The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of ShakespeareThe English Romance in Time is a study of English romance across the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It explores romance motifs - quests and fairy mistresses, passionate heroines and rudderless boats and missing heirs - from the first emergence of the genre in French and Anglo-Norman in the twelfth century down to the early seventeenth. This is a continuous story, since the same romances that constituted the largest and most sophisticated body of secular fiction in the Middle Ages went on to enjoy a new and vibrant popularity at all social levels in black-letter prints as the pulp fiction of the Tudor age. This embedded culture was reworked for political and Reformation propaganda and for the 'writing of England', as well as providing a generous reservoir of good stories and dramatic plots. The different ways in which the same texts were read over several centuries, or the same motifs shifted meaning as understanding and usage altered, provide a revealing and sensitive measure of historical and cultural change. The book accordingly looks at those processes of change as well as at how the motifs themselves work, to offer a historical semantics of the language of romance conventions. It also looks at how politics and romance intersect - the point where romance comes true. The historicizing of the study of literature is belatedly leading to a wider recognition that the early modern world is built on medieval foundations. This book explores both the foundations and the building. Similarly, generic theory, which previously tended to operate on transhistorical assumptions, is now acknowledging that genre interacts crucially with cultural context - with changing audiences and ideologies and means of dissemination. The generation into which Spenser and Shakespeare were born was the last to be brought up on a wide range of medieval romances in their original forms, and they could therefore exploit their generic codings in new texts aimed at both elite and popular audiences. Romance may since then have lost much of its cultural centrality, but the universal appeal of these same stories has continued to fuel later works from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. |
From inside the book
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Page viii
... editions so as to profit from their editorial material, though Early English Books Online has transformed the accessibility of early prints since I began the writing of this book, and I have supplemented the holdings of the Bodleian and ...
... editions so as to profit from their editorial material, though Early English Books Online has transformed the accessibility of early prints since I began the writing of this book, and I have supplemented the holdings of the Bodleian and ...
Page xv
... edition are given in parentheses. Citations from Shakespeare are taken from The Complete Works, general eds. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), unless otherwise stated. This page intentionally left blank ...
... edition are given in parentheses. Citations from Shakespeare are taken from The Complete Works, general eds. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), unless otherwise stated. This page intentionally left blank ...
Page 29
... editions under the Tudors.66 Another 'matter of England' legend, that of Havelok, first appears in Anglo-Norman in the continuation to Geoffrey's History written by Gaimar; in due course that too was rewritten as an autonomous romance ...
... editions under the Tudors.66 Another 'matter of England' legend, that of Havelok, first appears in Anglo-Norman in the continuation to Geoffrey's History written by Gaimar; in due course that too was rewritten as an autonomous romance ...
Page 31
... editions throughout the sixteenth century, and in the case of Bevis into the eighteenth.74 Bevis's dragon-fight is replicated in Redcrosse's fight with his own dragon in Book I of the Faerie Queene, with a detail that indicates that ...
... editions throughout the sixteenth century, and in the case of Bevis into the eighteenth.74 Bevis's dragon-fight is replicated in Redcrosse's fight with his own dragon in Book I of the Faerie Queene, with a detail that indicates that ...
Page 35
... editions in the 1590s and later. Spenser made an unusual choice at this date in following Chaucer and Ariosto in his selection of a long stanza rather than prose for his near-epic romance: prose was to be the preferred choice of future ...
... editions in the 1590s and later. Spenser made an unusual choice at this date in following Chaucer and Ariosto in his selection of a long stanza rather than prose for his near-epic romance: prose was to be the preferred choice of future ...
Contents
1 | |
THE ADVENTURE THAT GOD SHALL SEND ME | 45 |
NO TACKLE SAIL NOR MAST | 106 |
3 MAGIC THAT DOESNT WORK | 137 |
I AM OF ANE OTHER COUNTREE | 173 |
I AM WHOLLY GIVEN OVER UNTO THEE | 218 |
6 WOMEN ON TRIAL | 269 |
IF THAT WHICH IS LOST BE NOT FOUND | 324 |
THE MOST ACCURSED UNHAPPY AND EVIL FORTUNED | 361 |
Medieval romance in English after 1500 | 409 |
Notes | 431 |
Bibliography | 499 |
Index | 533 |
Other editions - View all
The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth ... Helen Cooper No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
16th–17th c currency accused adultery adventure allegorical Amadas Anglo-Norman antifeminism Arthur Arthurian audience ballad boat Britomart century Chaucer child chivalric Chrétien Chrétien de Troyes Chronicle claim culture Date/MS history death desire early edition EETS E.S. Elizabeth Elizabethan England English romance episode Faerie Queene fairy faithful father French Gawain genre Geoffrey of Monmouth God’s Grail Guinevere Guy of Warwick happy ending heiress hero heroine human Huon husband insists journey king knight lady Lancelot Lancelot-Grail legend London lovers magic male Malory Malory’s manuscript marriage married medieval Melusine meme Merlin Middle Ages Middle English moral Mordred mother motif narrative never offer ofthe original Percy Folio play plot poem printed prophecy prose quest readers Renaissance ring romance secular sexual Shakespeare Sir Gawain Spenser story supernatural surviving Thomas tion trans translation Tristan Tudor Valentine virginity virtue wife Winter’s Tale woman women
References to this book
Greenery: Ecocritical Readings of Late Medieval English Literature Gillian Rudd No preview available - 2007 |
Staging Early Modern Romance: Prose Fiction, Dramatic Romance, and Shakespeare Mary Ellen Lamb,Valerie Wayne No preview available - 2008 |