Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling
Online pre-publication draft available at MediaCommons
The purpose of this book is to outline the features of narrative complexity featured on contemporary primetime... more The purpose of this book is to outline the features of narrative complexity featured on contemporary primetime fictional television, tracing its emergence through institutional, technological, and artistic practices, and explore the mode of spectatorship that this narrative mode encourages.
Mythos, Katalog und Prophezeiung
Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag 2006 (Palingenesia. 87).
Reviews:
Markus Aspen, Classical Review 57n2 (2007), pp. 344-345.
Roxana B. Martínez Nieto, Emerita 75n2 (2007), pp. 354-357.
Evina Sistakou, Gnomon 80 (2008), pp. 640-642.
Narrative Form
by Suzanne Keen
Palgrave MacMillan 2003
an introductory textbook an introductory textbook
Le Lieu du genre. La narration comme espace performatif du genre
Co-edited with Patrick Farges (Associate Professor, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle), Cécile Chamayou-Kuhn (PhD of the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle)
ABSTRACT: Aucun doute : la catégorie du «genre/Gender» a bien fait son entrée dans l'institution universitaire... more
ABSTRACT: Aucun doute : la catégorie du «genre/Gender» a bien fait son entrée dans l'institution universitaire française. Mieux encore, cette catégorie d'analyse «voyageuse» se reconfigure sans cesse au gré des transferts transatlantiques et des appropriations disciplinaires qu'elle connaît. Le présent volume aborde différentes formes de narration contemporaine, de la fiction ou au film a l'entretien clinique ou au récit de vie. Il est né de la volonté de croiser, autour du problème de la narration genrée, cette réalité française «décalée» avec des perspectives développées plus tôt dans la recherche germanophone sur le genre.
Les études sur la narration ouvrent un large champ d'exploration et d'expérimentation des identités. Dans le sillage du Performative Turn, il devient possible de penser le genre comme l'un des éléments constitutifs de l'acte narratif. Le genre est le résultat d'un dire qui est, dans le même temps, un faire. Dire «je suis femme/homme», c'est en partie se constituer en tant que telle. La narration de l'identité de genre apparaît alors comme une éternelle refiguration, c'est-à-dire une manière signifiante pour soi d'arranger et d'agencer son récit de soi pour les autres. Dès lors, la narration de soi fonctionne comme un espace performatif de représentation construit par le sujet et au sein duquel il se définit in medias res, dans une constante évolution.
EXTRACT
Patrick Farges, Cécile Chamayou-Kuhn, Perin Emel Yavuz, "Introduction : Agencements/arrangements de genre La narration comme espace performatif du genre"
Si le questionnement du (des) genre(s) a émergé relativement récemment en France, il constitue en revanche l'un des axes fondamentaux d'analyse de la culture et de la société dans la recherche germanophone, souvent plus avancée sur le sujet. Et tandis que divers départements ou centres de recherche interdisciplinaires leur sont consacrés dans les universités allemandes, les «études de genre» (Gender Studies) demeurent encore sous-représentées en France, puisqu'elles sont essentiellement regroupées sur trois sites : 1°/ Paris, avec le «Centre d'enseignement et de recherches pour les études féministes» de l'université Denis Diderot Paris 7, le centre «Genre et Sciences sociales» à L'école des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), le «Centre d'études féministes et de genre» à l'université Vincennes Saint-Denis Paris 8 et l'Institut Emilie du Châtelet (IEC) ; 2°/ Toulouse, avec le «Portail genre» de l'université Toulouse II -Le Mirail et «L'équipe d'accueil Simone Sagesse» dans la, même université ; et enfin 3°/ Lyon, avec le «Centre Louise Labé» de l'université Louis Lumière Lyon 2.
Comme pour tout autre champ scientifique que l'on peut qualifier d'«émergent», la question de l'institutionnalisation des «études de genre» - ou tout du moins du positionnement des institutions universitaires par rapport à elles - revêt une importance capitale. Alors que l'université Sorbonne nouvelle - Paris 3 vient de fêter ses 40 années d'existence, diverses manifestations récentes (colloques et journées d'études, projets innovants, tables rondes, réflexions d'ordre pédagogique), semblent aller dans le sens d'une installation plus durable des «études de genre» dans le paysage scientifique et pédagogique de cette université. Ce «Gender Turn» doit d'autant plus être salué qu'il trouvera sans conteste une forte résonance chez les nouveaux partenaires institutionnels de la Sorbonne nouvelle au sein du Pôle de recherche et d'enseignement supérieur (PRES) «Sorbonne Paris Cité». C'est donc dans ce contexte favorable que nous souhaitons, par la présente publication, apporter une contribution à la sédimentation des «études de genre» à la Sorbonne nouvelle - Paris 3.
C'est du constat d'un déséquilibre entre les recherches francophone et germanophone - dans le contexte d'une réception différenciée de la recherche anglo-saxonne de part et d'autre du Rhin - qu'est née l'idée d'une réflexion pluridisciplinaire sur la thématique des genres sexuels dans une perspective franco-allemande. Comment en effet expliquer ce retard pris par la recherche en France, quand on sait que les «Gender Studies» sont le résultat d'une évolution épistémologique rendue possible par l'émergence des mouvements féministes qui, dans les années 1970, se revendiquaient explicitement de Simone de Beauvoir, reprenant en choeur sa célèbre formule : «On ne naît pas femme, on le devient» ? Comment en outre expliquer ce retard relatif, quand on sait que la critique de la psychanalyse lacanienne a donné naissance, en France, aux réflexions théoriques sur «l'écriture féminine» qui visaient à ébranler les fondements «phallogocentriques» du langage, et dont les plus illustres représentantes sont Luce Irigaray, Monique Wittig, Julia Kristeva et Hélène Cixous ?
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Download (.pdf) Travelling Objects: Modernity and Materiality in British Colonial Travel Literature about Africa
PhD thesis published in 2011
This study examines the functions of objects in a selection of British colonial travel accounts about Africa. The... more This study examines the functions of objects in a selection of British colonial travel accounts about Africa. The works discussed were published between 1863 and 1908 and include travelogues by John Hanning Speke, Verney Lovett Cameron, Henry Morton Stanley, Mary Henrietta Kingsley, Ewart Scott Grogan, Mary Hall and Constance Larymore. The author argues that objects are deeply involved in the construction of pre-modern and modern spheres that the travelling subject moves between. The objects in the travel accounts are studied in relation to a contextual background of Victorian commodity and object culture, epitomised by the 1851 Great Exhibition and the birth of the modern anthropological museum. The four analysis chapters investigate the roles of objects in ethnographical and geographical writing, in ideological discussions about the transformative powers of colonial trade, and in narratives about the arrival of the book in the colonial periphery. As the analysis shows, however, objects tend not to behave as they are expected to do. Instead of marking temporal differences, descriptions of objects are typically unstable and riddled with contradictions and foreground the ambivalence that characterises colonial literature.
Epistolary Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature
Edited volume, eds. P.A. Rosenmeyer, E. Bracke and O. Hodkinson.
Draft typescript currently under review with CUP.
Recent scholarship in Classics and related fields has shown great interest in letters and epistolary literature of all... more
Recent scholarship in Classics and related fields has shown great interest in letters and epistolary literature of all forms (e.g. Morello and Morrison 2007; Trapp 2003; Rosenmeyer 2001). The use of embedded letters to advance the narrative in genres such as historiography and the novel, and the potential for real or pseudonymous letters to function as biography (real or fictionalized), autobiography, or historical fiction, mean that letters in antiquity play a crucial role in the development of narrative literature of many kinds. The apparent popularity of letters as reading matter rather than merely tools for communication, especially in the Imperial period, makes it essential that we pay attention to this genre, as we assess the reading practices and literary preferences of antiquity. The literary qualities of Greek letters are often overlooked, despite the fact that they display the same kind of awareness of generic conventions and self-consciousness of their literary nature as other narrative genres.
Letters are always about narrative, among other things, whether directly – narrating events to absent correspondents - or indirectly – presenting fragments of an underlying narrative that the reader attempts to reconstruct. This collection of essays explores the inherent narrative quality of letters and its use by Greek authors in a variety of genres and time periods, as well as the limited and sometimes even willfully obscure nature of epistolary narratives that omit vital information in the name of verisimilitude. A series of case studies, with topics ranging from Classical poetry and historiography through to Philostratus and Christian martyrs, asks why particular authors choose the letter form; how an embedded letter relates to its narrative environment, and, conversely, the effect of the epistolary form on the narrative it contains; and how each author manipulates the epistolary tradition. It explores various types of epistolary forms: individual letters (embedded or free-standing); collections of continuous epistolary narrative; and letters presenting fragmented or discontinuous narrative. It pays close attention to the self-consciously literary or fictional qualities in Greek letters, including intertextuality with other literary texts and particularly allusions to earlier letters as literature. A chronological organization of the volume encourages the reader to consider epistolary narrative as a kind of literature that develops over time, growing in popularity and in the variety of forms it takes.
Narrative and Narratology in Greek Hymns
Edited volume, eds. M. Plantinga and O. Hodkinson.
Typescript in preparation for review by Mnemosyne Supplements.
Extract from the book proposal:
The basic premise for this volume is a simple one: the editors and... more
Extract from the book proposal:
The basic premise for this volume is a simple one: the editors and contributors feel that a collective and comparative focus on the narrative techniques and on the narrative sections of ancient Greek hymns (across the centuries and of various kinds) can yield extremely fruitful results, both for the reading of individual texts and authors and for the study of the hymnic genre as a whole; and that there is a marked gap in scholarship in this regard, in comparison with the study of other ancient Greek genres containing narrative. We recognise, of course, that discussions of the narrative aspects of hymns have not been absent from scholarly readings, especially of the major ‘literary’ hymns; but it is also the case that the analysis of narrative within classics has become far more sophisticated (especially in the last two decades), so that far more can now usefully be said than, e.g., categorising hymns as Du- or Er-Stil. Studies of the hymn genre have lagged behind those of some other major genres, on the whole, in exploiting the full potential of recent studies of narrative. Among the approaches employed by the volume’s contributors are, naturally, the kinds of narratological analysis first popularised within classics by Irene de Jong, but also other kinds of analysis of narrative literature and of narrative techniques, including more traditional approaches—especially in the case of the less studied texts featured in the volume, which unlike Callimachus’ or the Homeric Hymns have not already had the benefit of countless scholarly ‘readings’ and interpretations. That is to say, the volume is not intended to be a theory-heavy contribution to narratological scholarship within classics (nor to prescribe a particular narratological orthodoxy to its contributors); rather, it aims to be an accessible introduction to some of the possibilities raised by narrative- and narratology-focused approaches to the hymnic genre, and as such a valuable contribution to both the fields of ancient Greek hymn scholarship and of narratology within classics. The individual contributions often focus on examples and case studies, unlike the chapters on hymns in narratology collections as, for example, the ones edited by de Jong et al., which, by the nature of those volumes, aim to survey their respective corpora of hymns more evenly.
Since the focus of the volume is one particular aspect of hymnic texts and their interpretation, the editors have assembled contributions on a large variety of texts of that genre—wide-ranging in several ways: in terms of chronology; of means of transmission (from the very well-known corpora transmitted in literary MSS, to those preserved epigraphically or on papyrus); of the identity of the hymned gods and other entities; of formal features (e.g. different metres and prose); and including both ‘literary’ and ‘cult’ hymns. Because of the sufficiently narrow focus of the volume, we believe that this wider casting of the net is not out of place, but is rather very revealing, in that it shows the diversity and the development of narrative techniques in Greek hymns over a great many texts, authors, and traditions (including less clearly ‘literary’ hymns), and enables the contributors to demonstrate precisely what is unique, and what more conventional, in their chosen texts.
Medieval Translations and Cultural Discourse. The Movement of Texts in England, France and Scandinavia
Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2012
Throughout the middle ages, many Francophone texts - chansons de geste, medieval romance, works by Chrétien de Troyes... more Throughout the middle ages, many Francophone texts - chansons de geste, medieval romance, works by Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France - were widely translated in north-western Europe. In the process, these texts were frequently transformed to reflect the new cultures in which they appeared. This book argues that such translations, prime sites for cultural movement and encounters, provide a rich opportunity to study linguistic and cultural identity both in and through time. Via a close comparison of a number of these texts, examining the various modifications made, and drawing on a number of critical discourses ranging from post-colonial criticism to translation theory, the author explores the complexities of cultural dialogue and dissent. This approach both recognises and foregrounds the complex matrix of influence, resistance and transformations within the languages and cultural traditions of medieval Europe, revealing the undercurrents of cultural conflict apparent in medieval textuality.
(ed.) Metaphor Shaping Culture and Theory (REAL – The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 2009)
(with Herbert Grabes and Ansgar Nuenning) (Tübingen, 2009)
Hyvärinen, M., Hydén, L.C., Saarenheimo, M., Tamboukou, M. (eds) (2010) Beyond Narrative Coherence, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
For a review of this book, see: http://ro.uow.edu.au/currentnarratives/vol1/iss3/9/
Beyond Narrative Coherence reconsiders the way we understand and work with narratives. Even though narrators tend to... more Beyond Narrative Coherence reconsiders the way we understand and work with narratives. Even though narrators tend to strive for coherence, they also add complexity, challenge canonical scripts, and survey lives by telling highly perplexing and contradictory stories. Many narratives remain incomplete, ambiguous, and contradictory. Obvious coherence cannot be the sole moral standard, the only perspective of reading, or the criterion for selecting and discarding research material. Beyond Narrative Coherence addresses the limits and aspects of narrative (dis)cohering by offering a rich theoretical and historical background to the debate. Limits of narrative coherence are discussed from the perspective of three fields of life that often threaten the coherence of narrative: illness, arts, and traumatic political experience. The authors of the book cover a wide range of disciplines such as psychology, sociology, arts studies, political science and philosophy.
Rimski zgodovinar in pripovedno besedilo
The book deals primarily with the problem of the so-called point of view or the narrative focus in Roman... more
The book deals primarily with the problem of the so-called point of view or the narrative focus in Roman historiography, more accurately in the works of the Roman historian Sallust, namely The Catilinarian Conspiracy (Lat. Bellum Catilinae) and The Jugurthine Disorder (Lat. Bellum Iugurthinum). In the opening part of the thesis some questions concerning Sallust's literary methods are addressed, such as his style which is decidedly “Catonian” archaizing Latin and especially his choice of monograph as a form of delivering his chosen historical matter – obviously influenced by Thucydides. One of the main questions, however, which still puzzles many researchers and which are also addressed in the opening chapters of this thesis is what were the author’s main sources for his political and philosophical Weltanschauung, which was often mistaken for political disillusionment. Concluding with the view that Sallust dismissed the well established concept of the old aristocratic virtue (Lat. virtus) and forged a new, neutral concept of virtue attainable to all who deserve it, this thesis then procedes to address the well known points of theory in modern narratology.
After having established the primary functions and their interrelations in a text, such as the author, the reader, the implied author and implied reader, the narrator, the narratee etc., the thesis then focuses on the very much discussed problem of the point of view; distinguishing between different types of narrative focus and different focalizing situations, the chapter on narrative focus primarily deals with the question of the point of view and the narrative focus in historiography: it has been shown that in historiography one encounters an omniscient narrator with certain restrictions of his omniscience, however it is precisely through the internal point of view of a secondary focalizer that all the restrictions of knowledge are lifted.
Postulating that narratology and its hermeneutical tools are but a platform for further analysis in historiography, this paper then concentrates on narrative techniques in the most important section, the analysis of the text of both monographs. The narrative techniques discussed are mainly the narrator’s persona in the prologues of both monographs and the narrator’s “dialogue”, as we called it, with the narratee throughout the text. One of the main features of this process is shifting the point of view or rather, the narrative focus which proves to be extremely effective in characterizing different characters throughout the narrative. It was shown that while some characters are openly characterized by the narrator, the primary focalizer, as morally depraved, they are, on the contrary, characterized rather positively by secondary focalizers. This is most evident in the case of Catilina, the main character of Sallust’s first monograph, The Catilinarian Conspiracy. More so, some characters function as secondary focalizing agents while being the focalized object at the same time; these sequences of their own internal focalization can prove to be very damaging to the persona of the focalizing agent/focalized object. One such case is Marius in the Jugurthine Disorder.
The last chapter summarizes major findings of the analysis in the previous chapters; comparing these findings to some more traditional and well accepted views of Sallust’s works shows that some of these views need revising: through detailed analysis we’ve been able to show that some of the opinions expressed in the text which used to be connected directly to the author himself, actually apply only to the function of the narrator and not the author; such case, for instance, is the excursus on Africa in The Jugurthine Disorder and even more so the position of the narrating persona to Caesar in The Catilinarian Conspiracy. In this latter example which often provided the foundation of some severe accusations by some researchers against Sallust, narratological approach to textual analysis in historiography proved to be indispensable: while this study does nothing to combat the fact that Sallust was politically closely connected to Caesar, there is no doubt that the narrator in The Catilinarian Conspiracy, while depicting Caesar favourably through a long sequence of internal focalization, still openly hints against Caesar’s vices as primary focalizer. Another similar case is Sallust’s position to Cicero. It has been largely discussed and argued that there has been great animosity between the two men; under the influence of the famous invective against Cicero it would seem undisputable that Sallust expressed this animosity in his monographs as well. However, closer analysis proves this only partially correct: while Cicero is depicted as a morally base character through some instances of secondary focalization, the narrator as a primary focalizer checks this depiction with open admiration of Cicero, the homo novus.
L’équation du temps suivi de Étrangeté narrative et présence du surnaturel : le récit amnésique chez Marie NDiaye
Mémoire de maîtrise, Département des littératures, Faculté des lettres, Université Laval, 2009.
M.A. dissertation, Laval University, 2009.
RÉSUMÉ
Ce mémoire de maîtrise se divise en deux parties. L’équation du temps consiste en un travail de... more
RÉSUMÉ
Ce mémoire de maîtrise se divise en deux parties. L’équation du temps consiste en un travail de création littéraire qui questionne les narrations plurielles ainsi que l’ordre et la forme de la suite événementielle. Le temps et l’espace sont fragmentés afin de créer des interférences entre les personnages et les différentes temporalités, qui se chevauchent sans vraiment se rencontrer. Cet univers de fiction se situe entre le roman de la route, l’étrange et le réalisme psychologique et permet à trois personnages d’évoluer dans des quotidiens qu’ils tentent de rendre meilleurs ou de fuir. Étrangeté narrative et présence du surnaturel : le récit amnésique dans La Sorcière de Marie NDiaye est un essai théorique qui s’intéresse à la fin insoluble du roman La Sorcière de Marie NDiaye. L’essai analyse l’étrangeté de l’état final du roman et questionne sa structure, ainsi que la présence simultanée de naturel et de surnaturel dans un même cadre de référence.
ABSTRACT
This Master’s Dissertation splits in two parts. The Equation of Time is a creative writing work, which interrogates the following issues: the plural narrations and the order and the form of the tale told by the story. Time and space crumble in order to create interferences between the characters and the various temporalities, which overlap without really coming across. This fictitious world is set in-between the road novel, the strange and the psychological realism and it allows the characters to develop in everyday lives they try to improve, or to escape. Narrative Strangeness and the Supernatural: the Amnesic Tale in Marie NDiaye’s La Sorcière is an essay that takes an interest in the unsolvable final part of the novel La Sorcière by Marie NDiaye. The essay analyses the strangeness of the novel’s ending and interrogates its structure, along with the simultaneous presence of natural and supernatural in the same reference frame.
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![](http://photos.academia.edu/8021/2884/2868/tiny_gala.follaco.jpg?1323897000 "<strong>Gala Maria Follaco</strong><br/>University of Naples "L'Orientale""){kind=small}
Handbuch der Filmdramaturgie. Das Bauchgefühl und seine Ursachen
co-authored with Silke Kaiser
Kerstin Stutterheim, geboren 1961; Theater- und Medienwissenschaftlerin, Filmemacherin, Dramaturgin für Spiel- und Dokumentarfilme; seit 2006 Professorin für AV-Mediendramaturgie und -Ästhetik an der Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen «Konrad Wolf» in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Mitglied der Deutschen Filmakademie
Silke Kaiser, geboren 1971; 2005 - 2010 künstlerisch-wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen «Konrad Wolf» in Potsdam-Babelsberg; zahlreiche Drehbücher für verschiedene Fernsehproduktionen, u. a. Verliebt in Berlin I und II.
Dramaturgy is an old tradition to tell a story / a movie / a comic the way people feel entertained and touched.... more
Dramaturgy is an old tradition to tell a story / a movie / a comic the way people feel entertained and touched. Dramaturgy is more the a recepy how to build a structure - it is about structure, theme and meaning and much more. It give the basis for creativity.
Dramaturgie ist ein Wort, das alle im Munde führen. Bezogen wird es nicht nur auf Filme, sondern auch auf Ausstellungen, Konzerte und ähnliches. In diesem Handbuch widmen sich die Autorinnen der auf den fiktionalen Kino- oder Fernsehfilm bezogenen Dramaturgie. Um mit und in den Medien auf einem qualitativ überzeugenden Niveau zu operieren und zu diskutieren, bedarf es mehr als des Ziels eines Helden und der Suche nach zwei Wendepunkten und einem Happy End. Dramaturgische Strukturen bieten die Möglichkeit, auf gewonnener Erfahrung Kreativität zu entfalten. Sie ermöglichen auch, die sich mit Hilfe des bewussten oder unbewussten Einsatzes dieser Strukturen entfaltende Kunst analysieren zu können.
Aus dem Inhalt: Dramaturgie-Basis - Drei-Akt-Struktur - Fünf-Akt-Struktur - Intrige und Gegenintrige, Protagonist und Antagonist - Epischer Film, episodischer Film, multiperspektivisches Erzählen, postmoderner Film - Komödie und Tragödie - Heldenreise, offene Form, analytische Form - Road-Movie - Biographischer Film - Fernsehspiel, Fernsehserie, Soap, Telenovela - Glossar dramaturgischer Begriffe.
the topics: what means dramaturgy? explicit and implict dramaturgy, Intrique and counterintrique; protagonist / antagonist, dramatic and aesthetic conflicts, tragedy and comedy; "aristotelian" dramaturgy / non- and post-aristotelian narration / dramaturgy, European traditions, well made play and analytic drama, epic narrations, conflict free narration, poetic films, raod movies, multiperspective narration, dramaturgy of postmodern cinema; dramaturgy of serials and telenovelas, glossar
Die zweite erweiterte und überarbeitete Auflage erscheint im Frühjahr / Frühsommer 2011
the new extended edition will be avaiable in July 2011, for an English version please ask the publishers to (let) translate the book
Narrating from the Margins
In Narrating from the Margins,Nagihan Haliloglu casts a discerning look at Jean Rhys's protagonists and the ways in... more In Narrating from the Margins,Nagihan Haliloglu casts a discerning look at Jean Rhys's protagonists and the ways in which they engage in self-narration. The book offers a close reading of Rhys's novels, with particular attention to the links between identity construc-tion and self-narration, in a modernist and postcolonial idiom. It draws atten-tion to particular subject-categories that Rhys's protagonists fall into, such as the amateur and the white Creole, and de-lineates narrating personas such as the mad witch and the zombie, to explore aspects of de-essentalization, narrative agency, and dysnarrativia. The way in which Rhys's protagonists engage in self-narration reveals the close link between race and gender, and how both are contained by similar metaphors, or how, indeed, they be-come metaphors for each other. The narrators are defined in relation to their place in the 'holy English family' and how they transgress the rules of that family to become 'exiles'. The study explores the ways in which the self-nar-rator responds when her narrative is ob-structed by society; such as creating a community of stories in which her own makes sense, and/or resorting to third-person narration.
EMPIRE OF MAGIC: MEDIEVAL ROMANCE AND THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL FANTASY
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-12526-0/empire-of-magic
Empire of Magic offers a genesis and genealogy for medieval romance and the King Arthur legend through the history of... more
Empire of Magic offers a genesis and genealogy for medieval romance and the King Arthur legend through the history of Europe's encounters with the East in crusades, travel, missionizing, and empire formation.
The book argues that romance arose in the 12th century as a cultural response to the trauma and horror of taboo acts—in particular the cannibalism committed by crusaders on the bodies of Muslim enemies in Syria during the First Crusade. From such encounters with the East sprang the fantastical episodes featuring King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle, The History of the Kings of England, a work where history and fantasy collide and merge, each into the other, inventing crucial new examples and models for romances to come.
After locating the rise of romance and Arthurian legend in the contact zones of East and West, Empire of Magic demonstrates the adaptability of romance and its key role in the genesis of an English national identity. Discussing Jews, women, children, and sexuality in works like the romance of Richard Lionheart, stories of the saintly Constance, Arthurian chivralic literature, the legend of Prester John, and travel narratives, the book shows how fantasy enabled audiences to work through issues of communal identity, race, color, class and alternative sexualities in socially sanctioned and safe modes of cultural discussion in which pleasure, not anxiety, was paramount.
Romance also engaged with the threat of modernity in the late medieval period, as economic, social, and technological transformations occurred and awareness grew of a vastly enlarged world beyond Europe, one encompassing India, China, and Africa. Finally, the author suggests that romance locates England and Europe within an empire of magic and knowledge that surveys the world and makes it intelligible—usable—for the future.
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