Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan
Book cover

Space, Gender, and Memory in Middle English Romance

Architectures of Wonder in Melusine

  • Book
  • © 2016

Overview

Authors:
  1. Jan Shaw

    1. Department of English, Department of English, Sydney, Australia

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Fills a much-needed scholarly gap for Melusine, a work that has been under-explored up until now
  • Approaches Melusine through several theoretical discussions including spatial, gender, and memory theories
  • Widens discussions of Melusine to larger contexts about gender and England in the Middle Ages.

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages (TNMA)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Jan Shaw
    Pages 1-21

  3. Chapter 1 An Epistemology of Wonder

    • Jan Shaw
    Pages 23-57

  4. Chapter 2 Wonder and Love

    • Jan Shaw
    Pages 59-89

  5. Chapter 3 Building Gender

    • Jan Shaw
    Pages 91-127

  6. Chapter 4 Architectures of Memory

    • Jan Shaw
    Pages 129-164

  7. Chapter 5 Problematic Pasts and New Beginnings

    • Jan Shaw
    Pages 165-213

  8. Conclusion

    • Jan Shaw
    Pages 215-217

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 215-272
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

This book offers a much-needed consideration of Melusine within medieval and contemporary theories of space, memory, and gender. The Middle English Melusine offers a particularly rich source for such a study, as it presents the story of a powerful fairy/human woman who desires a full human life—and death—within a literary tradition that is more friendly to women’s agency than its continental counterparts. After establishing a “textual habitus of wonder,” Jan Shaw explores the tale in relation to a range of Middle English traditions including love and marriage, the spatial practices of women, the operation of individual and collective memory, and the legacies of patrimony. Melusine emerges as a complex figure, representing a multifaceted feminine subject that furthers our understanding of Middle English women’s sense of self in the world.



Reviews

“The story of the beautiful fairy Mélusine who is cursed by her own mother to transform into a half-serpent once a week has fascinated readers for centuries. … Shaw’s analysis covers an impressive range of modern and medieval concepts … . Shaw’s work lays a good and highly promising foundation for future discussions about this text, and about feminine subjectivity in Middle English romance more broadly.” (Lydia Zeldenrust, Modern Language Review, Vol. 133 (2) April, 2018)

“Displaying both a wide range of scholarship and a readable style, Jan Shaw shines a revealing light upon a number of medieval discourses – religious, philosophical, historical and architectural – as well as the theorizations of the feminine of our own times to reinterpret the little-known late medieval romance of Melusine. This study will transform our understanding of both the text and the potential of feminine subjectivity in the Middle Ages.” (Peter Goodall, Honorary Professor of Arts and Communication, University of Southern Queensland, Australia)

“Intelligently written and compelling to read, Jan Shaw’s pioneering account of the Middle English Melusine retrieves a complex heroine who challenges cultural narratives of gender. Engaging lucidly with theories of space and memory, Shaw redefines Melusine’s ambiguous hybridity, half fairy and half human, as a positive source of female agency. Shaw’s book, the first full-length study of this key text, transforms our understanding of the female subject in medieval romance.” (Helen Fulton, Professor of Medieval Literature, University of Bristol, UK)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of English, Department of English, Sydney, Australia

    Jan Shaw

About the author

Jan Shaw is Senior Lecturer of English at the University of Sydney, Australia. She has published on women in the romance of Medieval Britain, medievalism in contemporary literature by women, and narrative and gender approaches in leadership studies. She is also co-editor of Storytelling: Critical and Creative Approaches.



Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation