In a poststructuralist study of thirteenth-century French historical texts, Gabrielle Spiegel investigates the reasons for the rise of French vernacular prose historiography at this particular time. She argues that the vernacular prose histories that have until now been regarded as royalist were actually products of the aristocracy, reflecting its anxiety as it faced social and economic change and political threats from the monarchy. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994. In a poststructuralist study of thirteenth-century French historical texts, Gabrielle Spiegel investigates the reasons for the rise of French vernacular prose historiography at this particular time. She argues that the vernacular prose histories that have

By exposing the theory of romance to the romance of theory, Diane Elam explores literature’s most uncertain, least easily definable and most tenacious genre, assessing its implications for both feminism and the understanding of history. Arguing for a parallel between postmodernism’s divided relation to modernism and romance’s difficult stance towards realism, Romancing the Postmodern, first published in 1992, not only highlights how postmodernism questions our assumptions about historical time, it also reintroduces the figure of woman to the theory of both history and literature.

Although not a professional historian, the author raises several issues pertinent to the state of history today. Qualifying the ‘non-historian’ as an ‘able’ interventionist in historical studies, the author explores the relationship between history and theory within the current epistemological configurations and refigurations. He asks how history transcends the obsessive ‘linguistic’ turn, which has been hegemonizing literary/discourse analysis, and focuses greater attention on historical experience and where history stands in relation to our understanding of ethics, religion and the current state of global politics that underlines the manipulation and abuse of history.

It demonstrates that, even though Washington Irving's sojourn in Spain from 1826 until 1829 marked a distinct shift in the literary commodification of things Spanish, the transition from an enlightened to a romantic representation of Spain was a process triggered by a group of writers who produced Spanish travel narratives of lasting influence.

The renowned and illustrious tales of King Arthur, his knights and the Round Table pervade all European vernaculars, as well as the Latin tradition. Arthurian narrative material, which had originally been transmitted in oral culture, began to be inscribed regularly in the twelfth century, developing from (pseudo-)historical beginnings in the Latin chronicles of "historians" such as Geoffrey of Monmouth into masterful literary works like the romances of Chrétien de Troyes. Evidently a big hit, Arthur found himself being swiftly translated, adapted and integrated into the literary traditions of almost every European vernacular during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This Handbook seeks to showcase the European character of Arthurian romance both past and present. By working across national philological boundaries, which in the past have tended to segregate the study of Arthurian romance according to language, as well as by exploring primary texts from different vernaculars and the Latin tradition in conjunction with recent theoretical concepts and approaches, this Handbook brings together a pioneering and more complete view of the specifically European context of Arthurian romance, and promotes the more connected study of Arthurian literature across the entirety of its European context.

"Invaluable."--Choice "Shopkow's translation . . . should be included in all courses on aristocratic society and culture in the Middle Ages."--Parergon "This will join the handful of translated medieval chronicles that now hold canonical status."--Theodore Evergates, author of Aristocratic Women in Medieval France The History of the Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres, a work made famous by Georges Duby, now appears in an expert translation by Leah Shopkow. Consisting of 154 surviving chapters, Lambert's chronicle is just one of many local genealogies produced in Flanders during the high Middle Ages. It is extraordinarily rich and idiosyncratic, however, in its treatment of two competing families, longtime rivals until they were joined by marriage in the mid-twelfth century. In the first 96 chapters, Lambert, priest of the church of Ardres, traces the lineage of the counts of Guines from the seventh century to his present. Suddenly, narrative control seems to be wrested away by the garrulous Walter LeClud, illegitimate son of Baldwin of Ardres, who tells the history of the other family for the next 50 chapters. At that point, Lambert's voice is finally restored, with an account of the now combined holdings of Guines and Ardres. With two storytellers recounting some of the same events from different perspectives, The History of the Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres is a particularly useful source for probing the medieval aristocratic family and aristocratic attitudes. Shopkow brings Lambert's chronicle to life in an accurate, lively translation and provides relevant historical and historiographical information in her extensive introduction and explanatory notes to the text. Leah Shopkow is Associate Professor of History at Indiana University.

Nineteenth century medievalism is usually associated with Scott's world of Ivanhoe , but Romantic Medievalism argues that Scott's is a conservative use of the past and that radical poets such as the young Coleridge, Keats and Shelley used the medieval to critique and change, rather than validate, the present. These poets identified with the troubadour of courtly love, a disempowered figure often politically at odds with the establishment figure of the knight.

Medieval romances with their magic fountains, brave knights, and beautiful maidens have come to stand for the Middle Ages more generally. This close connection between the medieval and the romance has had consequences for popular conceptions of the Middle Ages, an idealized fantasy of chivalry and hierarchy, and also for our understanding of romances, as always already archaic, part of a half-forgotten past. And yet, romances were one of the most influential and long-lasting innovations of the medieval period. To emphasize their novelty is to see the resources medieval people had for thinking about their contemporary concern and controversies, whether social order, Jewish/ Christian relations, the Crusades, the connectivity of the Mediterranean, women's roles as mothers, and how to write a national past. This volume takes up the challenge to 'think romance', investigating the various ways that romances imagine, reflect, and describe the challenges of the medieval world.

The medieval Anglo-Norman prose chronicles are fascinating hybrids of history, legends and romance. Their prime subject is the history of England, but they also shed much light on other networks of influence, such as those between families and religious houses. This book studies the essential characteristics of the genre for the first time, situating Anglo-Norman prose chronicles within the multilingual cultures of late medieval England. It considers the chronicles' treatment of the ""legendary history of Britain"", legends about English heroes, accounts of the Norman Conquest, and histories o.

A comprehensive guide that defines the literature and the outlines the best-selling genre of all time: romance fiction. More than 2,000 romances are published annually, making it difficult for fans and the librarians who advise them to keep pace with new titles, emerging authors, and constant evolution of this dynamic genre. Fortunately, romance expert and librarian Kristin Ramsdell provides a definitive guide to this fiction genre that serves as an indispensible resource for those interested in it—including fans searching for reading material—as well as for library staff, scholars, and romance writers themselves. This title updates the last edition of Romance Fiction: A Guide to the Genre, published in 1999.While the emphasis is on newer titles, many of the important older classics are retained, keeping the focus of the book on the entire genre, instead of only those titles published during the last decade. Specific changes include new chapters on linked and continuing romances, a new section on "Chick Lit" in the Contemporary Romance chapter, an expansion of coverage on the alternative reality subset. This is THE romance genre guide to have.