Narrating the Crusades: Loss and Recovery in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 3/23/2017
EAN 9781107664715, ISBN10: 1107664713
Paperback, 322 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
In Narrating the Crusades, Lee Manion examines crusading's narrative-generating power as it is reflected in English literature from c.1300 to 1604. By synthesizing key features of crusade discourse into one paradigm, this book identifies and analyzes the kinds of stories crusading produced in England, uncovering new evidence for literary and historical research as well as genre studies. Surveying medieval romances including Richard CÅ“ur de Lion, Sir Isumbras, Octavian, and The Sowdone of Babylone alongside historical practices, chronicles, and treatises, this study shows how different forms of crusading literature address cultural concerns about collective and private action. These insights extend to early modern writing, including Spenser's Faerie Queene, Marlowe's Tamburlaine, and Shakespeare's Othello, providing a richer understanding of how crusading's narrative shaped the beginning of the modern era. This first full-length examination of English crusading literature will be an essential resource for the study of crusading in literary and historical contexts.
Introduction
1. An anti-national Richard CÅ“ur de Lion
associational forms and the English crusading romance
2. Sir Isumbras's '[p]rivy' recovery
individual crusading in the fourteenth century
3. Fictions of recovery in later English crusading romances
Octavian and The Sowdone of Babylone
4. Re-figuring Catholic and Turk
early modern literatures of crusading and the end of the crusading romance
Conclusion
Bibliography.