Performance and the Middle English Romance

Performance and the Middle English Romance
Author: Linda Marie Zaerr
Publisher: DS Brewer
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 1843843234

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.

Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance

Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance
Author: Corinne J. Saunders
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2010
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1843842211

"This study looks at a wide range of medieval Englisih romance texts, including the works of Chaucer and Malory, from a broad cultural perspective, to show that while they employ magic in order to create exotic, escapist worlds, they are also grounded in a sense of possibility, and reflect a complex web of inherited and current ideas." --Book Jacket.

Landscape in Middle English Romance

Landscape in Middle English Romance
Author: Andrew M. Richmond
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 542
Release: 2021-08-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108913091

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.

Amis and Amiloun

Amis and Amiloun
Author: MacEdward Leach
Publisher: Early English Text Society
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2001-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780859919371

Gender and History in Medieval English Romance and Chronicle

Gender and History in Medieval English Romance and Chronicle
Author: Laura D. Barefield
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

This reading of canonical texts of medieval English literature - Sir Gawain and the Green Night and Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale - alongside Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae and other Anglo-Norman and English chronicles offers a broader context for reading the romance narratives and re-evaluates romance conventions in light of the genealogical priorities of these chronicles. By arguing that maternity is featured as a position of power, Gender and History in Medieval English Romance and Chronicle adds to our understanding of women and sovereignty, and the ways gender and authority were rhetorically linked to medieval texts.

Medieval English Romance in Context

Medieval English Romance in Context
Author: Gail Ashton
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2010-04-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1847062504

Structured in three parts, this book focuses on immediate contexts, key texts, and wider contexts enabling development from background issues through the actual literary texts to criticism and afterlives.

Medieval Romance, Medieval Contexts

Medieval Romance, Medieval Contexts
Author: Michael Staveley Cichon
Publisher: DS Brewer
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2011
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1843842602

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

Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England

Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England
Author: Michael Johnston
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2014-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199679789

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.

Studies in Medieval English Romances

Studies in Medieval English Romances
Author: Derek Brewer
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Total Pages: 216
Release: 1988
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780859912471

Interest in the literary form of romance has greatly increased over the past few years and begins to equal that of tragedy. Romance is seen as a potent model of life equal but opposite to tragedy. The modern widespread realisation that art its most powerful is not necessarily a direct realistic 'imitation' or mimesis of ordinary life, together with the accompanying interest in fantasy, folktale and science fiction, have all opened out new vistas of literary experience.

Boundaries in Medieval Romance

Boundaries in Medieval Romance
Author: Neil Cartlidge
Publisher: DS Brewer
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781843841555

A wide-ranging collection on one of the most interesting features of medieval romance.