Author : Jean d'Arras
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 47,40 MB
Release : 2012
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 0271054123
"An annotated English translation of the fourteenth-century French prose romance Melusine, by Jean d'Arras"--Provided by publisher.
Author : Donald Maddox
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 20,89 MB
Release : 1996
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780820318233
This volume of original essays is the first collection devoted to the monumental Roman de Melusine (1393) by Jean d'Arras. A masterwork of late fourteenth-century French prose fiction, Melusine tells of the powerful medieval dynasty of Lusignan from its founding as a city by the legendary Melusine, an enigmatic fairy-figure subject to periodic monstrous transformations, through its expansion in Europe and the Near East, to its ultimate evanescence. Melusine offers a singular blend of history and fiction as it upholds the proprietary claims to Lusignan of the work's illustrious patron, Jean, Duc de Berry. The great deeds of Melusine, her forebears, and her progeny unfold in a narrative that blends elements of myth, folklore, and popular traditions with epic, Crusade narrative, romance, and theological doctrine. Advancing a wealth of new material and fresh insight, the essays in this volume address the complex interplay of the conventions of medieval fictional, historical, and genealogical writing from a wide variety of critical perspectives. Together, they offer a new, more balanced and comprehensive understanding of one of the most significant literary works of late medieval European culture.
Author : Gareth Knight
Publisher : Skylight Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 23,7 MB
Release : 2013
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 190801167X
Considerable interest in faery tradition has grown up in recent years and not least in the story of Melusine of Lusignan, the subject of a prose romance by Jean d'Arras at the end of the 14th century, swiftly followed by one in verse by Couldrette. This book provides a collection of material from various sources to give an all round picture of the remarkable faery, her town, her church, her immediate family, and the great Lusignan dynasty she founded. An established authority on Melusine, Gareth Knight collects together all the best source material, which he translates from the French, and presents his own researches into the Lusignan family of the 12th century, whose dynasty included kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem, examining the possibility of a familiar spirit guiding the family in its destiny.
Author : André Lebey
Publisher : Skylight Press
Page : 154 pages
File Size : 14,96 MB
Release : 2011
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1908011327
Springing from the heart of medieval France, The Romance of the Faery Melusine tells the story of Raymondin of Poitiers who accidentally kills his uncle while out hunting, and fleeing deep into the forest, encounters a faery by a fountain. Falling deeply into a mutual soul-love, the faery Melusine agrees to help Raymondin and to become his wife, on condition that he makes no attempt to see her between dusk and dawn each Saturday. On this basis the house of Lusignan thrives and prospers, until a series of treacherous events tempt Raymondin to violate his promise and shatter the magic which holds his faery wife to the human world. First rendered into written form in a text by Jean d'Arras in 1393, the legend of the Faery Melusine is well established in France, where she is credited with having founded the family, town and castle of Lusignan. However, it is very little known in the English-speaking world, despite the fact that Melusine originally hailed from Scotland. This new retelling by Gareth Knight translated from Andre Lebey's 1920s novel Le Roman de la Melusine captures the freshness of Lebey's telling of the legend and brings the benefit of Knight's expertise both in French literature and in the esoteric faery tradition.
Author :
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 451 pages
File Size : 34,83 MB
Release : 2017-11-13
Category : History
ISBN : 9004355952
In Melusine’s Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth, editors Misty Urban, Deva Kemmis, and Melissa Ridley Elmes offer an invigorating international and interdisciplinary examination of the legendary fairy Melusine. Along with fresh insights into the popular French and German traditions, these essays investigate Melusine’s English, Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese counterparts and explore her roots in philosophy, folklore, and classical myth. Combining approaches from art history, history, alchemy, literature, cultural studies, and medievalism, applying rigorous critical lenses ranging from feminism and comparative literature to film and monster theory, this volume brings Melusine scholarship into the twenty-first century with twenty lively and evocative essays that reassess this powerful figure’s multiple meanings and illuminate her dynamic resonances across cultures and time. Contributors are Anna Casas Aguilar, Jennifer Alberghini, Frederika Bain, Anna-Lisa Baumeister, Albrecht Classen, Chera A. Cole, Tania M. Colwell, Zoë Enstone, Stacey L. Hahn, Deva F. Kemmis, Ana Pairet, Pit Péporté, Simone Pfleger, Caroline Prud’Homme, Melissa Ridley Elmes, Renata Schellenberg, Misty Urban, Angela Jane Weisl, Lydia Zeldenrust, and Zifeng Zhao.
Author : Lydia Zeldenrust
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 29,21 MB
Release : 2020
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1843845210
Readers have long been fascinated by the enigmatic figure of M lusine - a beautiful fairy woman cursed to transform into a half-serpent once a week, whose part-monstrous sons are the ancestor of several European noble houses. This study is the first to consider how this romance developed from a local legend to European bestseller, analysing versions in French, German, Castilian, Dutch, and English. It addresses questions on how to study medieval literature from a European perspective, moving beyond national canons, and reading M lusine's bodily mutability as a metaphor for how the romance itself moves and transforms across borders. It also analyses key changes to the romance's content, form, and material presentation - including its images - and traces how the people who produced and consumed this romance shaped its international transmission and spread. The author shows how M lusine's character is adapted within each local context, while also uncovering previously unknown connections between the different branches of this multilingual tradition. Moving beyond established paradigms of separate national traditions, manuscript versus print, and medieval versus Renaissance literature, the book integrates literary analysis with art historical and book historical approaches. LYDIA ZELDENRUST is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York.
Author : Gareth Knight
Publisher :
Page : 108 pages
File Size : 11,11 MB
Release : 2013-12
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9781908011282
Potent medieval faery lore and hidden goddess traditions for the 21st century. Gareth Knight explores and reveals the hidden mystery of the Faery Melusine, a major figure in medieval French lore and legend. Through vivid interpretation of original source texts, Gareth Knight shows that the Melusine story is a powerful initiatory legend emerging from the deeply transformative Faery Tradition of ancient Europe. Furthermore he demonstrates how such legends manifest as history: the innate sacromagical power of Melusine affected key places and events in the development of the medieval world and from there reached far into the shaping of the modern world through the conflicts for Jerusalem and the Middle East. Gareth Knight is the author of many books on magic, occultism, and esoteric tradition. His work is known world-wide and has been influential in the development of the contemporary magical revival.
Author : Gareth Knight
Publisher : Skylight Press
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 20,19 MB
Release : 2013
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1908011408
The knights of King Arthur's Round Table - Erec, Lancelot, Yvain, Perceval and Gawain - first appeared in the works of Chrétien de Troyes, who cast into Old French stories told by Welsh and Breton story tellers which had their origin in Celtic myth and legend. Chrétien wrote at a time when faery lore was still taken seriously - some leading families even claimed descent from faery ancestors! So we do well to look again at these early stories, for they were written not so much in terms of mystical quests or examples of military chivalry but records of initiation into Otherworld dynamics. Gareth Knight, an acknowledged expert on spiritual and magical traditions and a student of medieval French, goes to the well spring of Arthurian tradition to unveil these original principles. What is more, he shows how they can be regenerated today. "Opening the faery gates" can have its reward not only in terms of personal satisfaction and spiritual growth but as part of a much needed realignment of our spiritual responsibilities as human beings on planet Earth.
Author : Mary Erler
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 293 pages
File Size : 34,16 MB
Release : 1988
Category : History
ISBN : 0820323810
Power in medieval society has traditionally been ascribed to figures of public authority--violent knights and conflicting sovereigns who altered the surface of civic life through the exercise of law and force. The wives and consorts of these powerful men have generally been viewed as decorative attendants, while common women were presumed to have had no power or consequence. Reassessing the conventional definition of power that has shaped such portrayals, Women and Power in the Middle Ages reveals the varied manifestations of female power in the medieval household and community--from the cultural power wielded by the wives of Venetian patriarchs to the economic power of English peasant women and the religious power of female saints. Among the specific topics addresses are Griselda's manipulation of silence as power in Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale"; the extensive networks of influence devised by Lady Honor Lisle; and the role of medieval women book owners as arbiters of lay piety and ambassadors of culture. In every case, the essays seek to transcend simple polarities of public and private, male and female, in order to provide a more realistic analysis of the workings of power in feudal society.
Author : June Hall McCash
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 428 pages
File Size : 48,3 MB
Release : 1996
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780820317021
The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women is the first volume exclusively devoted to an examination of the significant role played by women as patrons in the evolution of medieval culture. The twelve essays in this volume look at women not simply as patrons of letters but also as patrons of the visual and decorative arts, of architecture, and of religious and educational foundations. Patronage as a means of empowerment for women is an issue that underlies many of the essays. Among the other topics discussed are the various forms patronage took, the obstacles to women's patronage, and the purposes behind patronage. Some women sought to further political and dynastic agendas; others were more concerned with religion and education; still others sought to provide positive role models for women. The amusement of their courts was also a consideration for female patrons. These essays also demonstrate that as patrons women were often innovators. They encouraged vernacular literature as well as the translation of historical works and of the Bible, frequently with commentary, into the vernacular. They led the way in sponsoring a variety of genres and encouraged some of the best-known and most influential writers of the Middle Ages. Moreover, they were at the forefront in fostering the new art of printing, which made books accessible to a larger number of people. Finally, the essays make clear that behind much patronage lay a concern for the betterment of women.
