The New Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance

Abstract

This new Companion provides a broad and perceptive overview of the most important vernacular literary genre of the Middle Ages. Freshly commissioned, original chapters from seventeen leading scholars introduce students and general readers to the form's poetics, narrative voice and manuscript contexts, as well as its relationship to the Mediterranean world, race, gender and the emotions, among many other topics. Providing fresh perspectives on the first pan-European literary movement, essays range across a broad geographical area, including England, France, Italy, Germany and the Iberian Peninsula, as well as a varied linguistic spectrum, including Arabic, Hebrew and Yiddish. Exploring the celebration of chivalric ideals and courtly refinements, the volume excavates the tensions and traumas lying beneath decorous surface appearances. An introduction, bibliography of texts and translations as well as chapter-by-chapter reading lists complete this essential guide. Table of Contents Introduction Roberta L. Krueger 1. For love and for lovers': the origins of romance Laura Ashe 2. The manuscript contexts of medieval romance Keith Busby 3. Matters of form: experiments in verse and prose romance Jane Gilbert and Ad Putter 4. Authors, narrators, and their stories in Old French romance Sylvie Lefèvre (translated by Roberta L. Krueger) 5. Arthurian transformations Elizabeth Archibald 6. Romance and the medieval Mediterranean Sharon Kinoshita 7. The crusading romance in Britain: religious violence and the transformation of popular chivalric narrative Lee Manion 8. 'Making race' in medieval romance: a premodern critical race studies perspective Nahir I. Otaño Gracia 9. The construction and interrogation of gender in Old French romance Kathy M. Krause 10. Emotions as the language of romance Megan Moore 11. Medieval Iberian romance David A. Wacks 12. Medieval and early modern Italian romance Laura Chuhan Campbell 13. German medieval romance Albrecht Classen 14. The ends of romance in Chaucer and Malory Patricia Clare Ingham 15. French romance in the late middle ages and the renaissance Jane H.M. Taylor 16. Romance in historical context: literature and the changing values and norms of aristocratic society Craig Taylor 17. Romance in twentieth and twenty-first century popular culture Susan Aronstein.