This volume developed from a selection of the forty-odd papers presented at the 11th Biennial "Romance in Medieval Britain" conference hosted by the School of English at the University of St Andrews in March 2008.
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.
Author(s): Rhiannon Purdie, Michael Cichon (eds.)
Series: Studies in Medieval Romance, 14
Publisher: D. S. Brewer
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: X+198
City: Cambridge
Acknowledgements vii
Contributors viii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction: Romance and its Medieval Contexts / Rhiannon Purdie and Michael Cichon 1
1. The Pleasure of Popular Romance: A Prefatory Essay / Derek Pearsall 9
2. Representations of Peasant Speech: Some Literary and Social Contexts for "The Taill of Rauf Coilyear" / Nancy Mason Bradbury 19
3. "As ye have brewd, so shal ye drink": the Proverbial Context of "Eger and Grime" / Michael Cichon 35
4. Ekphrasis and Narrative in "Emaré" and "Sir Eglamour of Artois" / Nicholas Perkins 47
5. What's in a Name? Anglo-Norman Romances or "Chansons de geste"? / Marianne Ailes 61
6. "For Goddes loue, sir, mercy!": Recontextualising the Modern Critical Text of "Floris and Blancheflor" / John A. Geck 77
7. Roland in England: Contextualising the Middle English "Song of Roland" / Phillipa Hardman 91
8. Romance Baptisms and Theological Contexts in "The King of Tars" and "Sir Ferumbras" / Siobhain Bly Calkin 105
9. Modern and Medieval Views on Swooning: the Literary and Medical Contexts of Fainting in Romance / Judith Weiss 121
10. Walking (between) the Lines: Romance as Itinerary/Map / Robert Rouse 135
11. Romances of Continuity in the English Rous Roll / Yin Liu 149
12. "Ex Libris domini duncani / Campbell de glenwrquhay / miles": "The Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour" in the household of Sir Duncan Campbell, seventh laird of Glenorchy / Emily Wingfield 161
13. "Pur les francs homes amender": Clerical Authors and the Thirteenth-Century Context of Historical Romance / Rosalind Field 175
Index 189
