In 'Narrating the Crusades', Lee Manion examines crusading's narrative-generating power as it is reflected in English literature from c.1300 to 1604. By synthesizing key features of crusade discourse into one paradigm, this book identifies and analyzes the kinds of stories crusading produced in England, uncovering new evidence for literary and historical research as well as genre studies. Surveying medieval romances including 'Richard Cœur de Lion', 'Sir Isumbras', 'Octavian', and 'The Sowdone of Babylon'e alongside historical practices, chronicles, and treatises, this study shows how different forms of crusading literature address cultural concerns about collective and private action. These insights extend to early modern writing, including Spenser's 'Faerie Queene', Marlowe's 'Tamburlaine', and Shakespeare's 'Othello', providing a richer understanding of how crusading's narrative shaped the beginning of the modern era. This first full-length examination of English crusading literature will be an essential resource for the study of crusading in literary and historical contexts.
Author(s): Lee Manion
Series: Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 90
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: X+310
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
1. An anti-national 'Richard Cœur de Lion': associational forms and the English crusading romance 19
2. 'Sir Isumbras’s' "privy" recovery: individual crusading in the fourteenth century 67
3. Fictions of recovery in later English crusading romances: 'Octavian' and 'The Sowdone of Babylone' 107
4. Refiguring Catholic and Turk: early modern literatures of crusading and the end of the crusading romance 146
Conclusion 212
Notes 221
Bibliography 283
Index 303
