This volume provides a generic description, based on a formal analysis of narrative structures, of the Middle English noncyclic verse romances. As a group, these poems have long resisted generic definition and are traditionally considered to be a conglomerate of unrelated tales held together in a historical matrix of similar themes and characters. As single narratives, they are thought of as random collections of events loosely structured in chronological succession. Susan Wittig, however, offers evidence that the romances are carefully ordered (although not always consciously so) according to a series of formulaic patterns and that their structures serve as vehicles for certain essential cultural patterns and are important to the preservation of some community-held beliefs.
The analysis begins on a stylistic level, and the same theoretical principles applied to the linguistic formulas of the poems also serve as a model for the study of narrative structures. The author finds that there are laws that govern the creation, selection, and arrangement of narrative materials in the romance genre and that act to restrict innovation and control the narrative form.
The reasons for this strict control are to be found in the functional relationship of the genre to the culture that produced it. The deep structure of the romance is viewed as a problem-solving pattern that enables the community to mediate important contradictions within its social, economic, and mythic structures. Wittig speculates that these contradictions may lie in the social structures of kinship and marriage and that they have been restructured in the narratives in a “practical” myth: the concept of power gained through the marriage alliance, and the reconciliation of the contradictory notions of marriage for power’s sake and marriage for love’s sake.
This advanced, thorough, and completely original study will be valuable to medieval specialists, classicists, linguists, folklorists, and Biblical scholars working in oral-formulaic narrative structure.
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. 1978; Texas; green cloth covered boards with black titles; light wear; dust jacket with some edge wear; interior clean and unmarked; 8vo - over 7 3/4" to 9 3/4" tall; 223 pages. Seller Inventory # SKU1111824
Book Description Condition: Good. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # GRP28429908
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. Hardback, cloth-covered book is in near fine condition, with only just enough wear to the top and bottom of the spine to tell that it isn't new. The jacket, however, is worn at the edges and torn about 1cm at the top left of the front. Outline of an old price sticker visible, but not sticky. Colour faintly rubbed away all over, giving it a slightly textured look. The book itself is fine. Seller Inventory # 040327
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fair. No Jacket. 223pp. Ex-academic library with associated labels and markings. Hard cover, no jacket. Small amount of marginalia. Corners bumped. Edges rubbed. Seller Inventory # 941774