Space, Gender, and Memory in Middle English Romance
Architectures of Wonder in MelusineThis 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. ISBN: 9781137456502, 1137456507
