Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T10:48:04.650Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 22 - Chronicle and Romance

from Part IV - Genre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2019

Jennifer Jahner
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology
Emily Steiner
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Elizabeth M. Tyler
Affiliation:
University of York
Get access

Summary

This chapter examines the ways in which medieval romance acts to narrate history in late medieval culture. In this chapter I examine the role that the romance genre – often dismissed as merely entertaining tales of knights and giants, dragons and damsels – played as a mode of historical writing in medieval England. Romance can be understood as a mode of historical writing in medieval England through its widespread influence and lasting effects upon the material and textual history of the period. Adopted as a mode of historical rewriting of the past by the Norman and Angevin baronial classes, the narratives that it produced made their way from the pages of these early texts into chronicles and other historiographical genres such as genealogical rolls and civic memorials. They also had a lasting impact upon the terrain of England, in place names and origin stories for landmarks both manmade and natural, inscribing the local landscapes of memory with their histories. The importance of romance as a mode of narrating history should suggest that medieval historiography was a more flexible and encompassing practice than it is sometimes considered. History is not just confined to the pages of chronicles and universal histories, but is a malleable and flexible story that moves with ease between the oral, textual, and material cultures of medieval England.

Type
Chapter
Information
Medieval Historical Writing
Britain and Ireland, 500–1500
, pp. 389 - 403
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×