Download or read book Sentimental and Humorous Romances written by Erik Kooper and published by Medieval Institute Publications. This book was released on 2006-04-01 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a unique collection of Middle English romances, each with a different view of society. One of the oldest English romances, Floris and Blancheflour, presents a tale of oriental wonders: a harem, an emir who never lacks a wife, eunuchs, and a garden housing a magical tree and spring. Sir Degrevant relates a tale of country nobility and marriage between the low and high ranks, while realistically illustrating their status and the ever-present issues of love and battle; The Squire of Low Degree is a poem about social mobility and the difference between reputation and wealth. The Tournament of Tottenham and its likely continuation, The Feast of Tottenham , are excellent examples of burlesque where the humor is inescapable: the bumpkin heroes in their stuffed sheepskins fighting with flails for the reeve's daughter, who is watching them with her pet hen on her lap, are a spectacle not easily forgotten. - from the Introduction
Download or read book Approaches to emotion in Middle English literature written by Carolyne Larrington and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2024-04-16 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last twenty-five years, the ‘history of emotion’ field has become one of the most dynamic and productive areas for humanities research. This designation, and the marked leadership of historians in the field, has had the unlooked-for consequence of sidelining literature — in particular secular literature — as evidence-source and object of emotion study. Secular literature, whether fable, novel, fantasy or romance, has been understood as prone to exaggeration, hyperbole, and thus as an unreliable indicator of the emotions of the past. The aim of this book is to decentre history of emotion research and asks new questions, ones that can be answered by literary scholars, using literary texts as sources: how do literary texts understand and depict emotion and, crucially, how do they generate emotion in their audiences — those who read them or hear them read or performed?
Download or read book Virgin Envy written by Jonathan A. Allan and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virginity is of concern here, that is its utter messiness. At once valuable and detrimental, normative and deviant, undesirable and enviable. Virginity and its loss hold tremendous cultural significance. For many, female virginity is still a universally accepted condition, something that is somehow bound to the hymen, whereas male virginity is almost as elusive as the G-spot: we know it's there, it’s just we have a harder time finding it. Of course boys are virgins, queers are virgins, some people reclaim their virginities, and others reject virginity from the get go. So what if we agree to forget the hymen all together? Might we start to see the instability of terms like untouched, pure, or innocent? Might we question the act of sex, the very notion of relational sexuality? After all, for many people it is the sexual acts they don’t do, or don’t want to do, that carry the most abundant emotional clout. Virgin Envy is a collection of essays that look past the vestal virgins and beyond Joan of Arc. From medieval to present-day literature, the output of HBO, Bollywood, and the films of Abdellah Taïa or Derek Jarman to the virginity testing of politically active women in Tahrir Square, the writers here explore the concept of virginity in today’s world to show that ultimately virginity is a site around which our most basic beliefs about sexuality are confronted, and from which we can come to understand some of our most basic anxieties, paranoias, fears, and desires.
Download or read book A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance written by Raluca L. Radulescu and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2009 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular romance was one of the most wide-spread forms of literature in the Middle Ages, yet despite its cultural centrality, and its fundamental importance for later literary developments, the genre has defied precise definition, its subject matter ranging from tales of chivalric adventure, to saintly women, and monsters that become human. The essays in this collection provide contexts, definitions, and explanations for the genre, particularly in an English context. Topics covered include genre and literary classification; race and ethnicity; gender; orality and performance; the romance and young readers; metre and form; printing culture; and reception.
Download or read book Savage Economy written by Walter Wadiak and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance, Walter Wadiak traces the evolution of the medieval English romance from its thirteenth-century origins to 1500, and from a genre that affirmed aristocratic identity to one that appealed more broadly to an array of late medieval communities. Essential to this literary evolution is the concept and practice of “noble” gift-giving, which binds together knights and commoners in ways that both echo and displace the notorious violence of many of these stories. Wadiak begins with the assumption that “romance” names a particular kind of chivalric fantasy to which violence is central, just as violence was instrumental to the formation and identity of the medieval warrior aristocracy. A traditional view is that the violence of romance stories is an expression of aristocratic privilege wielded by a military caste in its relations with one another as well as with those lower on the social scale. In this sense, violence is the aristocratic gift that underwrites and reaffirms the feudal power of a privileged group, with the noble gift performing the symbolic violence on which romance depends in order to present itself as both a coded threat and an expression of chivalric values. Well-known examples of romance in Middle English, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, are considered alongside more “popular” examples of the genre to demonstrate a surprising continuity of function across a range of social contexts. Wadiak charts a trajectory from violence aimed directly at securing feudal domination to the subtler and more diffuse modes of coercion that later English romances explore. Ultimately, this is a book about the ways in which romance lives on as an idea, even as the genre itself begins to lose ground at the close of the Middle Ages.
Download or read book French Romance Medieval Sweden and the Europeanisation of Culture written by Sofia Lodén and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2021 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translations of French romances into other vernaculars in the Middle Ages have sometimes been viewed as "less important" versions of prestigious sources, rather than in their place as part of a broader range of complex and wider European text traditions. This consideration of how French romance was translated, rewritten and interpreted in medieval Sweden focuses on the wider context. It examines four major texts which appear in both languages: Le Chevalier au lion and its Swedish translation Herr Ivan; Le Conte de Floire et Blancheflor and Flores och Blanzeflor; Valentin et Sansnom (the original French text has been lost, but the tale has survivedin the prose version Valentin et Orson) and the Swedish text Namnlös och Valentin; and Paris et Vienne and the fragmentary Swedish version Riddar Paris och jungfru Vienna. Each is analysed through the lens of different themes: female characters, children, animals and masculinity. The author argues that French romance made a major contribution to the Europeanisation of medieval culture, whilst also playing a key role in the formation of a national literature in Sweden.
Download or read book The Roland and Otuel Romances and the Anglo Norman Otinel written by Susanna Fein and published by Medieval Institute Publications. This book was released on 2020-09-30 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition contains four Middle English Charlemagne romances from the Otuel cycle: Roland and Vernagu, Otuel a Knight, Otuel and Roland, and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain. A translation of the romances' source, the Anglo-French Otinel, is also included. The romances center on conflicts between Frankish Christians and various Saracen groups, and deal with issues of racial and religious difference, conversion, and faith-based violence.
Download or read book Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England written by Michael Johnston and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: showing that contrary to the commonly held view that romances are representative of the "popular culture" of their day, in fact such texts appealed primarily to the gentry, England's elite landowners who lacked titles of nobility.
Download or read book Food and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales written by Melissa Ridley Elmes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Food and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales editors Melissa Ridley Elmes and Kristin Bovaird-Abbo gather eleven original studies examining scenes of food and feasting in premodern outlaw texts ranging from the tenth through the seventeenth centuries and forward to their cinematic adaptations. Along with fresh insights into the popular Robin Hood legend, these essays investigate the intersections of outlawry, food studies, and feasting in Old English, Middle English, and French outlaw narratives, Anglo-Scottish border ballads, early modern ballads and dramatic works, and cinematic medievalism. The range of critical and disciplinary approaches employed, including history, literary studies, cultural studies, food studies, gender studies, and film studies, highlights the inherently interdisciplinary nature of outlaw narratives. The overall volume offers an example of the ways in which examining a subject through interdisciplinary, cross-geographic and cross-temporal lenses can yield fresh insights; places canonic and well-known works in conversation with lesser-known texts to showcase the dynamic nature and cultural influence and impact of premodern outlaw tales; and presents an introductory foray into the intersection of literary and food studies in premodern contexts which will be of value and interest to specialists and a general audience, alike.
Download or read book Representing Difference in the Medieval and Modern Orientalist Romance written by Amy Burge and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the first full-length cross-period comparison of medieval and modern literature, offers cutting edge research into the textual and cultural legacy of the Middle Ages: a significant and growing area of scholarship. At the juncture of literary, cultural and gender studies, and capitalizing on a renewed interest in popular western representations of the Islamic east, this book proffers innovative case studies on representations of cross-religious and cross-cultural romantic relationships in a selection of late medieval and twenty-first century Orientalist popular romances. Comparing the tropes, characterization and settings of these literary phenomena, and focusing on gender, religion, and ethnicity, the study exposes the historical roots of current romance representations of the east, advancing research in Orientalism, (neo)medievalism and medieval cultural studies. Fundamentally, Representing Difference invites a closer look at medieval and modern popular attitudes towards the east, as represented in romance, and the kinds of solutions proposed for its apparent problems.
Download or read book Middle English Romance and the Craft of Memory written by Jamie McKinstry and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2015 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the depiction and function of memory in a variety of romances, including Troilus and Criseyde and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Download or read book Performance and the Middle English Romance written by Linda Marie Zaerr and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2012 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of if and how medieval romance was performed, uniquely uniting the perspective of a scholar and practitioner. Although English medieval minstrels performed gestes, a genre closely related to romance, often playing the harp or the fiddle, the question of if, and how, Middle English romance was performed has been hotly debated. Here, the performance tradition is explored by combining textual, historical and musicological scholarship with practical experience from a noted musician. Using previously unrecognised evidence, the author reconstructs a realistic model of minstrel performance, showing how a simple melody can interact with the text, and vice versa. She argues that elements in Middle English romance which may seem simplistic or repetitive may in fact be incomplete, as missing an integral musical dimension; metrical irregularities, for example, may be relics of sophisticated rhythmic variation that make sense only with music. Overall, the study offers both a more accurate comprehension of minstrel performance, and a deeper appreciation of the romances themselves. Linda Marie Zaerr is Professor of Medieval Studies at Boise State University.
Download or read book Medieval Romance Medieval Contexts written by Michael Staveley Cichon and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2011 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The popular genre of medieval romance explored in its physical, geographical, and literary contexts. The essays in this volume take a representative selection of English and Scottish romances from the medieval period and explore some of their medieval contexts, deepening our understanding not only of the romances concerned but also of the specific medieval contexts that produced or influenced them. The contexts explored here include traditional literary features such as genre and rhetorical technique and literary-cultural questions of authorship, transmission and readership; but they also extend to such broader intellectual and social contexts as medieval understandings of geography, the physiology of swooning, or the efficacy of baptism. A framing context for the volume is provided by Derek Pearsall's prefatory essay, in which he revisits his seminal 1965 article on the development of Middle English romance. Rhiannon Purdie is Senior Lecturer in English, University of St Andrews; Michael Cichon is Associate Professor of English at St Thomas More College in the University of Saskatchewan. Contributors: Derek Pearsall, Nancy Mason Bradbury, Michael Cichon, Nicholas Perkins, Marianne Ailes, John A. Geck, Phillipa Hardman, Siobhain Bly Calkin, Judith Weiss, Robert Rouse, Yin Liu, Emily Wingfield, Rosalind Field
Download or read book Landscape in Middle English Romance written by Andrew M. Richmond and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-05 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our current ecological crises compel us not only to understand how contemporary media shapes our conceptions of human relationships with the environment, but also to examine the historical genealogies of such perspectives. Written during the onset of the Little Ice Age in Britain, Middle English romances provide a fascinating window into the worldviews of popular vernacular literature (and its audiences) at the close of the Middle Ages. Andrew M. Richmond shows how literary conventions of romances shaped and were in turn influenced by contemporary perspectives on the natural world. These popular texts also reveal widespread concern regarding the damaging effects of human actions and climate change. The natural world was a constant presence in the writing, thoughts, and lives of the audiences and authors of medieval English romance – and these close readings reveal that our environmental concerns go back further in our history and culture than we think.
Download or read book The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain 4 Volume Set written by Sian Echard and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-08-07 with total page 2102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together scholarship on multilingual and intercultural medieval Britain like never before, The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain comprises over 600 authoritative entries spanning key figures, contexts and influences in the literatures of Britain from the fifth to the sixteenth centuries. A uniquely multilingual and intercultural approach reflecting the latest scholarship, covering the entire medieval period and the full tapestry of literary languages comprises over 600 authoritative yet accessible entries on key figures, texts, critical debates, methodologies, cultural and isitroical contexts, and related terminology Represents all the literatures of the British Isles including Old and Middle English, Early Scots, Anglo-Norman, the Norse, Latin and French of Britain, and the Celtic Literatures of Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall Boasts an impressive chronological scope, covering the period from the Saxon invasions to the fifth century to the transition to the Early Modern Period in the sixteenth Covers the material remains of Medieval British literature, including manuscripts and early prints, literary sites and contexts of production, performance and reception as well as highlighting narrative transformations and intertextual links during the period
Download or read book Difficult pasts written by Mimi Ensley and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval romances were widely condemned by early modern thinkers: the genre of questing knights and marvellous adventure was decried as bloody, bawdy and superstitious. Despite such proclamations, though, the Middle English romance genre remained popular across the early modern period. Difficult pasts examines the reception of Middle English romances after the Protestant Reformation in England, arguing that the genre’s popularity rested not in its violent or superstitious qualities, but in its multivocality. Incorporating insights from book history, reception history and cultural memory studies, Ensley argues that the medieval romance book became a flexible site of memory with which early modern readers could both connect with and distance themselves from the recent ‘difficult past’, a past that invited controversy and encouraged divided perspectives. Central characters in this study range from canonical authors like Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser to less studied figures, such as printer William Copland, Elizabethan scribe Edward Banister and seventeenth-century poet and romance enthusiast, John Lane. In uniting a wide range of romance readers’ perspectives, the book complicates clear ruptures between manuscript and print, Catholic and Protestant, or medieval and Renaissance. Difficult pasts reveals how the romance book offers a new way to understand the simultaneous change and continuity that defines post-Reformation England.
Download or read book Comic Medievalism written by Louise D'Arcens and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2014 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of laughter and humour in the postmedieval citation, interpretation or recreation of the middle ages has hitherto received little attention, a gap in scholarship which this book aims to fill. Examining a wide range of comic texts and practices across several centuries, from Don Quixote and early Chaucerian modernisation through to Victorian theatre, the Monty Python films, television and the experience of visiting sites of "heritage tourism" such as the Jorvik Viking Museum at York, it identifies what has been perceived as uniquely funny about the Middle Ages in different times and places, and how this has influenced ideas not just about the medieval but also about modernity. Tracing the development and permutations of its various registers, including satire, parody, irony, camp, wit, jokes, and farce, the author offers fresh and amusing insight into comic medievalism as a vehicle for critical commentary on the present as well as the past, and shows that for as long as there has been medievalism, people have laughed at and with the middle ages. Louise D'Arcens is Associate Professor in English Literatures at the University of Wollongong.
