Description: A wide-ranging collection on one of the most interesting features of medieval romance.
Medieval romance frequently, and perhaps characteristically, capitalises on the dramatic and suggestive possibilities implicit in boundaries - not only the geographical, political and cultural frontiers that medieval romances imagine and imply, but also more metaphorical demarcations. It is these boundaries, as they appear in insular romances circulating in English and French, which the essays in this volume address. They include the boundary between reality and fictionality; boundaries between different literary traditions, modes and cultures; and boundaries between different kinds of experience or perception, especially the "altered states" associated with sickness, magic, the supernatural, or the divine. CONTRIBUTORS: HELEN COOPER, ROSALIND FIELD, MARIANNE AILES, PHILLIPA HARDMAN, ELIZABETH BERLINGS, SIMON MEECHAM-JONES, ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, ARLYN DIAMOND, ROBERT ROUSE, LAURA ASHE, JUDITH WEISS, IVANA DJORDJEVIC, CORINNE SAUNDERSBrief description: Corinne Saunders is Professor of Medieval Literature at the Department of English Studies, University of Durham.
Review Quotes: The contributions [...] represent solid and provocative readings of both frequently studied and much neglected romances. [...] This volume represents an important contribution to medieval romance studies. As a successful collection of essays should do, it presents a lively, exciting conversation among some of the foremost scholars in the discipline.-- "JOURNAL OF ENGLISH & GERMANIC PHILOLOGY"