Nicholas Perkins 
Medieval Romance and Material Culture 

Studies of how the physical manifests itself in medieval romance – and medieval romances as objects themselves.


Medieval romance narratives glitter with the material objects that were valued and exchanged in late-medieval society: lovers’ rings and warriors’ swords, holy relics and desirable or corrupted bodies. Romance, however, is also agenre in which such objects make meaning on numerous levels, and not always in predictable ways. These new essays examine from diverse perspectives how romances respond to material culture, but also show how romance as a genre helps to constitute and transmit that culture. Focusing on romances circulating in Britain and Ireland between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, individual chapters address such questions as the relationship between objects and protagonists in romance narrative; the materiality of male and female bodies; the interaction between visual and verbal representations of romance; poetic form and manuscript textuality; and how a nineteenth-century edition of medieval romances provoked artists to homage and satire.


NICHOLAS PERKINS is Associate Professor and Tutor in English at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford.


Contributors: Siobhain Bly Calkin, Nancy Mason Bradbury, Aisling Byrne, Anna Caughey, Neil Cartlidge, Mark Cruse, Morgan Dickson, Rosalind Field, Elliot Kendall, Megan G. Leitch, Henrike Manuwald, Nicholas Perkins, Ad Putter, Raluca L. Radulescu, Robert Allen Rouse,

Table of Content

Introduction: The Materiality of Medieval Romance and
The Erle of Tolous – Nicholas Perkins

Courtly Culture and Emotional Intelligence in
The Romance of Horn – Rosalind Field

Emplaced Reading, or Towards a Spatial Hermeneutic for Medieval Romance – Robert Rouse

Devotional Objects, Saracen Spaces and Miracles in Two Matter of France Romances – Siobhain Bly Calkin

The Werewolf of Wicklow: Shapeshifting and Colonial Identity in the
Lai de Melion – Neil Cartlidge

‘Ladyes war at thare avowing’: The Female Gaze in Late-Medieval Scottish Romance – Anna Caughey

The Evolution of Cooperation in
The Avowyng of Arthur – Elliot Kendall

Ritual, Revenge and the Politics of Chess in Medieval Romance –

Adventures in the Bob-and-Wheel Tradition: Narratives and Manuscripts – Ad Putter

Reading
King Robert of Sicily’s Text(s) and Manuscript Context(s) – Raluca Radulescu

The Circulation of Romances from England in Late-Medieval Ireland – Aisling Byrne

The Image of the Knightly Harper: Symbolism and Resonance – Morgan Dickson

Carving the
Folie Tristan: Ivory Caskets as Material Evidence of Textual History – Henrike Manuwald

Romancing the Orient: The
Roman d’Alexandre and Marco Polo’s
Livre du grand Khan in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodl. 264 – Mark Cruse

The Victorian Afterlife of the Thornton Romances – Nancy Mason Bradbury

About the author

ROBERT ROUSE Associate Professor, Department of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.