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(Minor Field)
Romance and the Questions
of Gender and 'Race'
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RATIONALE
My minor list in romance expands upon my interest in the
formation of subjectivity, since this genre typically
involves narratives of individuals who transgress social
codes of rank, gender, and sexuality, often on the basis
of a claim to justice. Importantly, one of the markers
by which gender and rank are encoded in medieval romance
is through color, such that darkness can signify masculinity
in opposition to a 'fair' femininity, and the subordinate
classes, most often minstrels and the peasantry, are represented
as blackened in some fashion. In addition, some romances
narrate encounters with characters from geographical locations
outside of northwestern Europe. By examining Silence:
A Thirteenth-Century Romance, Tristan, von
Eschenbach's Parzival, Aucassin et Nicolette,
and The Sultan of Babylon, I want to ask these
questions: Can the representations of the darkness of
'others' in romance—whether of those from another
geographical realm or from another rank than that of the
main character(s)—be understood within the terms
of the modern concept of race? Or is the importance of
color indicative of religious and rank differences, not
racial difference, in this genre? As well, I will read
Ami and Amile, Amys and Amylion, Chretien
de Troyes' The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot),
and Malory's "The Knight of the Cart," so that
I can scrutinize the intertextuality of medieval romance.
Through a comparison of how tales are re-narrated over
time, I expect to cultivate an understanding of the changes
in the socio-cultural perception of gender and sexuality
within the social context of the nobility. How, for example,
are same-sex and opposite-sex bonds—whether of fraternal
love, sexual desire, or marriage—represented in romance?
The other romances included in my list—The Romance
of the Rose, Havelok the Dane, Erec and
Enide, Cliges, and Malory's "The Tale
of the Sankgreal"—will deepen my inquiry into
the representation of gender, sexuality, and the question
of justice. In addition, Alanus de Insulis' twelfth-century
work, De Planctu Naturae, provides a discourse
on sex, sexuality, and language that sets the stage for
other medieval narratives, including the romance Silence,
and feeds into the questions that I have raised in the
above. In general, I also want to inquire into the following
questions: what are the generic markers of medieval romance?
How are those generic markers appropriated and re-deployed
by authors in late Medieval and Early Modern poetry and
drama?
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PRIMARY READINGS
Anonymous. Amys and Amylion. Francoise Le Saux, ed. Exeter:
University of Exeter Press, 1993.
Anonymous. Ami and Amile. Samuel N. Rosenberg and Samuel
Danon, trans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1996.
Anonymous. Aucassin et Nicolette. Glyn Burgess and Ann
E. Cobby, eds and trans. Vol. 47 New York: Garland Publishing,
1988
Anonymous. "Havelok the Dane." In Four Romances
of England. Ronald B. Herzman, Graham Drake, and Eve Salisbury,
eds. Michigan: Western Michigan University, 1999.
Anonymous. "The Sultan of Babylon." In Three
Middle English Charlemagne Romances. Alan Lupack, ed.
Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1990: 1 -
103.
Alanus, de Insulis. De planctu Naturae. James J. Sheridan,
trans. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
1980.
Chretien de Troyes. Erec and Enide. Carleton W. Carroll,
trans and ed. New York: Garland Publishing, 1987.
-----. Cliges. Ruth Harwood Cline, trans. Athens and London:
University of Georgia Press, 2000.
-----. The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot). William W. Kibler,
trans and ed. New York: Garland Publishing, 1981.
De Lorris, Guillaume, and Jean de Meun. The Romance of
the Rose. Charles Dahlberg, trans. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1971.
Von Eschenbach, Wolfram. Parzival. Andre Lefevere, trans.
and ed. New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1991.
Gottfried Von Straussburg. Tristan. A. T. Hatto, trans.
New York: Penguin, 1960.
Heldris, de Cornualle. Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French
Romance. Edited and translated by Sarah Roche-Mahdi. East
Lansing: Colleagues, 1992.
Malory, Sir Thomas. "The Tale of the Sankgreal"
and "The Knight of the Cart." In Works. Eugene
Vinaver, ed. Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1971.
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SECONDARY READINGS
Bartlett, Robert. "Medieval and Modern Concepts of
Race and Ethnicity." Journal of Medieval and Early
Modern Studies. 31.1 (Winter 2001): 39 - 56.
Bloch, R. Howard. "Silence and Holes: The Roman de
Silence and the Art of the Trouvere." Yale French
Studies. 67 (1986): 81 - 99.
-----. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western
Romantic Love. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991.
Burlin, Robert B. "Middle English Romance: The Structure
of Genre." The Chaucer Review: A Journal of Medieval
Studies and Literary Criticism. 30.1 (1995): 1 - 14.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity. New York and London: Routledge, 1990 and
1999.
-----. "Doing Justice to Someone." GLQ. 7.4
(2001): 621 - 636.
Cadden, Joan. Meaning of Sex Difference in the Middle
Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. "On Saracen Enjoyment: Some
Fantasies of Race in Late Medieval France and England."
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 31.1 (Winter
2001): 113 - 146.
Crane, Susan. Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture
in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1986.
Delany, Sheila and Vahan Ishkanian. "Theocratic and
Contractual Kingship in Havelok the Dane." Zeitschrift
fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik. 22 (1974): 290 - 302.
Friedman, John Block. The Monstrous Races in Medieval
Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Gaunt, Simon. Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Hahn, Thomas. "The Difference the Middle Ages Makes:
Color and Race before the Modern World." Journal
of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 31.1 (Winter 2001):
1 - 38.
Hanning, Robert. The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977
Heng, Geraldine. "Cannibalism, the First Crusade,
and the Genesis of Medieval Romance." Differences:
A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 10.1 (1998): 98
- 174.
Jacquart, Danielle and Claude Thomasset. Sexuality and
Medicine in the Middle Ages. Matthew Adamson, trans. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1988.
Kinoshita, Sharon. "Heldris of Cornualle's Roman
de Silence and the Feudal Politics of Lineage." PMLA.
110.3 (May 1995): 397 - 409.
Kruger, Steven F. "Conversion and Medieval Sexual,
Religious, and Racial Categories." In Constructing
Medieval Sexuality. Karma Lochrie, Peggy McCracken, and
James A. Schultz, eds. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis
Press, 1997: 158 - 79.
Sponsler, Claire. "Outlaw Masculinities: Drag, Blackface,
and Late-Medieval Laboring-Class Festivities." In
Becoming Male in the Middle Ages. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. New York: Garland Publishing,
2000: 321 - 47.
Staines, David. "Havelok the Dane: A Thirteenth-Century
Handbook for Princes." Speculum. 51 (1976): 602 -
23.
Walters, Elizabeth A. "The Third Path: Alternative
Sex, Alternative Gender in Le Roman de Silence."
Arthuria
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