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6 - Romance and the Medieval Mediterranean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2023

Roberta L. Krueger
Affiliation:
Hamilton College, New York
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Summary

This chapter provides a brief overview of the development of crusading practices in Europe from the eleventh century until their formal end in the seventeenth. It highlights crusading’s broad impact on society, its inconsistent racial and religious discrimination, and the appeal of its story of loss and recovery across social levels. The chapter then discusses two popular Middle English romances, Richard Coeur de Lion (c. 1300) and Guy of Warwick (c. 1330), to illustrate the ways crusading affected and was affected by literary narratives. The two poems represent different kinds of crusading practices – the large army sponsored by ecclesiastical authorities and the individual undertaking a personal vow without church involvement – while offering critical commentary on crusading itself. These crusading romances and others like them situate the British Isles as part of a larger premodern world engaged in religious conflict and exchange. By recognizing the long relationship between the romance and holy warfare – one that lasted well into the early modern period – we can better understand the interests of medieval and Renaissance audiences as well as the foundational role of religious intolerance in modernity.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Suggestions for Further Reading

Bakhtin, Mikhail M.Time and Chronotope in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays, ed. Holquist, Michael, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Blurton, Heather. “Jeo ai esté a Nubie”: Boeve de Haumtone in the Medieval Mediterranean,” Neophilologus 103 (2019): 465–77.Google Scholar
Catlos, Brian A. and Kinoshita, Sharon (eds.), Can We Talk Mediterranean? Conversations on an Emerging Field in Medieval and Early Modern Studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.Google Scholar
Crooke, William. “Der guote Gêrhart: The Power of Mobility in the Medieval Mediterranean.postmedieval 4 (2013): 163–76.Google Scholar
Kinoshita, Sharon. “Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligés in the Medieval Mediterranean.Arthuriana 18.3 (2008): 4861.Google Scholar
Kinoshita, SharonMedieval Mediterranean Literature.PMLA 124:2 (2009): 600–8.Google Scholar
Lot-Borodine, Myrrha. Le Roman idyllique au Moyen Âge. Paris: Auguste Picard, 1913.Google Scholar
Manion, Lee. Narrating the Crusades: Loss and Recovery in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.Google Scholar

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