The Chansons de Geste in the Age of Romance: Political FictionsThis is a major reassessment of the relation between the medieval French chansons de geste and the romance genre. Critics have often dismissed the chansons de geste as coming before and being inferior to the new and distinctively literary achievement of romance. Sarah Kay draws on the most up-to-date literary and feminist theory to show that the two genres in fact existed simultaneously, engaged in a productive and revealing dialogue. Each genre, moreover, illuminates the "political unconscious" of the other: those political conflicts and contradictions--particularly issues of gender--that the text attempts to evade and disguise. |
Contents
Introduction I | 1 |
Price or Gift? | 25 |
Narratives of ConflictConflict of Narratives | 49 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
Aiol Aliscans ambivalence Ami et Amile assonanced Aye d'Avignon Aymeri barons Baudoïn Bernier Blaye Bordelais Bove brother Bueve Chanson de Guillaume chansons de geste Chapter characters Charlemagne Charles Chrétien de Troyes Combarieu commodity companion companionship conflict of narratives counternarrative Couronnement de Louis court courtly daughter Daurel et Beton death decasyllables desire Doon epic example exchange family romance fantasy father feudal fief France Frankish Freud Fromont Ganor Garin le Loheren Gaydon gender genre geste and romance gift gift economy Girart de Roussillon Girart de Vienne Gui's Hardré hero hierarchy Hugon Jourdain killed king knights literary Louis male marriage marry Maugis medieval Milon mise en abyme mother Oliver Orson Orson de Beauvais Paris Parise plot poem protagonist Raoul de Cambrai relations Renaut de Montauban Renoart represent rhymed role romance influence Saisnes Saracen princess scene Sebile sexual social order society symbolic texts traitor vassal violence wife woman women Yvain