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"An annotated English translation of the fourteenth-century French prose romance Melusine, by Jean d'Arras"--Provided by publisher.
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.
"An annotated English translation of the fourteenth-century French prose romance Melusine, by Jean d'Arras"--Provided by publisher.
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.
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.
In this book, Marijane Osborn translates into modern English nine lively medieval verse romances, in a form that both reflects the original and makes the romances inviting to a modern audience. All nine tales contain elements of magic: shapeshifters, powerful fairies, trees that are portals to another world, and enchanted clothing and armor. Many of the tales also feature powerful women characters, while others include representations of “Saracens.” The tales address issues of enduring interest and concern, and also address sexuality, agency, and identity formation in unexpected ways.
Samuel N. Rosenberg, one of the premier translators of Old French, presents in this volume the first modern English-language version of the thirteenth-century French romance Robert le Diable, a tale of supernatural birth and spiritual redemption. Robert is born after his mother, a childless noblewoman, secretly calls upon Satan to help her conceive. His wicked behavior as a boy and, later, as a destructive young man is so brutal that one day Robert prevails upon his mother to reveal the secret of his birth and thus the source of his wickedness. Upon learning the truth, he leaves his privileged home in Normandy to seek salvation. Robert’s lengthy penance—under the aegis of the Pope and a pious hermit—begins with his acting as a mute fool in the Roman Emperor’s court and ends with his sainthood. In between he plays the hero’s role in defeating the Turks in battle and turns down the hand of the Emperor’s daughter in marriage, choosing instead to return to the hermit’s abode. The legend of Robert le Diable was extraordinarily influential in the seven hundred years after its creation, generating new versions and adaptations in various languages, ranging from sixteenth-century English adaptations by Wynken de Worde and Thomas Lodge to Giacomo Meyerbeer’s esteemed 1831 opera. Framed by a thoughtful introduction and thorough bibliography, this accessible translation renders the original octosyllabic rhymed couplets of the metrical Old French romance in energetic free verse.
With The Greek Girl’s Story, Alan Singerman presents the first reliable, stand-alone translation and critical edition of Abbé Prévost’s 1740 literary masterpiece Histoire d’une Grecque moderne. The text of this new English translation is based on Singerman’s 1990 French edition, which Jonathan Walsh called “arguably the most valuable critical edition” of Prévost’s novel to date. This new edition also includes a complete critical apparatus comprising a substantial introduction, notes, appendixes, and bibliography, all significantly updated from the 1990 French edition, taking into account recent scholarship on this work and providing some additional reflection on the question of Orientalism. Prévost’s roman à clef is based on a true story involving the French ambassador to the Ottoman Porte from 1699 to 1711. It is narrated from the ambassador’s viewpoint and is a model of subjective, unreliable narration (long before Henry James). It is remarkably modern in its presentation of an enigmatic, ambiguous character, as the truth about the heroine can never be established with certainty. It is the story of the tormented relationship between the diplomat and a beautiful young Greek concubine, Théophé, whom he frees from a pasha’s harem. While her benefactor becomes increasingly infatuated with her and bent on becoming her lover, the Greek girl becomes obsessed with the idea of becoming a virtuous and respected woman. Viewing the ambassador as a father figure, she condemns his quasi-incestuous passion and firmly rejects his repeated seduction attempts. Unable to possess the young woman or tolerate the thought that she might grant to someone else what she has refused him, the narrator subjects her behavior to minute scrutiny in an effort to catch her in an indiscretion. His investigations are fruitless, however, and Théophé, the victim of incessant persecution, simply dies, leaving all the questions about her behavior unanswered.
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.
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.