Scholarship on Middle English romance has done little to access the textual and bibliographical continuity of this remarkable literary tradition into the sixteenth century and its impact on Elizabethan works. And to an even greater extent Spenserian scholarship has failed to investigate the significant and complex debts which The Faerie Queene owes to medieval native verse romance and Malorys Le Morte Darthur. This book accordingly offers the first comprehensive study of the impact of Middle English romance on The Faerie Queene. It employs the concept of memory, in which both Middle English romance writers and Spenser show specific interest, to build a sense of the thematic, generic, and cultural complexity of the native romance tradition. The memorial character of Middle English romance resides in its intertextuality and its frequent presentation of its narrative events as historical and consequently the basis for a favourable sense of local or even national identity. Spensers memories of native romance involve a more troubled engagement with that tradition of providential national history as well as an endeavour to see in pre-Reformation romance a prophetic and objective authority for Protestant belief.
Readership: Scholars of Middle English romance and Spenser
Andrew King, Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in English, Dalhousie University, Canada
"We are all in Dr King's debt for this scholarly, ground-breaking book" - English Studies
"King concludes by encouraging future readings of The Faerie Queene which consider native romance. His book demonstrates the fruitfulness of such investigations and will certainly inspire further scholarship. I can only hope that whoever continues in King's footsteps will do so with the same amount of sophistication, skill and sensitivity" - Notes and Queries
"The book is remarkable for its scope and erudition" - Notes and Queries
1: Approaching Spenser's Medievalism 2: Middle English Romance: Tradition, Genre, Manuscripts, and Prints 3: The Matter of Just Memory: Providential History in Middle English Romance 4: Displaced Youths and Slandered Ladies in Middle English Romance 5: Malory's Le Morte Darthur: Remembering Native Romance 6: The 'Reformation' of Native Romance in The Faerie Queene, Book I 7: 'It seemed another worlde to beholde': Native Romance, History, and Book II of The Faerie Queene 8: 'The world runne quite out of square': Remembering/Dismembering Native Romance in Book V Conclusion
