Amis And Amiloun

In A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, Amis and Amiloun, Robert of Cisyle, and Sir Amadace are classified by Lillian Herlands Hornstein as Legendary Romances of Didactic Intent. Amis, produced in the East Midlands in the late thirteenth century was well known throughout Europe, but according to Edward Foster, the Middle English version is especially lively, entertaining, and perplexing.Robert of Cisyle was also a common and popular story. Like the medieval tragedies recounted in Chaucer's The Monk's Tale, it recounts the story of the fall of a great man and his ultimate triumph once he has been thoroughly humiliated.The stress in Sir Amadace is on material things: Amadace's original plight is material, his succor of the unburied knight is material, the white knight's assistance to him is material, his redemption is material . . . , and his ultimate happiness is material. - from the Introduction

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Unique in combining a comprehensive and comparative study of genre with a study of romance, this book constitutes a significant contribution to ongoing critical debates over the definition of romance and the genre and artistry of Malory's Morte Darthur. K.S. Whetter addresses the questions of how exactly romance might be defined and how such an awareness of genre impacts upon both the understanding and reception of the texts in question.

The Merchant of Venice: The Homosexual as Anti-Semite in Nascent Capitalism -- The Lesbian Hero Bound: Radclyffe Hall's Portrait of Sapphic Daughters and Their Mothers -- An Essay in Sexual Liberation, Victorian Style: Walter Pater's "Two Early French Stories"--To Love a Medieval Boy -- Index

Pulp fictions of medieval England comprises ten essays on individual popular romances; with a focus on romances that, while enormously popular in the Middle Ages, have been neglected by modern scholarship. Each essay provides valuable introductory material, and there is a sustained argument across the contributions that the romances invite innovative, exacting and theoretically charged analysis. However, the essays do not support a single, homogenous reading of popular romance: the authors work with assumptions and come to conclusions about issues as fundamental as the genre's aesthetic codes, its political and cultural ideologies, and its historical consciousness that are different and sometimes opposed. Nicola McDonald's collection and the romances it investigates, are crucial to our understanding of the aesthetics of medieval narrative and to the ideologies of gender and sexuality, race, religion, political formations, social class, ethics, morality and national identity with which those narratives engage.

Analysis of pious formulae across a range of medieval romance, illuminating their stylistic purpose.