Convention and the Individual in Medieval English Romance

Offers a nuanced reading of character and subjectivity in medieval romance via an exploration of its conventions.

Medieval romances can be characterised by their formulaic motifs, predictable plots, and ＂stock＂ figures and character types. This book offers a fresh perspective on these conventions, arguing that authors used them, and the expectations they generate, as a form of shorthand to interiority. Understanding romance conventions in this way reveals that romance characters’ complex and often contradictory inner lives are made available precisely through the genre’s narrative structures, shapes, and norms. Drawing upon recent work in the History of Emotions and Affect Theory, the author explores character and subjectivity in a variety of English romance texts from 1100 to 1500 - such as Amis and Amiloun, Le Bone Florence of Rome, The Squire of Low Degree, Sir Orfeo, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. Through new readings of these texts, the book demonstrates the contribution made by romance to the growing significance of the individual in fiction after the twelfth century by paying particular attention to the ways in which convention, expectation, and genre intersect with character-formation and the representation of identity.