The Faerie Queene and Middle English Romance The Matter of Just Memory

by King, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780198187226
• ISBN10: 019818722X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-09
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

Scholarship on Middle English romance has done little to access the textual and bibliographical continuity of this remarkable literary tradition into the sixteenth century and its impact on Elizabethan works. And to an even greater extent Spenserian scholarship has failed to investigate the significant and complex debts which The Faerie Queene owes to medieval native verse romance and Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur . This book accordingly offers the first comprehensive study of the impact of Middle English romance on The Faerie Queene . It employs the concept of memory, in which both Middle English romance writers and Spenser show specific interest, to build a sense of the thematic, generic, and cultural complexity of the native romance tradition. The memorial character of Middle English romance resides in its intertextuality and its frequent presentation of its narrative events as historical and consequently the basis for a favourable sense of local or even national identity. Spensers memories of native romance involve a more troubled engagement with that tradition of providential national history as well as an endeavour to see in pre-Reformation romance a prophetic and objective authority for Protestant belief.

Author Biography

Andrew King is Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in English, Dalhousie University, Canada

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	xiii
Approaching Spenser's Medievalism	1	(11)
Middle English Romance: Tradition, Genre, Manuscripts, and Prints	12	(30)
The Medieval Period	12	(17)
Romance in Print in the Late Middle Ages and Sixteenth Century	29	(13)
The Matter of Just Memory: Providential History in Middle English Romance	42	(36)
King Horn, Horn Childe, and Havelok: English Heroes and English History	42	(14)
Of Arthour and of Merlin and Richard Coeur de Lion	56	(3)
Sir Bevis of Hampton and Guy of Warwick	59	(10)
History, Romance, and National Identity: Arthur	69	(9)
Displaced Youths and Slandered Ladies in Middle English Romance	78	(27)
Eustace--Constance--Florence--Griselda Legends	78	(12)
Sir Degare, Sir Perceval, and Lybeaus Desconus	90	(4)
The Fifteenth Century	94	(11)
Malory's Le Morte Darthur. Remembering Native Romance	105	(21)
`Somme in Englysshe, but nowhere nygh all': Malory's Use of Native Romance	106	(11)
`There was a kyng of thys lande named Arthur': The Union of History and Romance in the Morte	117	(9)
The `Reformation' of Native Romance in The Faerie Queene, Book I	126	(34)
`That fire--mouthed Dragon, horrible and bright': Redcrosse and Bevis of Hampton	129	(16)
Redcrosse, Fair Unknowns, and Displaced Youths	145	(8)
Una and the Constance--Florence Figure in Native Romance	153	(7)
`It seemed another worlde to beholde': Native Romance, History, and Book II of The Faerie Queene	160	(29)
Faerie Land and Mirror-Versions of England	161	(4)
Phantastes and Elizabeth	165	(8)
Arthurian History and Romance in Book II	173	(7)
`Briton moniments' and `Antiquitie of Faerie lond'	180	(9)
`The world...runne quite out of square': Remembering/Dismembering Native Romance in Book V	189	(21)
The Disjunction of History and Romance	193	(3)
Mitigated Justice in Book V	196	(10)
Book V and Elizabeth	206	(4)
Conclusion	210	(4)
Bibliography	214	(29)
Index	243