Stylistic and Narrative Structures in the Middle English Romances PDF Download
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Author: Susan Wittig
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029276653X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
This volume provides a generic description, based on a formal analysis of narrative structures, of the Middle English noncyclic verse romances. As a group, these poems have long resisted generic definition and are traditionally considered to be a conglomerate of unrelated tales held together in a historical matrix of similar themes and characters. As single narratives, they are thought of as random collections of events loosely structured in chronological succession. Susan Wittig, however, offers evidence that the romances are carefully ordered (although not always consciously so) according to a series of formulaic patterns and that their structures serve as vehicles for certain essential cultural patterns and are important to the preservation of some community-held beliefs. The analysis begins on a stylistic level, and the same theoretical principles applied to the linguistic formulas of the poems also serve as a model for the study of narrative structures. The author finds that there are laws that govern the creation, selection, and arrangement of narrative materials in the romance genre and that act to restrict innovation and control the narrative form. The reasons for this strict control are to be found in the functional relationship of the genre to the culture that produced it. The deep structure of the romance is viewed as a problem-solving pattern that enables the community to mediate important contradictions within its social, economic, and mythic structures. Wittig speculates that these contradictions may lie in the social structures of kinship and marriage and that they have been restructured in the narratives in a “practical” myth: the concept of power gained through the marriage alliance, and the reconciliation of the contradictory notions of marriage for power’s sake and marriage for love’s sake. This advanced, thorough, and completely original study will be valuable to medieval specialists, classicists, linguists, folklorists, and Biblical scholars working in oral-formulaic narrative structure.
Author: Susan Wittig
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029276653X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume provides a generic description, based on a formal analysis of narrative structures, of the Middle English noncyclic verse romances. As a group, these poems have long resisted generic definition and are traditionally considered to be a conglomerate of unrelated tales held together in a historical matrix of similar themes and characters. As single narratives, they are thought of as random collections of events loosely structured in chronological succession. Susan Wittig, however, offers evidence that the romances are carefully ordered (although not always consciously so) according to a series of formulaic patterns and that their structures serve as vehicles for certain essential cultural patterns and are important to the preservation of some community-held beliefs. The analysis begins on a stylistic level, and the same theoretical principles applied to the linguistic formulas of the poems also serve as a model for the study of narrative structures. The author finds that there are laws that govern the creation, selection, and arrangement of narrative materials in the romance genre and that act to restrict innovation and control the narrative form. The reasons for this strict control are to be found in the functional relationship of the genre to the culture that produced it. The deep structure of the romance is viewed as a problem-solving pattern that enables the community to mediate important contradictions within its social, economic, and mythic structures. Wittig speculates that these contradictions may lie in the social structures of kinship and marriage and that they have been restructured in the narratives in a “practical” myth: the concept of power gained through the marriage alliance, and the reconciliation of the contradictory notions of marriage for power’s sake and marriage for love’s sake. This advanced, thorough, and completely original study will be valuable to medieval specialists, classicists, linguists, folklorists, and Biblical scholars working in oral-formulaic narrative structure.
Author: Susan Wittig
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292766556
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume provides a generic description, based on a formal analysis of narrative structures, of the Middle English noncyclic verse romances. As a group, these poems have long resisted generic definition and are traditionally considered to be a conglomerate of unrelated tales held together in a historical matrix of similar themes and characters. As single narratives, they are thought of as random collections of events loosely structured in chronological succession. Susan Wittig, however, offers evidence that the romances are carefully ordered (although not always consciously so) according to a series of formulaic patterns and that their structures serve as vehicles for certain essential cultural patterns and are important to the preservation of some community-held beliefs. The analysis begins on a stylistic level, and the same theoretical principles applied to the linguistic formulas of the poems also serve as a model for the study of narrative structures. The author finds that there are laws that govern the creation, selection, and arrangement of narrative materials in the romance genre and that act to restrict innovation and control the narrative form. The reasons for this strict control are to be found in the functional relationship of the genre to the culture that produced it. The deep structure of the romance is viewed as a problem-solving pattern that enables the community to mediate important contradictions within its social, economic, and mythic structures. Wittig speculates that these contradictions may lie in the social structures of kinship and marriage and that they have been restructured in the narratives in a “practical” myth: the concept of power gained through the marriage alliance, and the reconciliation of the contradictory notions of marriage for power’s sake and marriage for love’s sake. This advanced, thorough, and completely original study will be valuable to medieval specialists, classicists, linguists, folklorists, and Biblical scholars working in oral-formulaic narrative structure.
Author: Roger Dalrymple
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 9780859915984
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
Analysis of pious formulae across a range of medieval romance, illuminating their stylistic purpose.
Author: Derek Brewer
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 9780859912471
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Interest in the literary form of romance has greatly increased over the past few years and begins to equal that of tragedy. Romance is seen as a potent model of life equal but opposite to tragedy. The modern widespread realisation that art its most powerful is not necessarily a direct realistic 'imitation' or mimesis of ordinary life, together with the accompanying interest in fantasy, folktale and science fiction, have all opened out new vistas of literary experience.
Author: Jamie McKinstry
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843844176
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
An examination of the depiction and function of memory in a variety of romances, including Troilus and Criseyde and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Author: Michael Johnston
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191669210
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England offers a new history of Middle English romance, the most popular genre of secular literature in the English Middle Ages. Michael Johnston argues that many of the romances composed in England from 1350-1500 arose in response to the specific socio-economic concerns of the gentry, the class of English landowners who lacked titles of nobility and hence occupied the lower rungs of the aristocracy. The end of the fourteenth century in England witnessed power devolving to the gentry, who became one of the dominant political and economic forces in provincial society. As Johnston demonstrates, this social change also affected England's literary culture, particularly the composition and readership of romance. Romance and the Gentry in Late Medieval England identifies a series of new topoi in Middle English that responded to the gentry's economic interests. But beyond social history and literary criticism, it also speaks to manuscript studies, showing that most of the codices of the "gentry romances" were produced by those in the immediate employ of the gentry. By bringing together literary criticism and manuscript studies, this book speaks to two scholarly communities often insulated from one another: it invites manuscript scholars to pay closer attention to the cultural resonances of the texts within medieval codices; simultaneously, it encourages literary scholars to be more attentive to the cultural resonances of surviving medieval codices.
Author: Harriet Hudson
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
ISBN: 1580444369
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
Sir Isumbras, Octavian, Sir Eglamour of Artois, and Sir Tryamour are important works in a major literary development of the fourteenth century: the flourishing of Middle English popular romance. These four narratives were among the most popular; all survive in multiple manuscripts and continued to circulate in prints through the sixteenth century. All were composed in the northeast Midlands in the fifty years between 1325 and 1375, and they appear together in several manuscripts. The tale the romances tell-of exiled queens, orphaned children, and penitent fathers-was one of the most prevalent medieval stories. Sometimes called the Constance/Eustace legend (after two well-known pious versions), its influence can be seen in numerous romances.
Author: Noël James Menuge
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 9780859916325
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
This title explores how wardship literature in romance may be used in studies of wardship, and how it may complement an understanding of legal history. Wardship discourse is examined in a variety of sources - legal treatises, cases, and romance.
Author: Sara Pons-Sanz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137393874
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
How did the English language change from the Old to the Early Modern period? What effect do linguistic and stylistic choices have on a text? Why is it important to consider linguistic features together in a work? The grammar and vocabulary of the English language changed dramatically between the Old and Early Modern periods. These changes in language usage are explored in The Language of Early English Literature by examining the effect of authors' linguistic choices on the descriptions of characters, events, and situations. Written with today's undergraduate student in mind, this textbook is a highly rewarding guide to the rich history of the English language and literature. The Language of Early English Literature: - Provides detailed explanations of linguistic features, such as word formation, phrase structure, syntax, and semantics - Analyses a wide range of texts from Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English, and establishes comparisons with works written in other languages - Includes an invaluable glossary and an extensive bibliography
Author: Anne Laskaya
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
ISBN: 1580444679
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 454
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Book Description
This volume is the first to make the Middle English Breton lays available to teachers and students of the Middle Ages. Breton lays were produced by or after the fashion of Marie de France in the twelfth century and claim to be "literary versions of lays sung by ancient Bretons to the accompaniment of the harp." The poems edited in this volume are considered distinctly "English" Breton lays because of their focus on the family values of late medieval England. With the volume's helpful glosses, notes, introductions, and appendices, the door is opened for students to study Middle English poetry and the medieval family alike.
