Romance and History: Imagining Time from the Medieval to the Early Modern Period (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

To what extent can imaginative events be situated in time and history? From the medieval to the early modern period, this question is intriguingly explored in the expansive literary genre of romance. This collective study, edited by Jon Whitman, is the first systematic investigation of that formative process during more than four hundred years. While concentrating on changing configurations of romance itself, the volume examines a number of important related reference points, from epic to chronicle to critical theory. Recalling but qualifying conventional approaches to the three 'matters' of Rome, Britain, and France, the far-reaching inquiry engages major works in a variety of idioms, including Latin, French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish. With contributions from a range of internationally distinguished scholars, this unique volume offers a carefully coordinated framework for enriching not only the reading of romance, but also the understanding of changing attitudes toward the temporal process at large. Preface; Part I. Opening Perspectives: 1. Romance and history: designing the times Jon Whitman; Part II. The Matter of Rome (and Realms to the East): Approaches to Antiquity: 2. Fearful histories: the past contained in the romances of antiquity Christopher Baswell; 3. Troy and Rome, two narrative presentations of history in the thirteenth century: the Roman de Troie en prose and the Faits des Romains Catherine Croizy-Naquet; Part III. The Matter of Britain: Social and Spiritual Drives: 4. Inescapable history: Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain and Arthurian romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Robert W. Hanning; 5. Gottfried, Wolfram, and the Angevins: history, genealogy, and fiction in the Tristan and Parzival romances Adrian Stevens; 6. Fictional history as ideology: functions of the grail legend from Robert de Boron to the Roman de Perceforest Friedrich Wolfzettel; 7. The prose Brut, Hardyng's Chronicle, and the alliterative Morte Arthure: the end of the story Edward Donald Kennedy; 8. Arthur in transition: Malory's Morte Darthur Helen Cooper; Part IV. The Matters of France and Italy: Acts of Recollection and Invention: 9. The Chanson de geste as a construction of memory Jean-Pierre Martin; 10. Ruggiero's story: the making of a dynastic hero Riccardo Bruscagli; 11. Temporality and narrative structure in European romance from the late fifteenth century to the early sixteenth century Marco Praloran; Part V. Matters of Fabulation and Fact: Shifting Registers: 12. The disparagement of chivalric romance for its lack of historicity in sixteenth-century Italian poetics Daniel Javitch; 13. Romance and history in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata David Quint; 14. The thinking of history in Spenserian romance Gordon Teskey; 15. La Cava: romance and history in Corral and Cervantes Marina S. Brownlee; Part VI. Closing Reference Points: 16. Afterword and afterward: romance, history, time Jon Whitman; Select bibliography.