The Mélusine Romance in Medieval Europe

The Mélusine Romance in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Lydia Zeldenrust
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845210
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Readers have long been fascinated by the enigmatic figure of M lusine - a beautiful fairy woman cursed to transform into a half-serpent once a week, whose part-monstrous sons are the ancestor of several European noble houses. This study is the first to consider how this romance developed from a local legend to European bestseller, analysing versions in French, German, Castilian, Dutch, and English. It addresses questions on how to study medieval literature from a European perspective, moving beyond national canons, and reading M lusine's bodily mutability as a metaphor for how the romance itself moves and transforms across borders. It also analyses key changes to the romance's content, form, and material presentation - including its images - and traces how the people who produced and consumed this romance shaped its international transmission and spread. The author shows how M lusine's character is adapted within each local context, while also uncovering previously unknown connections between the different branches of this multilingual tradition. Moving beyond established paradigms of separate national traditions, manuscript versus print, and medieval versus Renaissance literature, the book integrates literary analysis with art historical and book historical approaches. LYDIA ZELDENRUST is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York.

The Mélusine Romance in Medieval Europe

The Mélusine Romance in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Lydia Zeldenrust
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845210
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book

Book Description
Readers have long been fascinated by the enigmatic figure of M lusine - a beautiful fairy woman cursed to transform into a half-serpent once a week, whose part-monstrous sons are the ancestor of several European noble houses. This study is the first to consider how this romance developed from a local legend to European bestseller, analysing versions in French, German, Castilian, Dutch, and English. It addresses questions on how to study medieval literature from a European perspective, moving beyond national canons, and reading M lusine's bodily mutability as a metaphor for how the romance itself moves and transforms across borders. It also analyses key changes to the romance's content, form, and material presentation - including its images - and traces how the people who produced and consumed this romance shaped its international transmission and spread. The author shows how M lusine's character is adapted within each local context, while also uncovering previously unknown connections between the different branches of this multilingual tradition. Moving beyond established paradigms of separate national traditions, manuscript versus print, and medieval versus Renaissance literature, the book integrates literary analysis with art historical and book historical approaches. LYDIA ZELDENRUST is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York.

Melusine; or, The Noble History of Lusignan

Melusine; or, The Noble History of Lusignan PDF Author: Jean d'Arras
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271059907
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Jean d’Arras’s splendid prose romance of Melusine, written for Jean de Berry, the brother of King Charles V of France, is one of the most significant and complex literary works of the later Middle Ages. The author, promising to tell us “how the noble and powerful fortress of Lusignan in Poitou was founded by a fairy,” writes a ceaselessly astonishing account of the origins of the powerful feudal dynasty of the Lusignans in southwestern France, which flourished in western Europe and the Near East during the age of the Crusades. The spellbinding story of the destinies of the fairy Melusine, her mortal husband, and her extraordinary sons blends history, myth, genealogy, folklore, and popular traditions with epic, romance, and Crusade narrative. Preceded by a substantial introduction, this translation, the first in English to be amply annotated, captures the remarkable range of stylistic registers that characterizes this extravagant and captivating work.

The Romance of the Faery Melusine

The Romance of the Faery Melusine PDF Author: André Lebey
Publisher: Skylight Press
ISBN: 1908011327
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Springing from the heart of medieval France, The Romance of the Faery Melusine tells the story of Raymondin of Poitiers who accidentally kills his uncle while out hunting, and fleeing deep into the forest, encounters a faery by a fountain. Falling deeply into a mutual soul-love, the faery Melusine agrees to help Raymondin and to become his wife, on condition that he makes no attempt to see her between dusk and dawn each Saturday. On this basis the house of Lusignan thrives and prospers, until a series of treacherous events tempt Raymondin to violate his promise and shatter the magic which holds his faery wife to the human world. First rendered into written form in a text by Jean d'Arras in 1393, the legend of the Faery Melusine is well established in France, where she is credited with having founded the family, town and castle of Lusignan. However, it is very little known in the English-speaking world, despite the fact that Melusine originally hailed from Scotland. This new retelling by Gareth Knight translated from Andre Lebey's 1920s novel Le Roman de la Melusine captures the freshness of Lebey's telling of the legend and brings the benefit of Knight's expertise both in French literature and in the esoteric faery tradition.

The Book of Melusine of Lusignan in History, Legend and Romance

The Book of Melusine of Lusignan in History, Legend and Romance PDF Author: Gareth Knight
Publisher: Skylight Press
ISBN: 190801167X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Considerable interest in faery tradition has grown up in recent years and not least in the story of Melusine of Lusignan, the subject of a prose romance by Jean d'Arras at the end of the 14th century, swiftly followed by one in verse by Couldrette. This book provides a collection of material from various sources to give an all round picture of the remarkable faery, her town, her church, her immediate family, and the great Lusignan dynasty she founded. An established authority on Melusine, Gareth Knight collects together all the best source material, which he translates from the French, and presents his own researches into the Lusignan family of the 12th century, whose dynasty included kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem, examining the possibility of a familiar spirit guiding the family in its destiny.

Melusine's Footprint

Melusine's Footprint PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004355952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Book Description
Melusine’s Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth offers nineteen new critical essays from an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars examining the cultural, literary, and mythical inheritance of the legendary half-fairy, half-serpent Melusine.

Melusine of Lusignan

Melusine of Lusignan PDF Author: Donald Maddox
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820318233
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This volume of original essays is the first collection devoted to the monumental Roman de Melusine (1393) by Jean d'Arras. A masterwork of late fourteenth-century French prose fiction, Melusine tells of the powerful medieval dynasty of Lusignan from its founding as a city by the legendary Melusine, an enigmatic fairy-figure subject to periodic monstrous transformations, through its expansion in Europe and the Near East, to its ultimate evanescence. Melusine offers a singular blend of history and fiction as it upholds the proprietary claims to Lusignan of the work's illustrious patron, Jean, Duc de Berry. The great deeds of Melusine, her forebears, and her progeny unfold in a narrative that blends elements of myth, folklore, and popular traditions with epic, Crusade narrative, romance, and theological doctrine. Advancing a wealth of new material and fresh insight, the essays in this volume address the complex interplay of the conventions of medieval fictional, historical, and genealogical writing from a wide variety of critical perspectives. Together, they offer a new, more balanced and comprehensive understanding of one of the most significant literary works of late medieval European culture.

Founding Feminisms in Medieval Studies

Founding Feminisms in Medieval Studies PDF Author: Laine E. Doggett
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843844273
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Essays using feminist approaches to offer fresh insights into aspects of the texts and the material culture of the middle ages.

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance PDF Author: Roberta L. Krueger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521556873
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
This Companion presents fifteen original and engaging essays by leading scholars on one of the most influential genres of Western literature. Chapters describe the origins of early verse romance in twelfth-century French and Anglo-Norman courts and analyze the evolution of verse and prose romance in France, Germany, England, Italy, and Spain throughout the Middle Ages. The volume introduces a rich array of traditions and texts and offers fresh perspectives on the manuscript context of romance, the relationship of romance to other genres, popular romance in urban contexts, romance as mirror of familiar and social tensions, and the representation of courtly love, chivalry, 'other' worlds and gender roles. Together the essays demonstrate that European romances not only helped to promulgate the ideals of elite societies in formation, but also held those values up for questioning. An introduction, a chronology and a bibliography of texts and translations complete this lively, useful overview.

Treason

Treason PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004400699
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Set against the framework of modern political concerns, Treason: Medieval and Early Modern Adultery, Betrayal, and Shame considers the various forms of treachery in a variety of sources, including literature, historical chronicles, and material culture creating a complex portrait of the development of this high crime.

Fires of Winter

Fires of Winter PDF Author: Roberta Gellis
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402255039
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
A sparkling prize, the beautiful Mellusine of Ulle is awarded to the bastard-born Bruno of Jernaeve as a spoil of war. Bruno vows to tame the rebellious spirit of the captive beauty– but ultimately surrenders to her charms. Born of different worlds, joined in the flames of passion and intrigue, they find new strength in each other's arms...and a burning love that defies all eternity."