Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural FantasyEmpire of Magic offers a genesis and genealogy for medieval romance and the King Arthur legend through the history of Europe's encounters with the East in crusades, travel, missionizing, and empire formation. It also produces definitions of "race" and "nation" for the medieval period and posits that the Middle Ages and medieval fantasies of race and religion have recently returned. Drawing on feminist and gender theory, as well as cultural analyses of race, class, and colonialism, this provocative book revises our understanding of the beginnings of the nine hundred-year-old cultural genre we call romance, as well as the King Arthur legend. Geraldine Heng argues that romance arose in the twelfth century as a cultural response to the trauma and horror of taboo acts--in particular the cannibalism committed by crusaders on the bodies of Muslim enemies in Syria during the First Crusade. From such encounters with the East, Heng suggests, sprang the fantastical episodes featuring King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle The History of the Kings of England, a work where history and fantasy collide and merge, each into the other, inventing crucial new examples and models for romances to come. After locating the rise of romance and Arthurian legend in the contact zones of East and West, Heng demonstrates the adaptability of romance and its key role in the genesis of an English national identity. Discussing Jews, women, children, and sexuality in works like the romance of Richard Lionheart, stories of the saintly Constance, Arthurian chivralic literature, the legend of Prester John, and travel narratives, Heng shows how fantasy enabled audiences to work through issues of communal identity, race, color, class and alternative sexualities in socially sanctioned and safe modes of cultural discussion in which pleasure, not anxiety, was paramount. Romance also engaged with the threat of modernity in the late medieval period, as economic, social, and technological transformations occurred and awareness grew of a vastly enlarged world beyond Europe, one encompassing India, China, and Africa. Finally, Heng posits, romance locates England and Europe within an empire of magic and knowledge that surveys the world and makes it intelligible--usable--for the future. Empire of Magic is expansive in scope, spanning the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, and detailed in coverage, examining various types of romance--historical, national, popular, chivalric, family, and travel romances, among others--to see how cultural fantasy responds to changing crises, pressures, and demands in a number of different ways. Boldly controversial, theoretically sophisticated, and historically rooted, Empire of Magic is a dramatic restaging of the role romance played in the culture of a period and world in ways that suggest how cultural fantasy still functions for us today. |
Other editions - View all
Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy Geraldine Heng Limited preview - 2003 |
Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy Geraldine Heng Limited preview - 2003 |
Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy Geraldine Heng No preview available - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
Aella Anglo-Norman Antioch Arthur Arthurian audience body Bryan and Dempster cannibalism Cathay chansons de geste Chaucer's Christendom Christian chronicle Clerk's Tale color Constance story Constance's Constantinople conversion crusading history cultural depicted desire discourse East economic Emaré emperor empire enemy England Europe European fantasy feudal figure fourteenth century French Gawain Genoese genre Geoffrey's giant Griselda Holy human identity imagined India Islam Jerusalem Jewish Jews John's Khan knighthood knights land late Middle late-medieval Later Middle Ages Latin Latin Europe legend literary literature Ma'arra mance Mandeville Mandeville's Travels manuscript medieval romance Michael's Mount Middle Ages Middle English military modern Morte Morte's mother Muslim narrative narrator nation Nestorian Oriental political Pope Prester John race racial religious Richard Rome royal Saladin Saracen sexual social sodomy suggests Sultan symbolic Syria territory Third Crusade thirteenth century tion traditional travel romance Trevet's twelfth century woman women ŝai ŝat