Troubling Arthurian Histories: Court Culture, Performance and Scandal in Chrétien de Troyes's Erec et Enide (5) (Medieval and Early Modern French Studies) - Softcover

Simpson, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3039113852 ISBN 13: 9783039113859

Publisher: Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers, 2007

Synopsis

Drawing on a range of approaches in cultural, gender and literary studies, this book presents Chrétien de Troyes's 'Erec et Enide' as a daring and playful exploration of scandal, terror and anxiety in court cultures. Through an interdisciplinary reading, it locates 'Erec et Enide', the first surviving Arthurian romance in French, in various contexts, from broad cultural and historical questionings such as medieval vernacular modernity's' engagement with the weight of its classical inheritance, to the culturally fecund and politically turbulent histories of the families of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II Plantagenet. Where previous accounts of the tale have not uncommonly presented Chrétien's poem as a decorous 'resolution' of tensions between dynastic marriage and 'fin'amors', between personal desire and social duty, this reading sees these forces as in permanent and irresolvable tension, the poem's key scenes haunted - whether mischievously or traumatically - by questions and skeletons from various closets.

About this title

Review:

«Simpson's writing style is clever, playful, creative - and for that reason supremely appropriate to an analysis of Chrétien de Troyes. [...] Simpson is as hilarious as he is insightful, a perfect match between writer and subject.» (Jeffrey J. Cohen, In the Middle)

About the Author:

The Author: James R. Simpson is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is the author of Fantasy, Identity and Misrecognition in Medieval French Narrative.

About this edition

• Publisher: Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 3039113852
• ISBN 13: 9783039113859
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 536