Hybridity in the Literature of Medieval England offers a wide-ranging exploration of hybridity in medieval English literature. Anxiety about hybridity surfaces in characters of mixed ethnic identity in the romances. But anxiety is found also in the intersection of the natural and the supernatural and its site can be located inside the human body’s unstable physical frame, living and dead, as much as in the cultural and social forces at work upon the human body politic at large. Hybridity is unlike other constructs of difference in that, while it is grounded in difference, hybridity points toward sameness. The four types of hybridity studied in medieval English literature show that hybridity can resolve the problems caused by difference. Understanding medieval hybridity can help us to deal with our own contemporary struggles with the mixtures of our own lives and societies.
Author(s): Rosanne P. Gasse
Series: The New Middle Ages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 257
City: London
Acknowledgements
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: Notions of Hybridity
Chapter 2: Mixed Ethnicity in the Romances of Medieval England: The Hybridity of Ethnic Identity
Mixed Ethnicity in Medieval Britain: Some Historical Perspective
Handling Miscegenation: The Problem of Children
Bevis of Hampton: Land and Identity
Resolving Hybrid Identity: Mothers and Fathers
Resolving Unwanted Hybridity: The Supernatural as Sign
Resolving Hybridity: Thomas Becket and His Saracen Mother in the Early South-English Legendary
Conclusion
Chapter 3: Fathers and Mothers: The Case for Hybrid Identity in Medieval Merlin and Melusine Romances
Merlin: The Demon’s Son
Like Father, Like Son: Merlin and His Father
Merlin and His Mother
Melusine: The Faery’s Daughter and Her Sons
Unhappy Beginnings: Melusine and Pressine
Sad Endings: Melusine and Raymond
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Monsters and Shapeshifters: The Hybrid Body in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis
Transforming the Human Body: Wonder and Disgust
Human/Animal Hybrids from Classical Legend
The Hybrid Masculine Body
The Hybrid Gendered Body
The Hybrid Feminine Body
The Disabled Hybrid Body: Tiresias
Conclusion
Chapter 5: The Living, the Dead, and Those In-between: The Hybridity of Dying
The Reanimated Dead
The Reanimated Secular Dead
Tales of the Resurrected Christ
Corpse Brides and Things That Will Not Die
The Revenant
The Revenant: The Dream Apparition
The Revenant: The Corporeal Ghost
The Revenant: The Noisy Ghost
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Epilogue: Hybridity Extinguishes Itself
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Index
