The Ends of Romance in Chaucer and Malory

doi:10.1017/9781108783033.016

14 - The Ends of Romance in Chaucer and Malory

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2023

Patricia Clare Ingham

Edited by

Roberta L. Krueger

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Roberta L. Krueger: Affiliation:
Hamilton College, New York

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Summary

This chapter demonstrates the seriousness and the versatility of the romance genre in the hands of two important late medieval English writers. Examples from the writings of fourteenth-century poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, and fifteenth-century translator and editor, Thomas Malory, reveal romance to be a fictionalizing genre capable of probing serious matters of broad political, social, ethical, or aesthetic concern. The range and versatility of the genre, moreover, offered these writers crucial opportunities for creative and editorial experimentation.

Keywords

Geoffrey Chaucer Thomas Malory King Arthur gender fictionalizing parody community experimentation

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance , pp. 211 - 227

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108783033.016 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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References

Suggestions for Further Reading

Armstrong, Dorsey. Gender and Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte Darthur. Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 2003.Google Scholar

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Cooper, Helen. The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar

Field, P. J. C., ed. Sir Thomas Malory: The Morte Darthur, 2 vols. London: D. S. Brewer, 2013.Google Scholar

Finke, Laurie, and Schichtman, Martin. King Arthur and the Myth of History. Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2004.Google Scholar

Fradenburg, L. O. Aranye. “Sacrificial desire in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (1996): 47–75.Google Scholar

Leitch, Megan G. and Rushton, Corey James, eds., A New Companion to Malory. London: Boydell and Brewer, 2019.Google Scholar

Ingham, Patricia Clare. “Pastoral Histories: Utopia and Conquest in the Wife of Bath’s Tale,” Texas Studies in Language and Literature, 44.1, 2002: 34–46.CrossRef Google Scholar

Saunders, Corinne. “Middle English Romance and Malory’s Morte Darthur.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Law and Literature, ed. Barrington, Candace and Sobecki, Sebastian, pp. 188–201. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.CrossRef Google Scholar

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