The English Romance in Time : Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare
- Author / Editor
- Cooper, Helen.
The English Romance in Time : Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare
- Published
- New York and Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Physical Description
- xvi, 542 pp.
- Description
- The motifs of medieval romances continued to be familiar in Tudor-Stuart England, although their meanings and the ways they were understood changed in time. Cooper traces a broad variety of romance motifs--quest, pilgrimage, encounters with fairies, the "Fair Unknown," threats to virginity, monstrous birth, magic and nonfunctioning magic, troth-plighting, etc.--documenting their availability to the English Renaissance in black-letter editions of medieval works and discussing their development and appropriation in Renaissance drama and narratives.
- References to Chaucer and his works recur throughout, particularly to TC and the romances of CT (KnT, MLT, WBT, FranT, and Th). Includes an appendix on medieval romance in English after 1500.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Troilus and Criseyde.
- Knight and His Tale.
- Man of Law and His Tale.
- Wife of Bath and Her Tale.
- Franklin and His Tale.
- Tale of Sir Thopas.