more widely, elucidating a variety of exploitative manoeuvres in terms of text, context, and intertext. Contributors: Neil Cartlidge, Ivana Djordjevic, Judith Weiss, Melissa Furrow, Rosalind Field, Diane Vincent, Corinne Saunders, Arlyn Diamond, Anna Caughey, Laura Ashe
Trade Review[A] stimulating collection, with articles ranging from discussions of specific poems to the reassessment of entire traditions. Many of the [...] pieces here deserve to become classics in the bibliographies of future work on insular romance. * NOTES & QUERIES *
An extremely useful collection - a significant contribution to the D. S. Brewer series and to the study of medieval romance writ large. * JOURNAL OF BRITISH STUDIES *
Table of ContentsIntroduction - Laura Ashe The Fairies in the Fountain: Promiscuous Liaisons - Neil Cartlidge Saracens and other Saxons: Using, Misusing and Confusing Names in Gui de Warewic and Guy of Warwick - Ivana Djordjevic The Exploitation of Ideas of Pilgrimage and Sainthood in Gui de Warewic - Judith Weiss Chanson de Geste as Romance in England - Melissa Furrow Patterns of Availability and Demand in Middle English Translations de romanz - Rosalind Field Reading a Christian-Saracen Debate in Fifteenth-Century Middle English Charlemagne Romance: The Case of Turpines Story - Diane Vincent Subtle Crafts: Magic and Exploitation in Medieval English Romance - Corinne Saunders Meeting Grounds: Gardens in Middle English Romance - Arlyn Diamond 'Als for the worthynes of þe romance': Exploitation of Genre in the Buik of Kyng Alexander the Conquerour - Anna Caughey Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Limits of Chivalry - Laura Ashe
