Medieval Romances across European Borders
Edited by Miriam Edlich-Muth
VII+228 p., 156 x 234 mm, 2018, ISBN: 978-2-503-57716-6, 75 euro HT
Collection: Medieval Narratives in Transmission. Cultural and Medieval Translation of Vernacular Traditions, vol. 1
Brepols Publishers
An international essay collection offering unique insights into how popular romances were adapted into different linguistic and cultural communities of late medieval Europe.
They were the bestsellers of their time; in the late medieval period, a umber of shorter romances and tales, such as Floire et Blancheflor, Partonopeus de Blois, Valentine and Orson and many others, enjoyed striking popularity across different regions of Europe. This essay collection gathers together contributions from across Europe, to examine the complex processes by which medieval romances were adapted across European borders. By examining how the content, form and broader contextualisation of individual romances were altered by the transition from one region to another, the essays address the role translators, narrators, editors and compilers played in adapting the tales to different cultural and codicological settings. In this context, they discuss not only the shifting plotlines of the tales, but also the points at which the generic features of the texts shift in response to changing cultural codes. In doing so, they raise wider questions concerning the links between genre, manuscript form, cultural assimilation and the popularity of certain romance texts in different cultural communities.
Table of Contents
Introduction — MIRIAM EDLICH-MUTH
Genre and Context
The Value of Genre for the Study of Multi-Text Codices — BART BESAMUSCA
‘L’aventure ke avez oïe | Veraie fu’: Bisclavret, Slender Man, and Story Transmission — ELIZABETH DEARNLEY
A Saint’s Romance: Rósa, Rosana and the Hispano-Scandinavian Links Shaping Flóres saga ok Blankiflúr — MIRIAM EDLICH-MUTH
Translation as Adaptation
Femininity and Masculinity in Flores och Blanzeflor —VIRGILE REITER
Laudine and Lunete Moving North — SOFIA LODÉN
The Romans Antiques Across Time and Space — VENETIA BRIDGES
The Phantom of a Romance: Traces of Romance Transmission and the Question of Originality — SIF RIKHARDSDOTTIR
Continuities
Translating Treason: Shameful Death in French and English Romances of Arthur’s Last Days — ROGER NICHOLSON
Between Father and Son: Interpreting Motherhood in L’Estoire de Merlin and its Middle English Adaptations — SUXUE ZHANG
The Serpent with a Woman’s Face: Transformation in Libeaus Desconus and the Vernacular Fair Unknown Tradition — NATALIE GOODISON