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This Companion presents fifteen original and engaging essays by leading scholars on one of the most influential genres of Western literature. Chapters describe the origins of early verse romance in twelfth-century French and Anglo-Norman courts and analyze the evolution of verse and prose romance in France, Germany, England, Italy, and Spain throughout the Middle Ages. The volume introduces a rich array of traditions and texts and offers fresh perspectives on the manuscript context of romance, the relationship of romance to other genres, popular romance in urban contexts, romance as mirror of familiar and social tensions, and the representation of courtly love, chivalry, 'other' worlds and gender roles. Together the essays demonstrate that European romances not only helped to promulgate the ideals of elite societies in formation, but also held those values up for questioning. An introduction, a chronology and a bibliography of texts and translations complete this lively, useful overview.
Focusing on a broad range of texts from England, France, Germany, and Italy -- conduct and courtesy books, advice poems, devotional literature, trial records -- the contributors to Medieval Conduct draw attention to the diverse ways in which readers of this literature could interpret such behavioral guides, appropriating them to their own ends. Medieval Conduct expands the concept of conduct to include historicized practices, and theorizes the connection between texts and their concrete social uses; what emerges is a nuanced interpretation of the role of gender and class inscribed in such texts. By bringing to light these subtleties and complexities, the authors also reveal the ways in which the assumptions of literary history have shaped our reception of such texts in the past two centuries.
This study challenges the view that all courtly literature promoted the social status of women. Unlike previous books which focused on knights, it starts from the perspective of the woman reader/listener. Using reader-response theory, feminist criticism and recent historical studies, it suggests that romances taught gender roles, often inviting readers to criticise and resist them.
Modern scholarship generally treats the "debate about women" (querelle des femmes) as a late medieval phenomenon, perhaps touched upon by canonic authors like Chaucer but truly begun by Christine de Pizan (1364-1429), and therefore primarily of English and French origin. That emphasis has obscured the ways in which both writers were participating in a much wider, much older cultural phenomenon with varied and intractable roots. Articles in this collection explore how gender is put into debate in Anglo-Saxon, German, Spanish and Italian cultures, and they re-examine French and Middle English debate literature. The collection is carefully planned to be accessible to students seeking an idea of the debate's motifs and contours while maintaining the high level of issue involvement necessary to commanding a more seasoned audience. Contributors include Pamela Benson, Alcuin Blamires, Margaret Franklin, Roberta Krueger, Clare Lees and Gillian Overing, Ann Matter, Karen Pratt, Helen Solterer, Julian Weiss, and Barbara Weissberger.
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's Writing seeks to recover the lives and particular experiences of medieval women by concentrating on various kinds of texts: the texts they wrote themselves as well as texts that attempted to shape, limit, or expand their lives. The first section investigates the roles traditionally assigned to medieval women (as virgins, widows, and wives); it also considers female childhood and relations between women. The second section explores social spaces, including textuality itself: for every surviving medieval manuscript bespeaks collaborative effort. It considers women as authors, as anchoresses 'dead to the world', and as preachers and teachers in the world staking claims to authority without entering a pulpit. The final section considers the lives and writings of remarkable women, including Marie de France, Heloise, Joan of Arc, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and female lyricists and romancers whose names are lost, but whose texts survive.
A fine collection...an excellent introduction to Chrétien's world and work. Highly recommended. CHOICE Chrétien de Troyes is arguably the creator of Arthurian romance, and it is on his work that later writers have based their interpretations. This book offers both crucial information on, and a comprehensive coverage of, all aspectsof the work of Chrétien de Troyes - the literary and historical background, patronage, his influence on other writers, manuscripts and editions of his work and, at the heart of the volume, major essays on the themes, techniques and artistic achievements in each of his compositions; the contributions, all from leading experts in Chrétien and related studies, hav...
Written in 1456 and purporting to be the biography of the actual fourteenth-century knight of its title, Jean de Saintré has been called the first modern novel in French and one of the first historical novels in any language. Taken in hand at the age of thirteen by an older and much more experienced lady, Madame des Belles Cousines, the youth grows into an accomplished knight, winning numerous tournaments and even leading a crusade against the infidels for the love of Madame. When he reaches maturity, Jean starts to rebel against Madame's domination by seeking out chivalric adventures on his own. She storms off to her country estates and takes up with the burly abbot of a nearby monastery. ...
This collection of essays recognizes the accomplishments of one of the pathbreaking women in the field of medieval French literature, Nancy Freeman Regalado, whose research has always pushed beyond disciplinary boundaries.
Presenting traditional views alongside new critical approaches, the chapters in this book present fresh perspectives on the poetics of the 12th-century author, Marie de France, the first woman of letters to write in French.
Essays using feminist approaches to offer fresh insights into aspects of the texts and the material culture of the middle ages. Feminist discourses have called into question axiomatic world views and shown how gender and sexuality inevitably shape our perceptions, both historically and in the present moment. Founding Feminisms in Medieval Studies advances that critical endeavour with new questions and insights relating to gender and queer studies, sexualities, the subaltern, margins, and blurred boundaries. The volume's contributions, from French literary studies as well as German, English, history and art history, evince a variety of modes of feminist analysis, primarily in medieval studies...